User Interfaces and Multiple Activities: The User Perspective

This paper contains some remarks about the use of window systems and menu based user interfaces as supports for multiple and concurrent activities, activities composed by tasks and actions. The main drawbacks of such systems are examined. Afterwards we discuss the definition of a working set as a tool that allows the user to carry out more than one of its activities by using a computing system. The closing sections of the paper contain some reflections on the improvements to be made to the aforesaid systems so to implement the concept of working set.