A Window of Opportunity: Active Window Tracking for Mining Work Practices

Abstract

The field of process mining has evolved from discovering single work processes towards providing broad insights into peoples' work practices. Existing techniques can be used to analyse such work practices, but this can be problematic if the available data is limited to the use of a single IT system or is not captured at the right level of granularity. We propose the use of a personal informatics technique, called Active Window Tracking (AWT), as a new way of gathering data for mining work practices. In this study, we identify the opportunities that this technique brings through a case study within our research group. In particular, we show how AWT helps to: capture previously-unrecorded work activities, expose the relations between work processes, and navigate between different levels of data granularity. The technique, which allows for generating new data as well as complementing existing data, is a valuable asset for the community when it comes to better understanding people's work practices across individual systems and processes.