What did I ask you to do, by when, and for whom? Passion and compassion in request management

Abstract

Request management occurs at an intersection of CSCW and personal information management (i.e., to-do management), with particular emphasis on social relationships and organizational accountability. We explore diverse work practices and representations for person-to-person requests in organizations, detailing the scatter of communications channels, difficulty of aggregation and prioritization, differences due to context, and the sometimes extraordinary effort and passion that knowledge workers expend on this part of their work, as well as the compassion with which they view their colleagues' efforts. We close with a proposal for the study of socially implicated objects in physical and/or virtual organizations, and implications for the design of services to support request management.