Web tasking
Web Tasking is a set of web user interactions in hypermedia purposefully conducted for the performance of tasks. Web tasking is a term coined intentionally to contrast Web Browsing (understood as exploration of the world wide web by following one interesting link to another, usually with a definite objective but without a planned search strategy).
Motivation
The web was originally designed as an information space through which people and machines communicate and exchange information. Web browsing through hypermedia links is the primary web interaction model optimal for such purpose. As the web evolves, web users conduct tasks today in web interaction model that was originally designed for information search and exchange. Optimal task performance was not in the original design concern.
Web tasking is to distinguish from web browsing, with the user goal of web interactions for the sake of information retrieval through hypermedia links, from the user goal of web interactions for the sake of task performance through hypermedia links.
| Perspectives | Web Browsing | Web Tasking |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose of Web Interactions | Information Retrieval and Search | Task Performance |
| Resource Access | Read Only | Create, Read, Update, Delete |
| State Transition | Ad Hoc | Predictive, Repeatable |
| Interaction Consequence | No server-side side effect | Server-side transactional side effect |
History
The term "Web Tasking" was originally coined by two researchers from IBM Canada CAS Research, Joanna W. Ng and Diana H. Lau, in "Going Beyond Web Browsing to Web Tasking: Transforming Web Users from Web Operators to Web Supervisors" to depict a set or a sequence of web interactions through hypermedia links for the purpose of performance of tasks. Task elements typically may include a goal, a set of information cues, an action and an outcome (or product). The interaction model of web browsing works well for the web’s original purpose of information search and retrieval. Though the purpose of the web has been extended beyond information search and retrieval into hypermedia-based task executions, the original web interaction model has not been enhanced for native web tasking support.
Scope
Like web browsing, web tasking is distributed in scope and RESTful in nature. The progress of tasks takes place as application states are being transitioned to the next through hypermedia. The model of web tasking complies with the application constraint of “Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State” (HATEOAS).[1]
Web tasking are users' interactions upon web resources that are typically distributed in nature for the purpose of performance of tasks. Actors of Interactions in web tasking can be a web user or a machine acting on behalf of web users. Web tasking execution complies with the RESTful principled design of the web architecture, and therefore can be executed across distributed domains of the Web.
References
Ng, Joanna W.; Lau, Diana H. "Going Beyond Web Browsing to Web Tasking: Transforming Web Users from Web Operators to Web Supervisors". IEEE Ninth World Congress on Services, SERVICES 2013, Santa Clara, CA, USA, June 28 - July 3, 2013. IEEE 2013IEEE 2013 International Workshop on Personalized Web Tasking: 126–130.
Notes
- ^ R. T. Fielding, and R.N.Taylor, “Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture,” ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT) vol.2 issue 2, pp. 115-150, May 2002.