An exploratory web log study of multitasking
Nikolai Buzikashvili · 2006
The Web search multitasking study based on automatic task session detection procedure is described. The results of the study: 1) multitasking is very rare, 2) it usually covers only 2 task sessions, 3) it is frequently formed into a temporal inclusion of an interrupting task session into the interrupted session, 4) the quantitative characteristics of multitasking greatly differ from the characteristics of sequential execution of one and several tasks. A searcher minimizes task switching costs: he avoids multitasking and while multitasking he uses cheapest manner of task switching.