TRACE-WORK

Traces of Work: Developing human-centered design principles for leveraging digital traces of activity in knowledge work

The TRACE-WORK project

Activity traces help people coordinate, have shared awareness, and maintain an overview of their own work.

Because many work traces are byproducts of the actual work (such as time stamps and other meta data, or auxiliary files like notes or drafts), current user interfaces aren't designed to help users notice and use traces. Therefore, the TRACE-WORK project asks:


  • How can activity traces become more perceivable and easier to interact with in workplace tools?

  • What would workplace tools look like if traces were engrained in their design, similar to the way that most of us expect computers to have windows and a mouse pointer?

  • What would trace-enhanced work technologies mean for work practices?

To answer these questions, we are doing research into what exactly traces are, how they can be categorized, and how they support work. We are doing this by:

  • ... consolidating existing research on human-computer interaction, design, and engineering that has proposed traces or trace-like concepts for specific use cases.
  • ... doing empirical studies in Irish workplaces, using observations and interviews to identify real-world examples of traces and how people experience them.


TRACE-WORK co-hosted a WORKSHOP at CSCW 2025

What are traces?

That’s a good question! TRACE-WORK is working on the answer.

We are undertaking a literature review to understand how people in human-computer interaction (HCI) have defined and explored traces so far. Stay tuned!

If you’re impatient, you can also read the paper that inspired the project: "Two Cases for Traces: A Theoretical Framing of Mediated Joint Activity" and the proposal for the 2025 CSCW workshop on Traces, Breadcrumbs, and Patina: Exploring and Designing with Traces of Activity.


Project methodology: PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

TRACE-WORK is using participant co-research, where employees from Irish workplaces help shape the data collection and analysis.

Co-research is the term we have chosen for a type of participatory research, inspired by worker-led research, that involves participants in doing the research by:

  • training participants in research methods
  • … to enable them to help develop the research protocols
  • … and take part in data analysis.

Participants have also allowed us to observe their work, supported by interviews to both prepare for the observations and discuss them with participants afterwards.


The project is funded by the European Union. For more information, see the Horizon Europe project description page.


Ida Larsen-Ledet

Hi! I’m a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the School of Applied Psychology in University College Cork, Ireland. I have a background in computer science, with a bit of cognitive semiotics and information studies sprinkled into the mix.

My research is driven by an interest in the subtle ways that our practices and behavior towards each other are formed by how technology is designed, and the ways we adapt our use of technology to make it suit different situations.

I have studied this through qualitative inquiries into work and the role of technology in people’s work, starting from collaborative academic writing, then workplace knowledge bases, and now more generally how people use digital traces to keep track of their work.

I'm currently a programme editor for the ECSCW issue of the CSCW Journal.

I'm a member of ACM SIGCHI and an academic member of Lero.

Where we might have met Publications (ORCID) Micro CV


The TRACE-WORK research team

Dr. Ida Larsen-Ledet: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork. Ida holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Aarhus University and worked for Microsoft Research before joining UCC.

Professor Luigina Ciolfi: Professor of Human Computer Interaction at the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork and academic member of Lero – The Research Ireland Centre for Software. Luigina holds a Ph.D. in Human Computer Interaction from University of Limerick.

Professor Carol Linehan: Professor at the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork. Carol holds a Ph.D. in Work Psychology from UCC.

The TRACE-WORK project is funded by the European Union under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship grant agreement no. 101110480. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

This site was last updated on the 9th of February 2026.