TaskSnap: One Task at a Time With Snapshots

Software developers frequently switch tasks in their daily work, each involving different artifacts such as code files, websites, and documents. These artifacts accumulate across tasks, cluttering the workspace, and making it cognitively demanding to identify relevant ones during resumption. Existing solutions group artifacts, but do not effectively reduce workspace clutter for better task resumption and often overlook development specific artifacts. This paper introduces TaskSnap, a novel approach that supports the semi-automated creation of snapshots to group task-relevant artifacts. These snapshots are automatically closed at task boundaries to reduce clutter and restored when resuming a previously interrupted task to reconstruct the working context. We evaluated TaskSnap in a controlled lab experiment with 55 software developers who worked on two development tasks and one information-seeking task, switching between them after interruptions or upon completion. Results showed that TaskSnap improved task resumption by significantly reducing edit lags (time to first code edit). Separating task contexts into snapshots reduced perceived cognitive load and fostered focus on the current task by reducing clutter and access to task-unrelated artifacts. We discuss the benefits of leveraging task snapshots for task switching and artifact management, and explore design opportunities for balancing automation and user control in real-world adoption.