Understanding Multitasking Behaviors on Foldable Smartphones
How do you research multitasking when traditional scenario categories (e.g. work/leisure) break down in simultaneous-use contexts?
My Role
Primary UX Researcher on this project, collaborating with a junior researcher.
Led the entire research process, including study design, data analysis, report writing, and presentations.
Worked closely with two product manager teams and one design team, who were also the key stakeholders for this research.
Business Background
Traditionally, complex multitasking involving three or more concurrent windows has been a design domain primarily owned by PCs and tablets.
With the advancement of foldable display technology, a growing number of foldable smartphones have entered the market. Compared to conventional slab phones, their significantly larger screen sizes make them inherently better suited for multitasking scenarios.
As a result, the design battleground for multitasking with three or more concurrent windows has expanded from PCs and tablets to include foldable smartphones.
Foldable smartphones
However, our OS does not currently enable multitasking with three or more apps running in parallel.
To address this gap, this research focuses on multitasking scenarios involving three or more concurrent applications.
The goal is to gain a deep understanding of users’ motivations and typical interaction flows in advanced multitasking scenarios, and to identify competitive strengths and weaknesses, providing actionable insights to inform future product iterations.
Target Users
Users who frequently utilize "multitasking" features on large foldable smartphones, with usage scenarios spanning work, entertainment, and learning contexts.
Preference will be given to users with prior experience using competitors' multitasking feature.
Research Approach
Multitasking Behavior Discovery:
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Conduct user interviews with in-context live demonstrations, where participants walk through how they typically use multitasking features in work, learning, and entertainment scenarios.
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Synthesize multitasking scenarios, user motivations, corresponding usage patterns (e.g., app combination modes), and pain points.
Competitive Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses:
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Pre-interview: Have users test competitor solutions across scenarios and provide comparative assessments.
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Interview phase: Guide users through specified tasks to surface competitive experience strengths/weaknesses and establish evaluation criteria for the experience.
Key Challenges: Redefining the research framework
We observed that real-world multitasking scenarios are inherently "overlapping"—for example, watching a video for entertainment while replying to work messages at the same time. This made conventional scenario classifications (e.g., work vs. entertainment vs. learning) insufficient for analysis.
Solution
Identifying distinct solution types through competitive analysis:
By analyzing competing products, we found that existing multitasking solutions can be broadly categorized into two types:
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task-switching solutions designed for rapid context switching, and
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parallel window solutions designed for true task concurrency.
Inferring underlying user needs from design intent:
Starting from the design intent behind these solutions, we inferred that they address user needs along two fundamental dimensions:
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how attention is allocated (balanced vs. prioritized), and
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whether the tasks involved are related or unrelated.
Establishing a new analytical framework Based on these insights, we redefined the analytical dimensions as attention allocation × task relatedness, which provided a coherent logical framework for subsequent analysis.
Conclusions
Value of Multitasking
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Multitasking is fundamentally a process in which users dynamically allocate their attention across multiple tasks.
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Window size and position serve as explicit signals of attention priority:
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Window size reflects the level of attention investment—the larger the window, the more attention it receives.
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Window position reflects task hierarchy: primary tasks are placed centrally, secondary tasks are positioned toward the edges, and tasks with no clear priority are arranged side by side.
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User Motivations
Users engage in multitasking to efficiently handle multiple tasks with limited attention, manifesting in four distinct motivations:
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Motivation 1: Allocate attention around a single goal to compare/transfer content across applications
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Motivation 2: Alternate attention between multiple independent tasks to maximize time utilization
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Motivation 3: Focus attention on the primary task while briefly open secondary tasks when needed and close them immediately after use.
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Motivation 4: Focus attention on the primary task while continuously monitoring other secondary tasks
Interaction flow
Multitasking follows a four-stage flow: initiation, arrangement, usage, and termination. Users first enter multi-window mode, then arrange the layout by adding or removing apps and resizing or repositioning windows. They subsequently switch between windows, transfer information, and coordinate tasks, before eventually exiting the multitasking state.
Representative scenarios
Typical multitasking scenarios include reference and comparison, information transfer, time-filling, tool invocation, and status monitoring, each closely aligned with the motivations identified above.
Impact
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Delivered research insights to product track leads and collaborated with business teams to co-create project initiation documents.
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Insights informed product strategy for multitasking features and validated proposed design solutions.