The e!ects of interruptions in work activity were investigated, "rst in a "eld study where the operators' task was to card-index data about customers' phone lines. The interruptions due to customers' calls resulted in an increase of the processing time of the current task and in the use of several management strategies. A laboratory study was then designed in order to study the e!ects of temporal strain, complexity and similarity on time-sharing e$ciency and to clarify the psychological mechanisms underlying the switching from one task to the other. The results showed especially a signi"cant e!ect of temporal strains on performance and a strong increase in mean error rate at the very beginning of the processing of the second task. In conclusion, advice is given for both technical and organisational design.

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