Measuring the effects of interruptions on task performance in the user interface

Abstract

As users continue offloading more control and responsibility to the computer, coordinating the asynchronous interactions between the user and computer is becoming increasingly important. Without proper coordination, an application attempting to gain the user's attention risks interrupting the user in the midst of performing another task. To justify why an application should avoid interrupting the user whenever possible, we designed an experiment measuring the disruptive effect of an interruption on a user's task performance. The experiment utilized six web-based task categories and two categories of interruption tasks. The results of the experiment demonstrate that (i) a user performs slower on an interrupted task than a non-interrupted task, (ii) the disruptive effect of an interruption differs as a function of task category, and (iii) different interruption tasks cause similar disruptive effects on task performance. These results empirically validate the need to better coordinate user interactions among applications that are competing for the user's attention.

Attention aware systems: Theories, applications, and research agenda

“…It has been argued that, in the case of simple primary tasks, interruptions may even facilitate task performance (Speier, Vessey, & Valacich, 2003). On the other hand, as widely reported in the literature, interruptions may generate stress (Bailey, Konstan, & Carlis, 2001;Zijlstra, Roe, Leonova, & Krediet, 1999) and hinder in various ways the performance of the primary task -see for example (Franke, Daniels, & McFarlane, 2002;McFarlane & Latorella, 2002;Nagata, 2003;Speier et al, 2003). As emphasised by McFarlane and Latorella (2002) the implementation of any semiautonomous or user multitasking technology entails interrupting the user from other activities they are performing.…”

Investigating interruptions in the context of computerised cognitive testing for older adults

“…Bailey [2] examined the COI for two interrupting tasks on six primary tasks, finding memory demand in the primary task at the point of interruption to be most predictive of COI, rather than any demand incurred by the interrupting task. Similarly, an effect of primary task workload demand was also found by Speier [25], wherein for highly-demanding primary tasks, interruptions can inhibit performance; conversely, they also found that interruptions can actually improve performance on lowdemand primary tasks, another Zeigarnik effect [32].…”

“…Effects of interruptions have been studied in many naturalistic and experimental settings, resulting in implications for designing applications to support productivity [2], decision-making [25], and vigilance [1].…”

Finding the Right Way for Interrupting People Improving Their Sitting Posture

“…In the last decade, a number of research groups have presented a lot of work around interruption and recovery with the goal of having a highly efficient interrupt with low intrusion [4,7,8,12,13,14,20].…”

“…Instead of using a physical puppet [9], we used a plastic plant based on the Hanappa toy 4 . The original Hanappa plant, manufactured by Sega Toys, flexes its petal and/or leafs based on human's speech input.…”