Telling calls: Facilitating mobile phone conversation grounding and management

Current cell phone designs are limited by the information a caller can provide to the receiver at the time of a call. As a result callers are handicapped in effectively negotiating interaction commitment from the receiver, and perhaps more importantly, receivers are unable to make informed call handling decisions. To examine the nature of this information gap we 1) developed Telling Calls, a mobile phone application which allows users to provide and receive information such as what the call is about and the circumstances of the caller under which it is being made, and 2) conducted a qualitative field study (36 users) and a quantitative field study (30 users) of Telling Calls use. Together these studies provide insights on how additional caller generated information shared at the time of call handling effectively improves the process of negotiating interaction commitment, and establishing common ground.