The importance of "who" and "what" in interruption management: Empirical evidence from a cell phone use study

Sukeshini A. Grandhi, Nate Laws, Brian Amento, Quentin Jones

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Interruption management in technology mediated communication is a key concern in ollaborative work and social environments. Previous empirical and theoretical work in predicting interruptibility predominantly focuses on interruptee's local context namely identifying cognitively and socially intruding contexts such as mental work load levels, activity, place of activity. They largely ignore the relational context namely "who" the interruption is from or "what" it is about. This paper addresses this issue by systematically investigating the use of the various contextual factors in interruption management practices of everyday cell phone use. Analysis of 1201 incoming calls from our experience sampling method study of cell phone use, shows that "who" is calling is used most of the time (87.4%) by individuals to make deliberate call handling decisions (N=834), in contrast to the inter ruptee's current local social (34.9%) or cognitive (43%) contexts. We present implications of these findings for the design of interruption management tools for communication media.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication14th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2008
Pages2334-2342
Number of pages9
StatePublished - 2008
Event14th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2008 - Toronto, ON, Canada
Duration: Aug 14 2008Aug 17 2008

Publication series

Name14th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2008
Volume4

Other

Other14th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2008
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto, ON
Period8/14/088/17/08

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Library and Information Sciences
  • Information Systems

Keywords

  • Availability
  • Communication
  • Design
  • Interruptibility
  • Interruption
  • Management
  • Mobile
  • Phones

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