Comparison of Four Primary Methods for Coordinating the Interruption of People in Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

Interruptions can cause people to make mistakes or errors during human-computer interaction (HCI). Interruptions occur as an unavoidable side-effect of some important kinds of human computer-based activities, for example, (a) constantly monitor for unscheduled changes in information environments, (b) supervise background autonomous services, and (c) intermittently collaborate and communicate with other people. Fortunately, people have powerful innate cognitive abilities that they can potentially leverage to manage multiple concurrent activities if they have specific kinds of control and interaction support. There is great opportunity, therefore, for user-interface design to increase people's ability to successfully handle interruptions, and prevent expensive errors. The literature contains very little concrete design wisdom about how to solve the interruption problems in user interfaces (UIs). Coordination support, however, is identified as a most important design topic. This article presents the results ...