Balancing Awareness and Interruption: Investigation of Notification Deferral Policies

Eric Horvitz, J. Apacible, M. Subramani

Adaptive Systems and Interaction
Microsoft Research
Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

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Abstract:

We review experiments with bounded deferral, a method aimed at reducing the disruptiveness of incoming messages and alerts in return for bounded delays in receiving information. Bounded deferral provides users with a means for balancing awareness about potentially urgent information with the cost of interruption.

Keywords: Attentional User Interface (AUI), bounded deferral, interruption, notifications.

In: Proceedings of User Modeling '05, Tenth Conference on User Modeling, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 2005.

Author Email: horvitz@microsoft.com

Related Background

• Overview of the Attentional User Interface (AUI) research at Microsoft Research: "Models of Attention in Computing and Communications: From Principles to Applications," Communications of the ACM 46(3), March 2003.
  
  
• Red Herring article on the Priorities and Notification Platform projects.
  
  
• Article on presentation at ACM Conference (with Steve Ballmer), Stephen Buel, Techweb News, March 2001.
  
  
• Bill Gates keynote at CTIA Wireless Conference, including live demonstration of the Priorities system.
  
  
• Presentation of Notification Platform, CHI Keynote talk by Bill Gates, Seattle, April 2001. (CHI 2001 photo.)
  
  
• News story on Attentional User Interface (AUI) project at Microsoft Research: "Microsoft Sees Software Agent as Way to Avoid Distractions", John Markoff, New York Times, July '00.
  
  
• Article on Notification Platform and Priorities work, Michael Hiltzik, MIT Technology Review, March '02.
  
  
• Article on sensing cell phones, MIT Technology Review, March 2002.
  
  
• Lumiere project on Bayesian user modeling.
  
  
• Lookout project on principles of mixed-initiative user interaction.