Notifications, Interruption, and Performance: User Studies

Several papers describing studies at Microsoft Research on the nature and effects of interruptions on users' performance and experience.


  • S.T. Iqbal, E. Horvitz, Y. Ju, and E. Mathews, Hang on a Sec! Effects of Proactive Mediation of Phone Conversations while Driving, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Vancouver BC, May 2011.

  • S.T. Iqbal, Y.C. Ju, E. Horvitz. Cars, Calls, and Cognition: Investigating Driving and Divided Attention, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Atlanta, GA, April 2010.

  • E. Horvitz, J. Apacible, and P. Koch. BusyBody: Creating and Fielding Personalized Models of the Cost of Interruption, Proceedings of CSCW, Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ACM Press, November 2004.

  • S. T. Iqbal and E. Horvitz. Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions, Proceedings of CHI 2007, San Jose, California, April 2007.

  • S.T. Iqbal and E. Horvitz. Notifications and Awareness: A Field Study of Alert Usage and Preferences, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Savannah, GA, February 2010.

  • E. Horvitz and J. Apacible. Learning and Reasoning about Interruption. Proceedings of the Fifth ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, November 2003, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

  • E. Horvitz, J. Apacible, M. Subramani. Balancing Awareness and Interruption: Investigation of Notification Deferral Policies. Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on User Modeling (UM 2005), July 2005, Edinburgh, Scotland.

  • S. Iqbal and E. Horvitz. Conversations Amidst Computing: A Study of Interruptions and Recovery of Task Activity. Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on User Modeling (UM 2005), June 2007, Corfu, Greece.

  • E. Horvitz, P. Koch, R. Sarin, J. Apacible, M. Subramani. Bayesphone: Context-Sensitive Policies for Inquiry and Action in Mobile Devices. Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on User Modeling (UM 2005), July 2005, Edinburgh, Scotland.

  • M. Czerwinski, M., E. Horvitz, and S. Wilhite (2004). A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions, Proceedings of CHI 2004, Human Factors in Computing Systems. Vienna, April 2004.

  • M. Czerwinski, E. Cutrell, and E. Horvitz. Instant Messaging: Effects of Relevance and Time, In S. Turner, P. Turner (Eds), People and Computers XIV: Proceedings of HCI 2000, Vol. 2, September 2000, British Computer Society, p. 71-76.

  • E. Cutrell, M. Czerwinski, and E. Horvitz. Effects of Instant Messaging Interruptions on Computing Tasks. In Extended Abstracts of CHI ’2000, Human Factors in Computing Systems, The Hague, April 1-6, 2000, ACM press, 99-100. ACM

  • M. Czerwinski, E. Cutrell, and E. Horvitz. Instant Messaging and Interruption: Influence of Task Type on Performance, Proceedings of OZCHI 2000, Sydney, Australia, December 2000.

  • E. Cutrell, M. Czerwinski, and E. Horvitz. Notification, Disruption, and Memory: Effects of Messaging Interruptions on Memory and Performance, Proceedings of Interact 2001: IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Tokyo, Japan, July 2001.

  • Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E. and Cutrell, E. (2001). Subjective Duration Assessment: An Implicit Probe for Software Usability. Proceedings of IHM-HCI 2001, Lille, France, September, 2001, pp. 167-170.

  • M. Czerwinski and E. Horvitz (2002). An Investigation of Memory for Daily Computing Events. Proceedings of HCI 2002: Sixteenth British HCI Group Annual Conference, London, England, September 2002.

  • M. van Dantzich, D. Robbins, E. Horvitz, M. Czerwinski (2003), Scope: Providing Awareness of Multiple Notifications at a Glance, In: Proceedings of AVI 2002, ACM Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, Trento, Italy, May 22-24, 2002. ACM Press.

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