Requests for communication via mobile devices can be disruptive to the current task or social situation. To reduce the frequency of disruptive requests, one promising approach is to provide callers with cues of a receiver's context through an awareness display, allowing informed decisions of when to call. Existing displays typically provide cues based on what can be readily sensed, which may not match what is needed during the call decision process. In this paper, we report results of a four week diary study of mobile phone usage, where users recorded what context information they considered when making a call, and what information they wished others had considered when receiving a call. Our results were distilled into lessons that can be used to improve the design of awareness displays for mobile devices, e.g., show frequency of a receiver's recent communication and distance from a receiver to her phone. We discuss technologies that can enable cues indicated in these lessons to be realized within awareness displays, as well as discuss limitations of such displays and issues of privacy. INTRODUCTIONThe rapid proliferation of mobile communication devices such as cell phones has enabled ubiquitous communication among family, friends, and colleagues. This has obvious benefits, but receiving requests for communication at inopportune moments can be very disruptive to the current task [33] or social situation [2,33]. To identify suitable moments for initiating communication, callers must be able to balance their need for communication with the receivers' need to remain engaged in the task or social situation. Existing mechanisms for maintaining this balance include allowing receivers to choose among many notification modalities such as ring tones and ring styles (e.g., audio, vibrate, silent) or by leveraging the caller-id function. However, these mechanisms are receiver-oriented -the receiver is forced to decide whether or not to accept a call in advance without knowing the caller's purpose. Enabling callers to push more context information (e.g., text messages indicating purpose) to the receiver offers one possible solution, as it would allow a receiver to make a more informed decision of whether to accept the call. However, the explicit effort required by the caller (entering the message) and imposed on the receiver (reading and interpreting the message) may outweigh any increase in the receiver's ability to moderate incoming calls.A promising alternative is to develop communication-oriented awareness displays that provide a caller with cues of the receiver's context (e.g., see [13,18,21,34]), allowing the caller to make a more informed decision of whether now is an appropriate time to call. A compelling benefit of this approach is that it maintains the balance in effort between caller and receiver in the call initiation process. For example, a caller can consult the awareness display to decide whether to initiate the request, while a receiver may use notification modalities or caller-id to decide whether ...
Peripheral displays allow users to monitor an information source while focusing on a separate primary task. In this paper, we present our work investigating what form peripheral displays of awareness information from instant messaging programs may take and the role these displays could have in existing communication practices. We describe several prototypes of tangible, aesthetic displays of awareness information. A focus group involving users of instant messaging software revealed that the awareness information component of the software (such as sounds or flashing windows) is often used to trigger communication through more heavyweight means such as telephone or face-to-face conversation.
Previous studies show that traditional usability evaluation methods can be problematic for collecting feedback on visual design [1]. Desirability studies have been used by usability practitioners to collect feedback on the affective response to interactive systems, but none allow end users to contribute feedback in the language of visual design experts. We describe how we adapted two traditional user research techniques (card sort, directed storytelling) to collect feedback on visual design. We then compare and contrast the kinds of data gathered from these methods with data gathered in a think-aloud exercise. A mixed-methods research strategy that includes methods adapted for visual design offers a path to engaging end users in a conversation that results in concise and actionable feedback for visual designers.
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