The Scope and Importance of Human Interruption in Human-Computer Interaction Design

Abstract

At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communicate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and respond to and communicate with other human operators.

Attention aware systems: Theories, applications, and research agenda

“…It has been argued that, in the case of simple primary tasks, interruptions may even facilitate task performance (Speier, Vessey, & Valacich, 2003). On the other hand, as widely reported in the literature, interruptions may generate stress (Bailey, Konstan, & Carlis, 2001;Zijlstra, Roe, Leonova, & Krediet, 1999) and hinder in various ways the performance of the primary task -see for example (Franke, Daniels, & McFarlane, 2002;McFarlane & Latorella, 2002;Nagata, 2003;Speier et al, 2003). As emphasised by McFarlane and Latorella (2002) the implementation of any semiautonomous or user multitasking technology entails interrupting the user from other activities they are performing.…”

“…On the other hand, as widely reported in the literature, interruptions may generate stress (Bailey, Konstan, & Carlis, 2001;Zijlstra, Roe, Leonova, & Krediet, 1999) and hinder in various ways the performance of the primary task -see for example (Franke, Daniels, & McFarlane, 2002;McFarlane & Latorella, 2002;Nagata, 2003;Speier et al, 2003). As emphasised by McFarlane and Latorella (2002) the implementation of any semiautonomous or user multitasking technology entails interrupting the user from other activities they are performing. In their seminal paper these authors review theoretical and experimental research on human interruption management and propose strategies for the design of systems capable of supporting this management process.…”

Resistance to the impact of interruptions during multitasking by healthy adults and dysexecutive patients

“…Length of the interruption and what they describe as "the opportunity to rehearse" were not considered to be important factors. However, McFarlane and Latorella (2002) point out that "opportunity to rehearse" was also not manipulated alone between any of the experiments, and therefore no conclusions can be drawn about the impact of rehearsal opportunities from Gillie and Broadbent's experiments. Also, because the interruption always occurred at the same point in any interrupted problem, participants could have come to expect it and prepare themselves.…”

“…It could be that people are actually quite skilled at dealing with interruptions, and are only disrupted on a small percentage of occasions. The effect of interruptions on computer multitasking and other computer use has been studied a great deal in the Human Computer Interaction literature (see McFarlane and Latorella, 2002, for a review). The primary goal of much of this research has been to design better user interfaces.…”

Interruptions in the wild: portraying the handling of interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition lens

“…safety critical environments, aviation, office work, and healthcare (e.g. ECRI Institute 2015;Grundgeiger and Sanderson 2009;Latorella 1996;McFarlane and Latorella 2002;NTSB 1988). Broadly speaking, without reviewing the extensive literature on the issue of interruption research specifically, it seems that there are some consistent findings that demonstrate a range of negative outcomes associated with frequently occurring interruptions.…”