Reference Information:
Title: Studying and Tackling Temporal Challenges in Mobile HCI
Author: Joel E. Fischer
Venue: CHI 2010
Summary:
The author begins by noting that interruptions from a mobile phone can be very troublesome. He then discusses ways that a phone could try to time its interruptions to be less troubling to the user. The author suggests using an adaptation of Harold D. Lasswell's formula of communication. The author would send messages to a user at random times asking the user to perform some task such as take a picture. The user would then rate how troublesome this task was and eventually the program would have a good idea of what times the person is more available to be interrupted.
Discussion:
This was by far my least favorite paper that I have read. Whenever I do not wish to be disturbed by my phone I simply put it on silent mode. If I am available I turn silent mode off. I think leaving it up to the machine is a recipe for disaster. This paper reminded me of the assigned reading in the design of future things.
Very interesting point of view. Your discussion represents my feelings about this technology since I also believe it is a recipe for disaster, however I do not condemn the technology as useless simply because there might be certain professionals in need of this
ReplyDeleteI agree that the problem of timing is largely solved by the user taking action (putting the phone on silent, etc) but I think it's an interesting subject to study- maybe for some smart-phone application where the user's response is time-sensitive? That might even make certain kinds of apps more feasible to design... although I can't think of any right now...
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer to control phone notifications myself; times when I forget to set silent or otherwise are few and far between, so I don't see it as a problem that needs another solution.
ReplyDeleteSomething like this does seem like a niche-application, so I think it's worthy of study.
I actually think that this is a very interesting idea to implement for people that need to be on task. However, I may agree with you in that society is definitely going about this the wrong way. When you are with someone or doing something important, that phone should be silent.
ReplyDelete