Behaviours and Preferences when Coordinating Mediated Interruptions: Social and System influence

There is a growing interest in technologies for supporting individuals to man- age their accessibility for interruptions. The applicability of these technologies is likely to be influenced by social relationships between people. This paper describes an experi- ment that examines interplay between a working relationship of an interruptor and an in- terruptee and two different system approaches to handle interruptions. We tested how system behaviour and the social relationship between the actors influence their interrup- tion behaviours. Our results are consistent with prior research on the importance of rela- tional benefit to understanding interruption. We found that interruptors were far more likely to be considerate of interruptees' activities, when they both shared a common goal. We have extended those findings by showing that interruptees display similar behaviours to those presented by interruptors. The results regarding the systems' influence show a clear trend towards the positive effect of the Automatic system on peoples' interruption behaviours which is based on: (i) visible interruption costs, (ii) social tension and (iii) sys- tem preference. We think that the results of this experiment translated into design impli- cations can prove helpful in informing the design of computer-mediated solutions sup- porting interruption handling.