Paper Reading # 6: Studying and tackling temporal challenges in mobile HCI

Comments:



Reference Information:

Title: Studying and tackling temporal challenges in mobile HCI
Author: Joel E. Fischer
Presentation Venue: CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:

The topic addressed in this paper by the researchers concerns determining a proper time to provide interruptions to the users when there is some needed or useful input the program can use in a mobile setting. This has been demonstrated to be a difficult problem due to the difficulties in being able to know in advance the state of the individual being interrupted, since it is constantly affected by location and time. Without being able to make people wear complicated sensors to feed data into their programs, it is a difficult task to gather this data to make the decision on interruption in longer narratives provided by such things a mobile games. 

One of the key items being examined by the researches is the concept of receptivity. This refers not only to the event of the interruption, but to the persons reaction to the interruption, as well. It is uncertain how the person will react to the interruption. The goal of the research is to attempt to minimize negative responses from the users and maximize the benefits the users receive from such interruptions.

Discussion:


This was an interesting topic from the stand point of being a user. Sometimes, the interruptions I receive -- on my phone, for example -- are useful and I appreciate that they have been provided to me. Things of this nature include the input I get when I receive an important text message or a notification in my email that I have received a notification that my text book has shipped from the publisher.

This is a double-edge sword upon occasion, though, as I have to content with other annoying messages in my mobile space. These include such things as spam from people I don't know, whom I don't care about, and that I want nothing to do with. Additionally, I don't need to know when someone sent me a gift in Farmville or other social gaming application. Thanks, Zynga!

Timing is also an issue. I don't need to receive notifications in the middle of my hard and heavy mid-term examination while I am taking it. After would suffice, but without knowing the timing of the exam, it would be hard to determine when the bad time to send that notification is. I think there is potential in this research and I look forward to seeing how it can be dealt with.