Notification Display Choice for Smartphone Users: Investigating the Impact of Notification Displays on a Typing Task

Interruption Management

McFarlane identified four strategies of managing interruptions (McFarlane, 1997): immediate (read the notification right away), scheduled (read at defined intervals), negotiated (read at user determined intervals), and mediated (third party decides when to read). McFarlane (2002) compares each approach to coordinating interruptions, and found that when people are forced to take immediate action, interruption tasks are completed quickly but more mistakes are made in the primary task, and more task switches are involved. In contrast, people perform very well when they can negotiate interruptions themselves, but providing control over the onset of an interruption will increase the time until the interruption task is attended to. This result motivates notification displays that support the negotiation of interruptions, and allow users to better manage the disruption to a primary task.