This year's Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Conference (UbiComp) took place in London from 09.09.19 - 14.09.19. As part of the conference, Christoph Anderson presented the paper "The Impact of Private and Work-Related Smartphone Usage on Interruptibility" at the Ubittention Workshop on behalf of his co-authors. The paper summarizes the research and results of a preliminary study on social roles and interruptibility. It could be shown that the social role (private or professional) had an influence on the interruptibility of the study participants. In addition, three different strategies for managing social roles and interruptibility were identified.

C. Anderson, J. S. Heinisch, S. Ohly, K. David, and V. Pejovic, "The Impact of Private and Work-Related Smartphone Usage on Interruptibility," in Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, London, United Kingdom, 2019, pp. 1058-1063.

Abstract:

In the last decade, the effects of interruptions through mobile notifications have been extensively researched in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Breakpoints in tasks and activities, cognitive load, and personality traits have all been shown to correlate with individuals' interruptibility. However, concepts that explain interruptibility in a broader sense are needed to provide a holistic understanding of its characteristics. In this paper, we build upon the theory of social roles to conceptualize and investigate the correlation between individuals' private and work-related smartphone usage and their interruptibility. Through our preliminary study with four participants over 11 weeks, we found that application sequences on smartphones correlate with individuals' private and work roles. We observed that participants engaged in these roles tend to follow specific interruptibility strategies - integrating, combining, or segmenting private and work-related engagements. Understanding these strategies breaks new ground for attention and interruption management systems in ubiquitous computing.