User-interruption in human-computer interaction (HCI) is an increasingly important problem. Many of the useful advances in intelligent and multitasking computer systems have the significant side effect of greatly increasing user-interruption. This previously innocuous HCI problem has become critical to the successful function of many kinds of modern computer systems. Unfortunately, no HCI design guidelines exist for solving this problem. In fact, theoretical tools do not yet exist for investigating the HCI problem of user-interruption in a comprehensive and generalizable way. This report asserts that a single unifying definition of user-interruption and the accompanying practical taxonomy would be useful theoretical tools for driving effective investigation of this crucial HCI problem. These theoretical tools are constructed here. A comprehensive analysis is conducted through the existing literature. Theoretical constructs from several relevant but diverse fields are identified and discussed. A unifying definition of user-interruption is synthesized. This new definition is supported with an array of postulates, assertions, and a taxonomy of human interruption to facilitate its practical application.

Interruptions can cause people to make mistakes or errors during human--computer interaction (HCI). Interruptions occur as an unavoidable side-effect of some important kinds of human computer-based activities, for example, (a) constantly monitor for unscheduled changes in information environments, (b) supervise background autonomous services, and (c) intermittently collaborate and communicate with other people. Fortunately, people have powerful innate cognitive abilities that they can potentially leverage to manage multiple concurrent activities if they have specific kinds of control and interaction support. There is great opportunity, therefore, for user-interface design to increase people's ability to successfully handle interruptions, and prevent expensive errors. The literature contains very little concrete design wisdom about how to solve the interruption problems in user interfaces (UIs). Coordination support, however, is identified as a most important design topic. This article presents the results of an empirical investigation to compare basic design solutions for coordinating human interruption in computer -based multitasks. A theory-based taxonomy of human interruption is used

At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communicate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and respond to and communicate with other human operators. Automated monitoring

In this paper, we describe a system and architecture for building and remotely accessing shared context between a user and a computer. The system is designed to allow a user to browse web pages on a personal computer and then remotely make queries about information seen on the web pages using a telephone-based voice user interface. Keywords Shared context, voice user interfaces, information access, telephone-based user interfaces, software architecture, VoiceXML. 1.

Groupware design is at a stage where identification, clarification and validation of best practice is critical if its potential is to be realised. This paper examines and records the major causes of groupware failure, and provides four groupware design principles that encapsulate the problems and guide design teams around them. The principles provide an extendable framework that is a synthesis of design lessons recorded in CSCW literature. KEYWORDS: groupware, design, principles, user-acceptance. INTRODUCTION The failure of early groupware systems is well recorded (Grudin, 1988; Grudin, 1990; Grudin, 1994). The design approach adopted in these pioneering development projects was often characterised by computer scientists intending to radically increase the efficiency of organisations through deterministic models of cooperative activity. Such design strategies have been shown to be inadequate: they fail to account for the social factors in group work. As a consequence, research into...

"Software engineering" was introduced as a model for the field of software development in 1968. This paper, reconsidering that model in the light of four decades of experience, finds it lacking in its ability to explain project success and failures, predict important issues in running projects, and help practitioners formulate effective strategies on the fly. An alternative underlying model for software development is presented: Software development as a series of resource-limited, goal-directed cooperative games of invention and communication. The primary goal of each game is the production and deployment of a software system; the residue of the game is a set of markers to assist the players of the next game. People use markers and props to remind, inspire and inform each other in getting to the next move in the game. The next game is an alteration of the system or the creation of a neighboring system. Each game therefore has as a secondary goal to create an advantageous position for the next game. Since each game is resource-limited, the primary and secondary goals compete for resources. The cooperativegame model provides the benefits that the software engineering model misses: It raises to the proper priority level issues crucial to successful software projects; it explains how teams with messy-looking processes sometimes outperform others with tidier processes; and it helps busy practitioners decide how to respond to unexpected situations. Finally, it is seen that much of engineering in the general belongs in the category of resource-limited, cooperative games.

This paper presents a framework for agent communication and its mediation by technological systems. The goal of the framework is to provide quantitative mechanisms that will allow principled decisions to be made about the use and construction of mediating technological systems. Beginning with a simple model of interaction between agents, a model of communication influenced by bounded knowledge of others (or common ground) is developed. This leads to predictions that agent interactions generate equilibrium phenomena where optimal levels of grounding emerge over time between agents.

Human conversations have long been considered as a model for interaction with computers [1]. One theory of human conversations, proposed by Clark and Schaefer [2, 3], has already been used in other HCI efforts. In the work proposed here, another part of this theory, the states of understanding principles, is used as the basis for a model of feedback for graphical interaction techniques. A formal evaluation of the feedback model will be performed. The feedback model is extended to a multi-threaded dialogue model with which to handle interruption and cancellation requests as negotiated requests. The proposed dialogue model will serve as the requirement specification for the design of a dialogue controller in a user interface management system (UIMS). A prototype of this model will be built and a usability study will be conducted. KEYWORDS: human-computer dialogues, feedback, states of understanding, user interface management systems INTRODUCTION Graphical user interfaces, specifically...

In this position paper, I argue, from previous experience working on Computer Mediated Communication and from recent experience studying contexts for computer supported cooperative work such as ambulance control and hospitals, that any use of the Clark Model in design needs to be incorporated within a more general analysis of experiencing relational activity. 1. INTRODUCTION I have been involved in research projects on various aspects of computer mediated communication (CMC) in which Clark's Model, particularly his work on grounding in conversation (Clark and Schaefer, 1989; Clark and Brennan, 1991) were pivotal. Within an interdisciplinary project which involved relatively formally oriented computer scientists and fairly eclectic psychologists, Clark's model provided a very useful basis for discussion. It resonated for people from both disciplines and may even have provided the kind of `common ground' necessary for developing a conversation the aim of which was to build interesti...

This is a special online version of the thesis which omits much of the appendix section to decrease file size and facilitate quick download. Original contents of the appendix can still be viewed in the table of contents – omissions mostly regard scanned copies of data collection methods from industrial