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

Incorporating faces into mediated discussions is a complex design problem. The face conveys social and personal identity; it reports fleeting changes of emotion and the cumulative effects of often repeated expressions.

Implicit (unconscious) gender stereotyping in fame judgments was tested with an adaptation of a

Abstract. In a persuasive communication, not only the message but also the source of the message can influence the persuasibility of the audience. This paper investigates whether displaying a static image of the source can affect the perceived credibility of a message that aims to promote regular exercise. We find a clear influence of the source’s appearance on the source’s credibility and that this effect is topic dependent. We also explore how the perceived source’s credibility for a particular topic correlates with the perceived credibility of a message on that topic. 1

This paper presents some thoughts on agency and sociality. Social intelligence is studied in the context of humanstyle forms of social behaviour. Issues like embodiment, believability, rationality, social understanding, and different levels of social organisation and control are discussed.

Abstract. In a persuasive communication, not only the content of the message but also its source, and the type of communication can influence its persuasiveness on the audience. This paper compares the effects on the audience of direct versus indirect communication, one-sided versus two-sided messages, and one agent presenting the message versus a team presenting the message. 1

Social psychology shows that the effect of a persuasive argument depends on characteristics of the person to be persuaded, including the person’s involvement with the topic and the discrepancy between the person’s current position on the topic and the argument’s position. Via a series of experiments, this paper provides insight into how the receiver’s position can be modelled computationally, as a function of the strength, feature importance, and position of arguments in a set. 1.

We interpret workers ’ confidence in their own skills as their morale, and investigate the implication of worker overconfidence on the firm’s optimal wage-setting policies. In our model, wage contracts both provide incentives and affect worker morale, by revealing private information of the firm about worker skills. We provide conditions for the non-differentiation wage policy to be profit-maximizing. In numerical examples, worker overconfidence is a necessary condition for the firm to prefer no wage differentiation, so as to preserve some workers ’ morale; the nondifferentiation wage policy itself breeds more worker overconfidence; finally, wage compression is more likely when aggregate productivity is low.

Abstract. With research revealing the importance of trust as a deciding factor for users to visit a website, designing websites that users find credible becomes important. Adding onscreen characters in various forms (e.g. photographs of a person) to represent the source of information is a simple and popular way to to increase the credibility of a website. However, despite its popularity, empirical studies have reported mixed results. This paper presents three experiments that explored the causes of this contradiction. In our experiments, the credibility of the source (as resulting from a photograph of a person) was found to be topic dependent. It was also found to positively correlate with and account for some 30 % of the variability in the credibility of a website. These findings perhaps can explain the inconsistency of many previous studies. Finally, our study suggested that adding a user-selected photograph increases the credibility of the website, while the opposite occurs when adding a photograph that is lowly credible with respect to the topic of the website’s content. 1 1