Research Projects

Interruption in the Workplace

I collaborated with Wendy Kellogg, Tom Erickson, and Jim Christensen at IBM to explore the problems of interruption in the workplace. To study this question, I helped develop software for early RIM Blackberry handheld computers that interrupted my research subjects—managers at IBM—approximately ten times each day. At each interruption, the device presented the managers with a survey about their current activities and their attitudes toward interruption at that moment. This research demonstrated that the increasing proliferation of communication technologies over the past thirty years has not significantly affected the challenges of time management in the workplace (Hudson, Christensen, Kellogg, & Erickson, 2002). In other words, we found little evidence of the problems of "information overload" caused by new communication technologies. This research also suggested that interruption is often beneficial in the work place and that attitudes toward interruption are cyclic during the day. For example, interruptions first thing in the day are especially unwelcome, but interruption at lunchtime is ideal. This implies that technology designers should not try to reduce the overall quantity of interruption, but should instead provide tools to manage when interruptions occur. As an extension of this work, IÕve collaborated with Kris Nagel and Gregory Abowd at Georgia Tech to examine interruption in the home.

Publications

Hudson, J. M., Christensen, J., Kellogg, W. A., & Erickson, T. (2002). "I'd Be Overwhelmed, But It's Just One More Thing to Do:" Availability and Interruption in Research Management. Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 97 - 104. Minneapolis, MN.