Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
10.1145/3098279.3098526acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesmobilehciConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Productive, anxious, lonely: 24 hours without push notifications

Published: 04 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

We report from the Do Not Disturb Challenge where 30 volunteers disabled notification alerts for 24 hours across all devices. The effect of the absence of notifications on the participants was isolated through an experimental study design: we compared self-reported feedback from the day without notifications against a baseline day. The evidence indicates that notifications have locked us in a dilemma: without notifications, participants felt less distracted and more productive. But, they also felt no longer able to be as responsive as expected, which made some participants anxious. And, they felt less connected with one's social group. In contrast to previous reports, about two third of the participants expressed the intention to change how they manage notifications. Two years later, half of the participants are still following through with their plans.

References

[1]
Piotr D. Adamczyk, and Brian P. Bailey. 2004. If Not Now, when?: The Effects of Interruption at Different Moments Within Task Execution. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 271--278.
[2]
Agathe Battestini, Vidya Setlur, and Timothy Sohn. 2010. A Large Scale Study of Text-messaging Use In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 229--238.
[3]
Jeremy Birnholtz, Jeff Hancock, Madeline Smith, and Lindsay Reynolds. 2012. Understanding unavailability in a world of constant connection. interactions 19, 5 (2012), 32--35.
[4]
Jelmer P. Borst, Niels A. Taatgen, and Hedderik van Rijn. 2015. What Makes Interruptions Disruptive?: A Process-Model Account of the Effects of the Problem State Bottleneck on Task Interruption and Resumption. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2971--2980.
[5]
Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, 2 (2006), 77--101.
[6]
Marta E. Cecchinato, Anna L. Cox, and Jon Bird. 2015. Working 9-5?: Professional Differences in Email and Boundary Management Practices. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3989--3998.
[7]
Yung-Ju Chang and John C. Tang. 2015. Investigating Mobile Users' Ringer Mode Usage and Attentiveness and Responsiveness to Communication. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6--15.
[8]
Adela Chen and Elena Karahanna. 2014. Boundaryless Technology: Understanding the Effects of Technology-Mediated Interruptions across the Boundaries between Work and Personal Life. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction 6, 2 (2014), 16--36.
[9]
Karen Church and Rodrigo de Oliveira. 2013. What's Up with Whatsapp?: Comparing Mobile Instant Messaging Behaviors with Traditional SMS. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 352--361.
[10]
Ed Cutrell, Mary Czerwinski, and Eric Horvitz. 2001. Notification, Disruption, and Memory: Effects of Messaging Interruptions on Memory and Performance. In Proc. INTERACT '01. IOS Press.
[11]
Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite. 2004. A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 175--182.
[12]
Joost C. F. de Winter and Dimitra Dodou. 2010. Five-Point Likert Items: t test versus Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 15, 11 (October 2010), 1--12.
[13]
Tilman Dingler and Martin Pielot. 2015. I'll Be There for You: Quantifying Attentiveness Towards Mobile Messaging. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1--5.
[14]
Jose A. Gallud and Ricardo Tesoriero. 2015. Smartphone Notifications: A Study on the Sound to Soundless Tendency. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (MobileHCI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 819--824.
[15]
Garrett Hardin. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162, 3859, 1243ñ1248. http://dx.doi.org/
[16]
Shamsi T. Iqbal and Brian P. Bailey. 2008. Effects of Intelligent Notification Management on Users and Their Tasks. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 93--102.
[17]
Shamsi T. Iqbal and Brian P. Bailey. 2010. Oasis: A framework for linking notification delivery to the perceptual structure of goal-directed tasks. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 17, 4, Article 15 (Dec.), 28 pages.
[18]
Shamsi T. Iqbal and Eric Horvitz. 2010. Notifications and Awareness: A Field Study of Alert Usage and Preferences. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 27--30.
[19]
Jing Jin and Laura A. Dabbish. 2009. Self-interruption on the Computer: A Typology of Discretionary Task Interleaving. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1799--1808.
[20]
Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2014. Checking email less frequently reduces stress. Computers in Human Behavior 43 (2014), 220--228.
[21]
Kostadin Kushlev, Jason Proulx, and Elizabeth W. Dunn. 2016. "Silence Your Phones": Smartphone Notifications Increase Inattention and Hyperactivity Symptoms. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1011--1020.
[22]
Uichin Lee, Joonwon Lee, Minsam Ko, Changhun Lee, Yuhwan Kim, Subin Yang, Koji Yatani, Gahgene Gweon, Kyong-Mee Chung, and Junehwa Song. 2014. Hooked on Smartphones: An Exploratory Study on Smartphone Overuse Among College Students. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2327--2336.
[23]
Luis Leiva, Matthias Böhmer, Sven Gehring, and Antonio Krüger. 2012. Back to the App: The Costs of Mobile Application Interruptions. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 291--294.
[24]
Hugo Lopez-Tovar, Andreas Charalambous, and John Dowell. 2015. Managing Smartphone Interruptions Through Adaptive Modes and Modulation of Notifications. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 296--299.
[25]
Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke. 2008. The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 107--110.
[26]
Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns. 2015. Focused, Aroused, but So Distractible: Temporal Perspectives on Multitasking and Communications. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 38; Social Computing (CSCW '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 903--916.
[27]
Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardello. 2012. "A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons": An Empirical Study of Work Without Email. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 555--564.
[28]
Melissa Mazmanian and Ingrid Erickson. 2014. The Product of Availability: Understanding the Economic Underpinnings of Constant Connectivity. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 763--772.
[29]
Abhinav Mehrotra, Mirco Musolesi, Robert Hendley, and Veljko Pejovic. 2015. Designing Content-driven Intelligent Notification Mechanisms for Mobile Applications. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 813--824.
[30]
Tadashi Okoshi, Julian Ramos, Hiroki Nozaki, Jin Nakazawa, Anind K. Dey, and Hideyuki Tokuda. 2015. Reducing Users' Perceived Mental Effort Due to Interruptive Notifications in Multi-device Mobile Environments. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 475--486.
[31]
Antti Oulasvirta, Tye Rattenbury, Lingyi Ma, and Eeva Raita. 2012. Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16, 1 (2012), 105--114.
[32]
Donald J. Patterson, Christopher Baker, Xianghua Ding, Samuel J. Kaufman, Kah Liu, and Andrew Zaldivar. 2008. Online Everywhere: Evolving Mobile Instant Messaging Practices. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 64--73.
[33]
Martin Pielot, Karen Church, and Rodrigo de Oliveira. 2014a. An In-situ Study of Mobile Phone Notifications. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services (MobileHCI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 233--242.
[34]
Martin Pielot, Rodrigo de Oliveira, Haewoon Kwak, and Nuria Oliver. 2014b. Didn't You See My Message?: Predicting Attentiveness to Mobile Instant Messages. In Proceedings of the 32Nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3319--3328.
[35]
Martin Pielot and Luz Rello. 2015. The Do Not Disturb Challenge: A Day Without Notifications. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1761--1766.
[36]
Julie Rennecker and Lindsey Godwin. 2005. Delays and Interruptions: A Self-perpetuating Paradox of Communication Technology Use. Inf. Organ. 15, 3 (July 2005), 247--266.
[37]
Alireza Sahami Shirazi, Niels Henze, Tilman Dingler, Martin Pielot, Dominik Weber, and Albrecht Schmidt. 2014. Large-scale Assessment of Mobile Notifications. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3055--3064.
[38]
Cary Stothart, Ainsley Mitchum, and Courtney Yehnert. 2015. The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal of experimental psychology: human perception and performance 41, 4 (2015), 893.
[39]
Judy Wajcman and Emily Rose. 2011. Constant Connectivity: Rethinking Interruptions at Work. Organization Studies 32, 7 (2011), 941--961.
[40]
JP Wanous, AE Reichers, and MJ Hudy. 1997. Overall Job Satisfaction: How Good Are Single-Item Measures? J Appl Psychol 82, 2 (April 1997), 247--252.
[41]
Tilo Westermann, Sebastian Möller, and Ina Wechsung. 2015. Assessing the Relationship between Technical Affinity, Stress and Notifications on Smartphones. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (MobileHCI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 652--659.
[42]
Joanne M. Youngblut and Gail R. Casper. 1993. Focus on Psychometrics Single-item Indicators in Nursing Research. Research in Nursing and Health 16, 6 (December 1993), 459--465.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)"I Want Lower Tone for Work-Related Notifications": Exploring the Effectiveness of User-Assigned Notification Alerts in Improving User Speculation of and Attendance to Mobile NotificationsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765128:MHCI(1-25)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
  • (2024)InteractOut: Leveraging Interaction Proxies as Input Manipulation Strategies for Reducing Smartphone OveruseProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642317(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Greater mobile device‐prompted phone pickups are associated with daily parent stressActa Paediatrica10.1111/apa.17260113:8(1868-1875)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
MobileHCI '17: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
September 2017
874 pages
ISBN:9781450350754
DOI:10.1145/3098279
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 September 2017

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. deprivation study
  2. mobile devices
  3. notifications

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

MobileHCI '17
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

MobileHCI '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 45 of 224 submissions, 20%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)191
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)15
Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)"I Want Lower Tone for Work-Related Notifications": Exploring the Effectiveness of User-Assigned Notification Alerts in Improving User Speculation of and Attendance to Mobile NotificationsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765128:MHCI(1-25)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
  • (2024)InteractOut: Leveraging Interaction Proxies as Input Manipulation Strategies for Reducing Smartphone OveruseProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642317(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Greater mobile device‐prompted phone pickups are associated with daily parent stressActa Paediatrica10.1111/apa.17260113:8(1868-1875)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
  • (2024)Fingerhinter Takes Center Stage: User Experience Insights from Informal Encounters with a Finger-Augmentation Device2024 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and eXtended and Virtual Reality (AIxVR)10.1109/AIxVR59861.2024.00044(265-269)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Waiting for the Boss's Blue Checkmark to Appear: Supervisor's Attentiveness, Negative Emotions, and Work Engagement During Instant Messaging at WorkCyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking10.1089/cyber.2023.035427:5(347-352)Online publication date: 1-May-2024
  • (2024)Beyond the Buzz: Investigating the Effects of a Notification-Disabling Intervention on Smartphone Behavior and Digital Well-BeingMedia Psychology10.1080/15213269.2024.233402528:1(162-188)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2024
  • (2024)InSightHub: Intelligent Notification and Status Indicator for Streamlined Work-From-Home EnvironmentsInnovations and Interdisciplinary Solutions for Underserved Areas10.1007/978-3-031-51849-2_4(48-65)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2024
  • (2024)The effects of goal setting, notification alerts, and sharing results with peers on smartphone usageBehavioral Interventions10.1002/bin.2050Online publication date: 26-Aug-2024
  • (2023)MuM'23 Workshop on Interruptions and Attention ManagementProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3626706(548-551)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Exploring Unimodal Notification Interaction and Display Methods in Augmented RealityProceedings of the 29th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology10.1145/3611659.3615683(1-11)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2023
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media