Contextual Factors of the Interruptive Notification User Experience
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: A Model of Contextual Factors and their Effects in the Interruptive Notification User Experience Celeste Lyn Paul, Ph.D., 2013 Directed By: Dr. Anita H. Komlodi, Department of Information Systems Interruptive notifications in a desktop environment are an important service that knowledge workers rely on for maintaining awareness of information and services outside their current focus. Research to date has focused primarily on empirical laboratory-based testing, which is very specific and out of context of a realistic user environment, and broad ethnographic research, which is not specific enough for meaningful notification system design guidelines. This dissertation aims to address the gap between existing laboratory-based and ethnographic research by conducting a series of studies that explored the notification user experience in a both broad and deep way. The results of this research contribute the following: A catalog of significant contextual factors that affect the notification user experience; a series of models that describe how factors in the notification system context influence the overall user experience; a set of design guidelines, derived from this research but generalized to be applicable to any interruptive notification system. A MODEL OF CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND THEIR EFFECTS IN THE INTERRUPTIVE NOTIFICATION USER EXPERIENCE By Celeste Lyn Paul Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 © Copyright by Celeste Lyn Paul 2013 I would have written a shorter letter if I had the time. – Blaise Pascal ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank: My husband, my parents, and my family; Patrick Juola, for planting the idea of graduate school in my head; My advisor, Anita Komlodi. But not the country of Hungary; Members of my committee: Henry Emurian, Emile Morse, Carolyn Seaman, and Wayne Lutters; My colleagues, B.N., D.N., R.R., M.S., P.S., and K.W.; The KDE Community and the Free/Libre/Open Source Software world; The Modern Times Café, for a quiet place to write and drink coffee and The Doctor for drinking coffee with me; All the Ph.D.s and A.B.D.s at Capital Aikikai; Science. It works. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .............................................................................................................. xi List of Figures ........................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Related Work ........................................................................................... 5 2.1 Interrupting Users ............................................................................................. 5 2.1.1 Interruptions between Tasks .................................................................... 8 2.1.2 Interruptions during Tasks ....................................................................... 9 2.1.3 Methods of Interruption ......................................................................... 10 2.2 Interruptive User Interfaces ............................................................................ 14 2.2.1 Information ............................................................................................ 14 2.2.2 Behavior ................................................................................................. 15 2.2.3 User Interface ......................................................................................... 17 2.3 Interruption in the User's Context of Use ....................................................... 21 2.3.1 User-Controlled Interruption ................................................................. 21 2.3.2 Interruption Compensation .................................................................... 23 2.3.3 Relationship between Task and Interruption ......................................... 24 2.3.4 Attending to Interruptions ...................................................................... 25 2.3.5 Interruption Purpose and Content .......................................................... 27 2.3.6 Value of an Interruption ......................................................................... 28 2.4 Contextual Interruption Models ...................................................................... 29 2.5 Summary of Related Work .............................................................................. 31 Chapter 3: Statement of Research........................................................................... 34 3.1 Research Questions ......................................................................................... 38 3.2 Approach ......................................................................................................... 40 3.3 Contribution Summary .................................................................................... 43 iv Chapter 4: Exploratory Notification Study ............................................................ 45 4.1 Methodology ................................................................................................... 45 4.1.1 Procedure ............................................................................................... 45 4.1.2 Participants ............................................................................................. 46 4.1.3 Data Collection ...................................................................................... 46 4.1.3.1 One-Word Response ..................................................................... 49 4.1.4 Data Analysis ......................................................................................... 49 4.1.4.1 Data Quality .................................................................................. 49 4.1.4.2 Factor Coding................................................................................ 50 4.1.4.2.1 Notification Socialness ........................................................ 50 4.1.4.2.2 OWR Emotion ..................................................................... 50 4.1.4.3 Statistical Analysis ........................................................................ 51 4.2 Results ............................................................................................................. 51 4.2.1 Notification Socialness and Emotional Experience ............................... 52 4.2.1.1 Social Interruptive Notifications ................................................... 54 4.2.1.2 Non-social Interruptive Notifications ........................................... 55 4.2.2 Emotion as an Indicator for Similar Future Notifications ..................... 57 4.3 Discussion ....................................................................................................... 59 4.3.1 Contributions.......................................................................................... 59 4.3.2 Limitations ............................................................................................. 60 4.3.3 Impact on Future Work .......................................................................... 61 Chapter 5: Methodology........................................................................................... 63 5.1 User Experience Report Study ........................................................................ 64 5.1.1 Participants ............................................................................................. 65 5.1.1.1 KDE and the Open Source Software Community ........................ 66 5.1.1.2 Recruitment ................................................................................... 68 5.1.1.3 Participant Incentives .................................................................... 69 5.1.2 Instrument .............................................................................................. 69 5.1.2.1 Participation Selection Bias .......................................................... 72 5.1.3 Pilot Testing ........................................................................................... 73 5.1.3.1 Pilot Test ....................................................................................... 73 5.1.3.2 User Experience Report ................................................................ 74 5.1.4 Data Analysis ......................................................................................... 74 5.1.4.1 Qualitative Data Analysis ............................................................. 75 v 5.1.4.1.1 Open Coding ........................................................................ 75 5.1.4.1.2 Axial Coding ........................................................................ 77 5.1.4.2 Quantitative Data Analysis ........................................................... 78 5.1.4.2.1 Descriptive Statistics ............................................................ 78 5.1.4.2.2 Significant Factor Relationships .......................................... 78 5.1.4.2.3 Structured Coding ................................................................ 80 5.1.4.3 Response Quality and Validation.................................................