Can Calendar Events and Ambient Noise Sensors Decrease Interruption Levels of Incoming Phone calls? Sean Holbert & Charlton Soesanto

Previous Work Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

James Fogarty “…simple sensors can support the construction of models that estimate human interruptibility as well as people do.”

James Fogarty’s Work “Predicting Human Interruptibility with Sensors” “Biases in human estimation of interruptibility: effects and implications for practice”

Lady Gaga “…you should’ve made some plans with me, you knew that I was free And now you won’t stop calling me, I’m kinda busy.”

Our Research Question Can Calendar Events and Ambient Noise Sensors Decrease Interruption Levels of Incoming Phone calls?

The System: RingSense An Application for the Android OS run on Motorola Droid Phones Inputs –Calendar Events –Ambient Noise Features: –Switch to silent –Calendar keywords “meeting, interview, appointment, class” or AAA###

Methodology Two Day Trial Periods. Users filled out survey after incoming phone calls to report interruptibility levels Post-Questionnaire Experimental Used Active RingSense Control Only logged data

Example Data

Quantitative Results Data Points of Interest If user received call AND they were in an event that was caught by our heuristics, Or If user received call AND the surrounding noise was loud enough. Student’s t-test 133 survey responses 40 experimental responses 93 control Control mean: 2.65 Experimental Mean:.36 Interruptibility Control mean: 2.65 Experimental mean: 2.36 Alternative hypothesis: True mean is less than 2.65 Control Mean t = p value =

Explanation more phones and participants over a longer time period longer study time period

Valuable Data Extremely Rare Satisfies heuristic (contains ‘meeting,’ ‘interview,’ ‘ME101’ …etc)

Qualitative Feedback

Questions?