1. Understanding How the Projection of Availability State Impacts the Reception Incoming Communication
Jaime Teevan - Available
Microsoft Research
Busy
How many people have phones on them in the audience?
Would you answer the phone if it rang right now?
No! Not answering or turning off the ringer is one way as recipients we get to engage in the negotiation of establishing calls.
We can help the people placing a call partake in the negotiation, too
By sharing context – you’re in a scheduled talk, there are people talking, the door is closed
A lot of interesting research in the CSCW community to understand how such context can be used
A key finding: People use context information to make better interruption decisions than they might otherwise
And this can happen even when we abstract information about availability state [click through examples]
Large-scale log analysis of the Lync system
An enterprise communication system used by many companies worldwide
Poll audience: How many people here have used Lync?
Limited consumer-facing support – but with Skype there’s likely to be more
How many people have used Skype? – So we’re all at least somewhat familiar with the concept of availability
Primary aspects of Lync that are important to consider:
Lync is involved in any electronically mediated communication – meetings, , IM, phone conversations
Has access to a lot of information to infer availability
Projects the information everywhere you encounter a person
Log analysis
My background: Not in availability (got a lot of help), but in log analysis (mostly query logs)
Analysis of Lync system much larger than previous study (10s of people, prototype systems)
There are challenges to log analysis, but also provides us a realistic picture
Leads to a surprising observation that ultimately reveals that not only do people use availability to decide when to interrupt someone, but that when someone interrupts us that fact that they know whether we’re available impacts us
Alexander Hehmeyer - Available
Microsoft Corporation
Away

2. Call Logs Analyzed by State
Analyzed phone call logs
Direct: Minimize scheduled calls
Internal: Know each other’s state
Recipients in 5 availability states
Filtered + cleaned = 103,962 calls
Users
Anonymous opt-in Lync user
Represent multiple companies
Avail.
Busy
DND
Away
Offline
Looked at how availability state was used during phone calls
Interesting to study because calls represent real-time, immediate negotiation for attention
You can’t delay the connection at all
Focus on direct calls reduces pre-scheduled phone meetings, which are primarily set up as conference calls even when 1-on-1
Internal calls means everyone in the call has access to availability information
Five states:
Available: Active on a device and not busy
Busy: Active on a device and in a meeting or on the phone
DND: Set manually
Away: Not recently active
Offline: Not logged in anywhere

3. Call Logs Analyzed by State
Answered
Not Answered
Other # %
Avail.
Busy
DND
Away
Offline
22916
44%
27183
53%
1602 3%
Busy
22926
67%
10561
31%
737 2%
DND
190
54%
147
42% 14 4%
2662
41%
3585
55%
238
4487
40%
6137
577 5%
22916
44%
27183
53%
1602 3%
22926
67%
10561
31%
737 2%
190
54%
147
42% 14 4%
2662
41%
3585
55%
238
4487
40%
6137
577 5%
Looked at how people handled incoming calls, based on their state
Three options: answer it, not answer it, or do something else
Other: Actively rejecting the call, sending it straight to voice mail
People might answer the phone when away or offline for a number of reasons, including
They are near a phone but not on a device
They manually set the state
Max value in each row shows something surprising:
More likely to answer the phone when busy or DND
And less likely to answer the phone when available!
What’s going on?
Chances are you’re probably already thinking of a million reasons why these results can’t possibly be true
Log data is great for revealing interesting, real-world effects,
And this one is particularly strong
But we don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes.

4. Survey on Availability State + Calls
Questions in three sections
Section 1: How availability state is used
Section 2: Considerations when placing a call
Section 3: Considerations when receiving a call
Most questions produce a partial ranking
Rate multiple responses on 5-point scale
Used to rank within-subject and compared across
Participants: 569 Lync users at single company
Conducted a follow-up survey with 569 employees within a single company to try to understand why.
- Section 1: The respondent’s awareness of one’s own and other’s availability states, how often they set their state manually and to what
- Section 2: How often calls were placed and the factors considered when calling (including the recipient’s availability state)
- Section 3: How often calls were received, factors considered when answering, and how their state impacted their response to incoming calls
For most questions participants rated a set of availability states or factors on a five-point scale.
Example: How likely are you call someone if their availability is: {available, busy, do not disturb, …}
Because some people may have on average respond higher or lower
We used these ratings to rank states/factors within-subject
And compared the rankings across subjects
(Results are the same, however, if we use the mean responses)
All differences are significant (p < .0001) according to nonparametric Friedman tests
Post-hoc pairwise Wilcoxon tests using Holm’s sequential Bonferroni procedure reveal significant (p < .01)
Except as indicated by dotted lines
Collected a lot of data
Highlight the most important findings

5. Callers Consider Recipient’s State
Ok to Call Someone in State
(5=most acceptable)
Avail.
4.69
Away
3.19
Offline
3.05
Busy
2.65
DND
1.42
Participants use state: they understand it, make use of it, are aware of their current state, manage what they project.
Consistent with previous research, callers consider the recipient’s state when placing a call.
On the recipient's end, most (69%) believed their state was taken into account by incoming callers.
85% of Lync users claim to know what state they are in at all times.
They also manage their state: Many reported modifying their state (44%) if they received a call they didn’t want.

6. Key Considerations for Connections
Placing
Recipient’s availability
3.32
Importance to respondent
3.29
Importance to other
2.63
Closeness of relationship
2.36
Recipient’s location
1.99
Relative status
1.42
Receiving
3.46
2.78
2.18
2.32
2.26
2.00
Given recipients willingness to call varies so much by state,
It’s not surprising that availability is a very important consideration when placing a call
Factors derived from semi-structured interviews with 34 system users from multiple companies in a variety of job roles
Importance is another important consideration
87% of people said they might interrupt someone in a state they normally would not interrupt if it were important
For receiving calls, availability and importance also top considerations
Of course, recipient doesn't know the call’s importance.

7. Recipients Know That Callers Know
Perceived Importance of Call by State
(5=most acceptable)
Busy
3.30
DND
Avail.
3.07
Away
2.69
Offline
2.64
The importance of message is key to explaining this strange data we see
Recipients know that the callers know their availability state,
and use that information to guess how important the call is.
For example, Alex knows I’m busy right now, presenting our paper.
If he were to call me, I’d assume it was very important and answer right away.
This seems likely to explain why people are more likely to answer calls when in one of these top two states
They believe the message is important, and care a lot about how important it is
What’s interesting about this find is that we already know, well established in the literature, that people placing calls use availability information
Now we have evidence that the people receiving calls also do!

8. Summary: I Know You Know
Surprise: We answer calls more when busy!
Survey of 569 people suggests why
Availability, message importance key factors
People avoid calling others who are busy
But call regardless when message is important
Knowing the caller knows we are busy leads us to perceive the message as more important
Availability is a tool for caller and recipient!
Presented large-scale log analysis that reveals a surprising fact:
People answer the phone more when busy.
But as much as we were surprised to see this in the data,
When we talked to people, it made sense
Availability and message importance are key factors for people when establishing phone communication
We avoid calling people if they are busy (perhaps IM’ing them instead)
And we only call if the message is really important
Recipients know this, and thus believe if they get a call while busy it is important

9. I know you know I’m busy.