Impacts of Disruption on Secondary Task Knowledge: Recovery Modes and Social Nuances

Abstract

The working memory of the human brain has always had a strong influence on the design of Human-Computer Interaction. Yet, it is limited in capacity and loses its contents over time. Research regarding these constraints typically focused on single user tasks and systems. Collaborative settings and systems introduce the need for the secondary task of coordination which shares the same conditions and constraints as the knowledge of the primary task. Additionally, it is easily compromised by interruption and interference. Our approach seeks to understand the impacts of disruption on secondary task knowledge, but from a different angle than previous related work. Since it is hard to avoid disruption entirely, it aims to understand how users recover from disruptions in order to help them recover the best way possible from different types of interruptions using appropriate mechanisms and cues. This paper reports on the results of one of the first experiments along the way, observing the effects of four types of interruptions revealing different modes of recovery and social nuances that inform the design of adaptive coordination support systems.