Project

Disruptive Interruptions

Disruption is an important issue in the design of self-adaptive interfaces. This project attempts to make a computer intelligent enough to select the appropriate sensorial modality. This project investigates which modality is the most efficient and at the same time, the least disruptive. Two interruption modalities are studied: heat and light. This research adds to previous research by showing that there is an effect on performance caused by interruption modalities: for example, thermal modality produced a larger decrease in performance than visual modality; this modality has a greater disruptive effect on interrupted tasks than light. Disruptiveness and performance measures agree that heat causes more of a detrimental effect than light when used as an interruption.