Towards attention-aware adaptive notification on smart phones

As the amount of information to users increases with the trends of an increasing numbers of devices, applications, and web services, the new bottleneck in computing is human attention. To minimize users attentional overload, we propose a novel middleware “Attelia” that detects breakpoints of user’s mobile interactions to deliver notifications adaptively. Attelia detects such timings in real-time, using only users phones, without any external sensors, and without any modifications to applications. Our extensive evaluation proved Attelias effectiveness. In-the-wild user study with 30 participants for 16 days showed that, specifically for the users with greater sensitivity for interruptive notification timings, notification scheduling in Attelia’s breakpoint timing reduced users frustration by 28% in users’ real smart phone environments.