Mobile Notifications
Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
Sandy Gould s.gould@cs.bham.ac.uk
1st March 2021
Week 6 Assessment
– Your assessment will be a class test. You will have two hours to complete it.
– There are separate LM and LH versions of the class test.
– You need to expect to produce answers in the form of written
prose.
– Any material from the first five weeks of the module is assessable.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Week 6 Assessment – Tips
– Read the questions carefully before you do anything. Have you read them? Now read them again.
– All parts of each question are important. Nothing has been thrown in the for the sake of it.
– Do not throw things into your answer for the sake of it. Answer the question. Throwing in tangential stuff will not enhance your answer. Writing everything you know about Thing X probably
won’t either.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Notification overload
– What happens if you’ve got 8 million followers on Instagram?
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Cognitive load and working memory
– As we work through tasks, we generate lots of goals… For example, ‘make a photocopy’
– …and sub-goals
For example, ‘put paper on scanning surface’
– “Memory for Goals” is a theory of how these goals are stored and retrieved in your working memory.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Memory for goals: an activation-based model
A goal
Altmann, E. M., & Trafton, J. G. (2002). Memory for goals: an activation-based model.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Memory for goals
– The key to memory for goals:
– Goals need to be rehearsed or they will be forgotten.
– When we’re working towards a goal, it has stronger activation.
– Stronger activation makes goals easier to retrieve.
– If goals are not rehearsed, they fall below a retrieval threshold.
– Goals below threshold are normally forgotten.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Why notifications are disruptive
Event
Effect
Notification arrives
Perceptual distraction from light, noise and vibration
Attend or not attend?
Further disruption to current activity. Cognitive effort to evaluate notification and decide what to do.
Decision: ignore
Forgetting the notification. Will you remember the content of the notification in five minutes?
Decision: attend
Focus switching to another task take time and mental effort to understand the new context. Will you remember what you were doing once you deal with the notification?
Finally
Depending on the degree of disruption (how long and how complex), you will have to re-encode information that you have forgotten. That’s time consuming and cognitively taxing.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
We can’t put our phones down.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
CallHeads
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
CallHeads, aka Google’s ‘Heads Up’
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
CallHeads
Advantages:
– Means you can get on with what you’re doing.
– You can hide the notification without affecting the call.
Disadvantages:
– Still perceptually distracting. Sudden appearance might still take your attention away from what you’re doing.
– You still have to decide whether to accept the call or not.
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
What info are notifications based on?
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
The ‘Dot’ notification generator
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021
Quiz time 😀
kahoot.it
Mobile notifications – Sandy Gould, University of Birmingham – 1st March 2021