ABSTRACT
Most modern work environments require humans to juggle several concurrent responsibilities. A human’s level of success is largely dependent on how well they manage their cognitive resources to handle their responsibilities in a timely manner. Although tasks compete for time and attention, complete failure to fulfill any responsibility is unacceptable. To be considered successful, humans must succeed, at least minimally, in all tasks. Interruption of one task by competing tasks is inevitable in this environment. Time-critical information must be disseminated, requests must be made, reminders must be delivered, and interactions must be initiated. In technology-rich work environments, interruptions are often presented on a computer screen by user-interface (UI) applications. The design challenge for UIs is to deliver balanced support for the powerful information access humans need to succeed while avoiding disruptive interruptions that degrade overall task performance. This is a great application for a cognitive system.
