Interruption management and office norms: Technology adoption lessons from a product commercialization study
Introduction
Interruptions are becoming a pervasive element within the contemporary workplace context. Haynes, 2007b, Haynes, 2008a identifies the office behavioral environment as the most important factor in enhancing/hindering office productivity1 and demonstrates that the dynamic elements of the office environment (i.e., interaction and distraction) have the largest positive and negative influences on office productivity. In office settings, studies show that employees can be interrupted frequently and for relatively long durations (O’Connell, 2008). O’Conaill and Frohlich (1995) report an average of four (4) interruptions per hour, with approximately 10 min an hour spent engaged in an interruption. In an 8-h work day, Sykes (2011) observed an average of 121 interruptions experienced by technical leaders, which took up 5.7 h of their working time. Sykes (2011) observed other staff to get interrupted less frequently but still at a significant rate: on the average, 24 interruptions and 73 min total interruption time in an 8-h work day. Further, Czerwinski, Horvitz, and Wilhite (2004) report that office workers experience multiple interruptions while they perform a single task.
Interruptions have become a larger concern in the recent years with increased reliance on a variety of electronic communication tools that result in heightened availability and an expectation of rapid response time. These technology mediated interpersonal interruptions appear to have increased at a rapid rate in the recent years and although they constitute new realities of the contemporary workspace, these disruptions are becoming so frequent as to decrease, rather than increase, workplace productivity (Karr-Wisniewski & Lu, 2010). Face-to-face interruptions are also still of concern given the rise in popularity of open concept office design, which aims to encourage collaboration.
It should be noted that collaboration is important for businesses to remain successful (Innes & Booher, 1999) and is a crucial aspect of modern workplaces (Sykes, 2011). One of the most difficult challenges faced in managing interruptions is navigating the balance between collaboration and interruption (Haynes, 2008a, Haynes, 2008b). For example, Perlow (1999) observed that her subjects, namely software engineers, considered 96% of their interactive activities to be helpful. However, her subjects also considered only 10% of these activities to be urgent, suggesting that the majority could be scheduled for a later time without negative repercussions for anyone involved. Despite this possibility, 95% of the interactive activities in this study occurred spontaneously, fragmenting the engineers’ day and giving them no control over their schedules. Interruptions can carry important content, which can benefit the recipient (O’Conaill & Frohlich, 1995), and are in fact often welcomed depending on the nature of work (e.g., interdependencies of activities, pressure to respond to crisis) and the work culture (e.g., reward system based on individual heroics) (Hudson et al., 2002, Perlow, 1999). However, if interruptions take over control of their schedule away from the workers, they may disrupt focused work and deteriorate productivity. Further, if they happen at inopportune times, they can also be quite detrimental to performance.
The negative effects of interruptions on task performance are well documented in the literature. Interruptions can cause errors and reduce people's efficiency. For a comprehensive review, see Trafton and Monk (2007). Interruptions also reduce the quality of work (Foroughi, Werner, Nelson, & Boehm-Davis, in press). One mechanism that contributes to the role of interruptions in performance degradation is their interference with prospective memory (Brandimonte, Einstein, & McDaniel, 1996). Diary and observational studies suggest that 41% of tasks are not resumed immediately after an interruption (O’Conaill & Frohlich, 1995) and 23% are not resumed at all within that day (Mark, Gonzalez, & Harris, 2005). Even if the resumption occurs, individuals may experience source confusion and neglect to complete certain components of a task, thinking that they were completed before the interruption took place (Trafton & Monk, 2007). Unpredictable and uncontrollable interruptions can also induce personal stress, which can in turn negatively impact performance (Cohen, 1980), and ultimately an individual's well-being. There is increasing recognition that lack of personal control on workplace demands can lead to increased ill health and in particular chronic conditions (Ganster, Fox, & Dwyer, 2001).
Emerging amidst the shifting workplace landscape, Covey (1989) developed a matrix that identifies typical tasks as urgent or non-urgent, and important or non-important. The popularity of email-enabled mobile devices, push notifications, and instant messaging has allowed the urgent items within this matrix to become increasingly visible, detracting attention away from important but non-urgent tasks. In this scenario, important tasks, such as strategic planning, product design, and detailed analysis, can be set aside to address interrupting instant messages. In fact, Czerwinski et al. (2004) found that information workers were interrupted the most while performing high-priority and complex tasks involving information management. Further, they found that it was difficult to return to these complex tasks and that interruptions had the worst effect on these types of tasks. The dominance of urgent over important has further implications given the nature of the mindset required to complete these complex tasks, which often require high concentration (Perlow, 1999). The cost of interruption can be very high for such high cognitive load tasks (Iqbal & Horvitz, 2007).
This study was developed in response to these personal, professional, and health considerations relating to interruption management. The research team embarked on a program to test and evaluate a product in its pre-commercialization phase, designed to publicly distinguish between time dedicated to collaboration or to individual concentration requiring focused periods with no interruptions. The product was designed to mitigate face-to-face as well as technology mediated interpersonal interruptions, in both traditional and open concept office layouts. Through a series of research components that tested the product's software and hardware, we examined the prevalence of different workplace interruptions, perceived need for focused work, as well as the relationship among usability features, social norms, and predicted adoption uptake. We also explored the importance of social norms in an office environment as drivers in the adoption of this new technology and identified further product development suggestions. As will be discussed in later sections, the successful uptake of this product can be defined not only by the individuals’ use but also by their colleagues adjusting their behavior based on the status of an individual communicated to them through the product. Thus, the results of this research bear on technology adoption in general, especially in office environments, and point to new research directions exploring the interaction between individual and group attitudes toward productivity enhancement in the office context.
Section snippets
Technology adoption and diffusion
The theory, the process, and the necessary preconditions for the adoption of new technology formed the underlying basis of this study. The literature on technology diffusion has traditionally focused on two crucial elements that have been assumed to be essential drivers: apparent need, and the ease of use of a new technology (Davis, 1989, Rogers, 1995). Davis (1989) proposed the Technology Acceptance Model primarily based on these two determinants. The first of these describes the requirement
Product description and interruption management technologies
Our focus was on a hardware and software product in its pre-commercialization phase (Fig. 1) that, for selected periods of time, aims to minimize workplace interruptions that reduce employee concentration on creative and analytical tasks. The product was designed to mitigate face-to-face as well as technology mediated interpersonal interruptions, in both traditional and open concept office layouts. Recognizing the importance of collaboration within the office context (Haynes, 2008b), the
Methods
Several complementary methods were utilized to examine the product in its pre-commercialization phase with the intention of moving it closer to marketability. The product testing that took place was for the physical hardware and the software dashboard, both of which continue to be developed. The key methodologies consist of a usability study, a survey of existing users, interviews, and focus groups with intended users. Table 1 provides a summary of the sample size and characteristics used for
Workplace interruptions
The majority of participants in the usability study (81%) considered workplace interruptions to be detrimental to their productivity at work and almost all (87.5%) stated that it was important for them to have focused time in the work week. Despite the stated importance of focused time, only half of the participants indicated that they were able to take measures at work to reduce interruptions, underlining the need for supporting interruption management in office settings.
These participants
Conclusions, limitations, and future work
The findings of this study support the importance of balancing work time devoted to collaboration and focus, and the general interest in creating space to concentrate on important yet non-urgent tasks. Both face-to-face and technology mediated interpersonal interruptions are considered to be an important impediment to productivity and concentration, a finding similar to Sykes (2011), as well as a consideration in information management. When asked about different interruptions, our participants
Acknowledgements
The research team gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. Our funding source did not have any role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. The assistance of our industry partner Kangaroo Design and Innovation has also been crucial to our work, with specific acknowledgment for the support from Lahav Gil,
Dr. Birsen Donmez is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. She received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering, and the M.S. degree in statistics from the University of Iowa. Before joining University of Toronto, she was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests include understanding and improving human behavior and performance in multitask and complex situations, using a
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Dr. Birsen Donmez is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. She received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering, and the M.S. degree in statistics from the University of Iowa. Before joining University of Toronto, she was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests include understanding and improving human behavior and performance in multitask and complex situations, using a wide range of analytical techniques.
Zannah Matson is a Master's student at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto.
Dr. Beth Savan is on the faculty at the University of Toronto's School of Environment, and teaches in the Geography Department and the Program in Planning. Her research seeks to understand pro-environment behaviour change and focuses on sustainability and active transportation, and she has published widely in the scholarly and popular media and has authored books for adults and children. She was appointed as the University of Toronto's inaugural Sustainability Director and has served as an advisor to the provincial and municipal governments on a variety of sustainability-related topics.
Dr. Ellie Farahani is the Chief Operations Officer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change. She is also one of the lead authors and editors of the Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5, www.mitigation2014.org, 2014) and the co-founder of Safara Sustainability Solutions. She holds a PhD in Atmospheric Physics (University of Toronto, Canada) and a MBA (Kellogg School of Management, USA). Her main research interests are in climate change adaptation and mitigation, particularly on institutional sustainability and Conservation Demand Management with a focus on the interaction and integration of system design, human behaviour and technology.
David Photiadis is a consultant at The Delphi Group, a private Canadian consulting firm specializing in climate change and corporate sustainability. His expertise areas are in sustainability strategy, climate change mitigation, and employee engagement. He holds a Master's degree in Geography from the University of Toronto.
Joanna Dafoe is a teaching fellow at Yale University, International Institute for Sustainable Development. She holds a Master's degree in Environmental Science from Yale University as well as a B.A. from the University of Toronto.