Many computer tasks involve looking up information from different sources, and these self-interruptions can be disruptive. In this article, we investigate whether giving people feedback on how long they are away from their task influences their self-interruption behaviour. We conducted a contextual inquiry on self-interruption behaviour in an office workplace. Participants were observed to postpone physical interruptions until a convenient moment in the task if they were expected to take time. In contrast, observations revealed that digital interruptions were addressed immediately; participants reported these were presumed to be quick to deal with. To increase awareness of time spent on digital interruptions, we developed TimeToFocus, a notification tool showing people the duration of their interruptions while working on a task. A field study deployment of TimeToFocus in an office workplace found that feedback on the duration of interruptions made participants reflect on what they were doing during interruptions. They reported that they used this insight to avoid task-irrelevant activities. To confirm whether participants’ perceptions of the benefit of the tool could be measured, we conducted an online experiment, where participants had to retrieve information from an email sent to their personal email addresses and enter it into a spreadsheet. Participants who used our tool made shorter interruptions, completed the spreadsheet task faster and made fewer data entry errors. We conclude that feedback on the length of interruptions can assist users in focusing on their primary task and thus improve productivity.

中文翻译：

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时间聚焦

许多计算机任务涉及从不同来源查找信息，这些自我中断可能会造成破坏。在本文中，我们调查了向人们提供关于他们离开任务多长时间的反馈是否会影响他们的自我干扰行为。我们对办公室工作场所的自我干扰行为进行了情境调查。如果预计参与者需要时间，则观察到参与者将物理中断推迟到任务中的方便时刻。相比之下，观察显示，数字中断会立即得到解决。参与者报告说，这些被认为可以快速处理。为了提高人们对数字中断所花费时间的认识，我们开发了 TimeToFocus，这是一种通知工具，可向人们显示他们在执行任务时中断的持续时间。在办公室工作场所部署 TimeToFocus 的实地研究发现，对中断持续时间的反馈使参与者反思他们在中断期间所做的事情。他们报告说，他们利用这种洞察力来避免与任务无关的活动。为了确认参与者对该工具的好处的看法是否可以衡量，我们进行了一项在线实验，参与者必须从发送到他们个人电子邮件地址的电子邮件中检索信息并将其输入电子表格。使用我们工具的参与者缩短了中断时间，更快地完成了电子表格任务并减少了数据输入错误。我们得出结论，关于中断时长的反馈可以帮助用户专注于他们的主要任务，从而提高生产力。