research-article

Overcoming Distractions during Transitions from Break to Work using a Conversational Website-Blocking System

Authors:

Vincent W.-S. Tseng,

Matthew L. Lee,

Laurent Denoue, and

Daniel AvrahamiAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2019

Paper No.: 467, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300697

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Work breaks--both physical and digital--play an important role in productivity and workplace wellbeing. Yet, the growing availability of digital distractions from online content can turn breaks into prolonged "cyberloafing". In this paper, we present UpTime, a system that aims to support workers' transitions from breaks back to work--moments susceptible to digital distractions. Combining a browser extension and chatbot, users interact with UpTime through proactive and reactive chat prompts. By sensing transitions from inactivity, UpTime helps workers avoid distractions by automatically blocking distracting websites temporarily, while still giving them control to take necessary digital breaks. We report findings from a 3-week comparative field study with 15 workers. Our results show that automatic, temporary blocking at transition points can significantly reduce digital distractions and stress without sacrificing workers' sense of control. Our findings, however, also emphasize that overloading users' existing communication channels for chatbot interaction should be done thoughtfully.

References

[1]

2018. Chrome APIs - Google Chrome. https://developer.chrome.com/ extensions/api_index

[2]

2018. Cold Turkey Blocker. http://getcoldturkey.com/

[3]

2018. FocusMe. https://focusme.com/

[4]

2018. Freedom. https://freedom.to/

[5]

2018. Moment--Automatically track your and your family's daily iPhone and iPad use. https://inthemoment.io

[6]

2018. Node.js. https://nodejs.org/en/

[7]

2018. RescueTime : Time management software for staying productive and happy in the modern workplace. https://www.rescuetime.com/

[8]

2018. Slack API. https://api.slack.com/

[9]

2018. StayFocused. www.stayfocusd.com/

[10]

Rachel F. Adler and Raquel Benbunan-Fich. 2013. Self-interruptions in discretionary multitasking. Computers in Human Behavior 29, 4 (July 2013), 1441--1449.

Digital Library

[11]

Elena Agapie, Daniel Avrahami, and Jennifer Marlow. 2016. Staying the Course: System-Driven Lapse Management for Supporting Behavior Change. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1072--1083.

Digital Library

[12]

Murugan Anandarajan and Claire A Simmers. 2005. Developing Human Capital through Personal Web Use in the Workplace: Mapping Employee Perceptions. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 15 (2005), 18.

[13]

Daniel Avrahami, Mitesh Patel, Yusuke Yamaura, and Sven Kratz. 2018. Below the Surface: Unobtrusive Activity Recognition for Work Surfaces Using RF-radar Sensing. In 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 439--451.

Digital Library

[14]

Soham Banerjee and Sanjeev Thakur. 2016. A Critical Study of Factors Promoting Cyberloafing in Organizations. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Competitive Strategies (ICTCS '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139:1--139:6.

Digital Library

[15]

Eric P.S. Baumer. 2015. Reflective Informatics: Conceptual Dimensions for Designing Technologies of Reflection. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 585--594.

Digital Library

[16]

Timothy Bickmore and Toni Giorgino. 2006. Health dialog systems for patients and consumers. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 39, 5 (Oct. 2006), 556--571.

Digital Library

[17]

Anita L. Blanchard and Christine A. Henle. 2008. Correlates of different forms of cyberloafing: The role of norms and external locus of control. Computers in Human Behavior 24, 3 (May 2008), 1067--1084.

Digital Library

[18]

Derek Burkland. 2013. The Effects of Taking a Short Break: Task Difficulty, Need for Recovery and Task Performance. Master's thesis. Applied Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie WI.

[19]

Scott A. Cambo, Daniel Avrahami, and Matthew L. Lee. 2017. BreakSense: Combining Physiological and Location Sensing to Promote Mobility During Work-Breaks. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3595--3607.

Digital Library

[20]

Francesco Cirillo. 2006. The Pomodoro Technique (The Pomodoro). Creative Commons.

[21]

Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernan-Gonzalez, and Matthew W. McCarter. 2015. The Role of the Decision-Making Regime on Cooperation in a Workgroup Social Dilemma: An Examination of Cyberloafing.

[22]

Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite. 2004. A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 175--182.

Digital Library

[23]

Daniel A. Epstein, Daniel Avrahami, and Jacob T. Biehl. 2016. Taking 5: Work-Breaks, Productivity, and Opportunities for Personal Informatics for Knowledge Workers. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 673--684. CHI 2019, May 4--9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK Vincent Tseng, Matthew L. Lee, Laurent Denoue, and Daniel Avrahami

Digital Library

[24]

Kentaro Fujita and H. Anna Han. 2009. Moving Beyond Deliberative Control of Impulses: The Effect of Construal Levels on Evaluative Associations in Self-Control Conflicts. Psychological Science 20, 7 (July 2009), 799--804.

[25]

R. Kelly Garrett and James N. Danziger. 2008. On Cyberslacking: Workplace Status and Personal Internet Use at Work. CyberPsychology & Behavior 11, 3 (June 2008), 287--292.

[26]

Tony Gillie and Donald Broadbent. 1989. What makes interruptions disruptive? A study of length, similarity, and complexity. Psychological Research 50, 4 (April 1989), 243--250.

[27]

Jeremy Glassman, Marilyn Prosch, and Benjamin B.M. Shao. 2015. To monitor or not to monitor: Effectiveness of a cyberloafing countermeasure. Information & Management 52, 2 (March 2015), 170--182.

[28]

Victor M. Gonzalez and Gloria Mark. 2004. "Constant, Constant, Multi-tasking Craziness": Managing Multiple Working Spheres. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 113--120.

Digital Library

[29]

Nanna Gorm and Irina Shklovski. 2016. Steps, Choices and Moral Accounting: Observations from a Step-Counting Campaign in the Workplace. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 148--159.

Digital Library

[30]

Genevieve N. Healy, David W. Dunstan, Jo Salmon, Ester Cerin, Jonathan E. Shaw, Paul Z. Zimmet, and Neville Owen. {n. d.}. Breaks in Sedentary Time: Beneficial associations with metabolic risk. 31, 4 ({n. d.}), 661--666.

[31]

Christine A. Henle and Uma Kedharnath. 2012. Cyberloafing in the Workplace. Encyclopedia of Cyber Behavior (2012), 560--573.

[32]

Alexis Hiniker, Sungsoo (Ray) Hong, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Julie A. Kientz. 2016. MyTime: Designing and Evaluating an Intervention for Smartphone Non-Use. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4746--4757.

Digital Library

[33]

Shamsi T. Iqbal and Eric Horvitz. 2007. Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 677--686.

Digital Library

[34]

Jing Jin and Laura A. Dabbish. 2009. Self-interruption on the Computer: A Typology of Discretionary Task Interleaving. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1799--1808.

Digital Library

[35]

Jaejeung Kim, Chiwoo Cho, and Uichin Lee. 2017. Technology Supported Behavior Restriction for Mitigating Self-Interruptions in Multi-device Environments. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 1, 3 (Sept. 2017), 64:1--64:21.

Digital Library

[36]

Sungdoo Kim. 2018. Managing millennials' personal use of technology at work. Business Horizons 61, 2 (March 2018), 261--270.

[37]

Young-Ho Kim, Jae Ho Jeon, Eun Kyoung Choe, Bongshin Lee, KwonHyun Kim, and Jinwook Seo. 2016. TimeAware: Leveraging Framing Effects to Enhance Personal Productivity. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 272--283.

Digital Library

[38]

Alexander K. Koch and Julia Nafziger. 2016. Gift exchange, control, and cyberloafing: A real-effort experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 131 (Nov. 2016), 409--426.

[39]

Rafal Kocielnik, Daniel Avrahami, Jennifer Marlow, Di Lu, and Gary Hsieh. 2018. Designing for Workplace Reflection: A Chat and Voice-Based Conversational Agent. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 881--894.

Digital Library

[40]

Rafal Kocielnik, Lillian Xiao, Daniel Avrahami, and Gary Hsieh. 2018. Reflection Companion: A Conversational System for Engaging Users in Reflection on Physical Activity. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 2, 2 (July 2018), 70:1--70:26.

Digital Library

[41]

Artie Konrad, Simon Tucker, John Crane, and Steve Whittaker. {n. d.}. Technology and Reflection: Mood and Memory Mechanisms for Well-Being. 6, 1 ({n. d.}), 5.

[42]

Ian Li, Anind K. Dey, and Jodi Forlizzi. 2011. Understanding My Data, Myself: Supporting Self-reflection with Ubicomp Technologies. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 405--414.

Digital Library

[43]

Vivien K. G. Lim. 2002. The IT way of loafing on the job: cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational justice. Journal of Organizational Behavior 23, 5 (Aug. 2002), 675--694.

[44]

Vivien K. G. Lim and Don J. Q. Chen. 2012. Cyberloafing at the workplace: gain or drain on work? Behaviour & Information Technology 31, 4 (April 2012), 343--353.

Digital Library

[45]

Yuhan Luo, Bongshin Lee, Donghee Yvette Wohn, Amanda L. Rebar, David E. Conroy, and Eun Kyoung Choe. 2018. Time for Break: Understanding Information Workers' Sedentary Behavior Through a Break Prompting System. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 127:1--127:14.

Digital Library

[46]

Markus Löchtefeld, Matthias Böhmer, and Lyubomir Ganev. 2013. AppDetox: Helping Users with Mobile App Addiction. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 43:1--43:2.

Digital Library

[47]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns. 2014. Capturing the Mood: Facebook and Face-to-face Encounters in the Workplace. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1082--1094.

Digital Library

[48]

Gloria Mark, Shamsi Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns. 2015. Focused, Aroused, but So Distractible: Temporal Perspectives on Multitasking and Communications. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 903--916.

Digital Library

[49]

Daniel C. McFarlane and Kara A. Latorella. 2002. The Scope and Importance of Human Interruption in Human-Computer Interaction Design. Human--Computer Interaction 17, 1 (March 2002), 1--61.

Digital Library

[50]

Gregory D. Moody and Mikko Siponen. 2013. Using the theory of interpersonal behavior to explain non-work-related personal use of the internet at work. Information & Management 50, 6 (2013), 322--335.

Digital Library

[51]

Brid O'Conaill and David Frohlich. 1995. Timespace in the Workplace: Dealing with Interruptions. In Conference Companion on Human Factors Overcoming Distractions during Transitions from Break to Work CHI 2019, May 4--9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK in Computing Systems (CHI '95). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 262--263.

Digital Library

[52]

Fabian Okeke, Michael Sobolev, Nicola Dell, and Deborah Estrin. 2018. Good Vibrations: Can a Digital Nudge Reduce Digital Overload?. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4:1--4:12.

Digital Library

[53]

Shani Pindek, Alexandra Krajcevska, and Paul E. Spector. 2018. Cyberloafing as a coping mechanism: Dealing with workplace boredom. Computers in Human Behavior 86 (Sept. 2018), 147--152.

[54]

Smrithi Prasad, Vivien K. G. Lim, and Don J. Q. Chen. {n. d.}. Self-regulation, individual characteristics and cyberloafing. In PACIS 2010 - 14th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (2010). 1641--1648. https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/44672

[55]

Andrew K. Przybylski, Kou Murayama, Cody R. DeHaan, and Valerie Gladwell. 2013. Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in Human Behavior 29, 4 (July 2013), 1841--1848.

[56]

Anya Skatova, Ben Bedwell, Victoria Shipp, Yitong Huang, Alexandra Young, Tom Rodden, and Emma Bertenshaw. 2016. The Role of ICT in Office Work Breaks. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3049--3060.

Digital Library

[57]

Wendell C. Taylor, Kathryn E. King, Ross Shegog, Raheem J. Paxton, Gina L. Evans-Hudnall, David M. Rempel, Vincent Chen, and Antronette K. Yancey. {n. d.}. Booster Breaks in the workplace: participants' perspectives on health-promoting work breaks. 28, 3 ({n. d.}), 414--425.

[58]

Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman. 2010. Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review 117, 2 (April 2010), 440--463.

[59]

Jessica Vitak, Julia Crouse, and Robert LaRose. 2011. Personal Internet use at work: Understanding cyberslacking. Computers in Human Behavior 27, 5 (Sept. 2011), 1751--1759.

Digital Library

[60]

Steve Whittaker, Vaiva Kalnikaite, Victoria Hollis, and Andrew Guydish. 2016. 'Don'T Waste My Time': Use of Time Information Improves Focus. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1729--1738.

Digital Library

[61]

Alex C. Williams, Harmanpreet Kaur, Gloria Mark, Anne Loomis Thompson, Shamsi T. Iqbal, and Jaime Teevan. 2018. Supporting Workplace Detachment and Reattachment with Conversational Intelligence. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 88:1--88:13.

Digital Library

Cited By

Ahire SSimon BRohs M(2024)WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge WorkersProceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3640794.3665561(1-14)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640794.3665561
Aggarwal DKhot RYi JCiolfi LHogan TDöring TJenkins Tvan Dijk JHuron SLi ZCoyle DSigner B(2024)Zenscape: Encouraging Microbreaks from Screen-based Work through a Tangible SystemProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633368(1-17)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633368
Yadav DKarlgren KShaikh RHelms KMcmillan DBrown BLampinen A(2024)Bodywork at Work: Attending to Bodily Needs in Gig, Shift, and Knowledge WorkProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642416(1-13)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642416
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Overcoming Distractions during Transitions from Break to Work using a Conversational Website-Blocking System
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interactive systems and tools

Recommendations

Effects of Individual Differences in Blocking Workplace Distractions
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Information workers are experiencing ever-increasing online distractions in the workplace, and software to block distractions is becoming more popular. We conducted an exploratory field study with 32 information workers in their workplace using software ...
Read More
How blocking distractions affects workplace focus and productivity
UbiComp '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Information workers are faced with ever-increasing online distractions in the workplace. Website blockers are one solution toward preventing unwanted distractions. We conducted an in situ field study with 32 information workers in their workplace to ...
Read More
The Role of ICT in Office Work Breaks
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Break activities -- deliberate and unexpected -- are common throughout the working day, playing an important role in the wellbeing of workers. This paper investigates the role of increasingly pervasive ICT in creating new opportunities for breaks at ...
Read More

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2019

9077 pages

ISBN:9781450359702

DOI:10.1145/3290605

General Chairs:
Stephen Brewster
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
,
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
TU Wien, Austria
,
Program Chairs:
Anna Cox
University College London, UK
,
Vassilis Kostakos
University of Melbourne, Australia

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 May 2019

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '19

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '19: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 4 - 9, 2019

Glasgow, Scotland Uk

Acceptance Rates

CHI '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 703 of 2,958 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

40
Total Citations
View Citations
1,129
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)196
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)18

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ahire SSimon BRohs M(2024)WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge WorkersProceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3640794.3665561(1-14)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640794.3665561
Aggarwal DKhot RYi JCiolfi LHogan TDöring TJenkins Tvan Dijk JHuron SLi ZCoyle DSigner B(2024)Zenscape: Encouraging Microbreaks from Screen-based Work through a Tangible SystemProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633368(1-17)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633368
Yadav DKarlgren KShaikh RHelms KMcmillan DBrown BLampinen A(2024)Bodywork at Work: Attending to Bodily Needs in Gig, Shift, and Knowledge WorkProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642416(1-13)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642416
Ferguson SMassimi M(2024)Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers’ Unstructured Time and Attention NegotiationProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642175(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642175
Choi RPark SHan SLee S(2024)FoodCensor: Promoting Mindful Digital Food Content Consumption for People with Eating DisordersProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641984(1-18)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641984
Kim ILee U(2024)Navigating User-System Gaps: Understanding User-Interactions in User-Centric Context-Aware Systems for Digital Well-being InterventionProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641979(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641979
Biedermann DKister SBreitwieser JWeidlich JDrachsler H(2024)Use of digital self-control tools in higher education – a survey studyEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-12198-229:8(9645-9666)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-023-12198-2
Oravec J(2023)The Shape of Workbreaks to ComeJournal of Organizational and End User Computing10.4018/JOEUC.32959635:3(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/JOEUC.329596
Chow KFritz THolsti LBarbic SMcGrenere J(2023)Feeling Stressed and Unproductive? A Field Evaluation of a Therapy-Inspired Digital Intervention for Knowledge WorkersACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/360933031:1(1-33)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3609330
Petihakis GKiritsis DFarao ABountakas PPanou AXenakis C(2023)A Bring Your Own Device security awareness survey among professionalsProceedings of the 18th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3600160.3605072(1-10)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3600160.3605072
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents