The Effect of Visual Cues on How People Handle Interruptions

People in work domains such as healthcare are often interrupted. As a result, they sometimes forget to resume their prior task, which may lead to undesirable consequences. In many cases, strategies such as deferring an interruption for a while can help people lower the risks imposed by interruptions. Using two computer-based tasks, we investigated whether visual cues make people more likely to defer an interruption until their current task is finished. Our study participants worked on an arithmetic task and were interrupted from time to time by an animated character inviting them to play Tic-Tac-Toe. Results showed that participants were more likely to defer accepting the interruption and to complete the arithmetic task if the arithmetic task contained visual cues that indicated the location of the next steps, than if it did not. The findings suggest that equipment with appropriately designed visual cues might encourage people to defer interruptions and finish their current tasks. Further research is needed to understand exactly how visual cues promote deferral strategies