Conversational context helps improve mobile notification management

We explore if and how identifying the character of face-to- face conversations can help manage notifications on smart- phones so that they become less disruptive. We show that the social dimensions depth/importance and formality/goal orien- tation of a conversation are strong indicators of receptiveness. Furthermore, we find that there are types of conversation, e.g. small talk, in which individuals are even more receptive to no- tifications than in situations without any verbal social interac- tion at all. This refutes the assumption currently found in the literature that the occurrence of a conversation is a strong pre- dictor of unavailability. We demonstrate a system that tracks conversations in which the user is engaged and that analyzes speech in terms of embedded affective and social cues. Even- tually, we find that information of either kind, derived from audio, improves the accuracy of personal notification prefer- ence models substantially.