Peer Reviewed Journal via three different mandatory reviewing processes, since 2006, and, from September 2020, a fourth mandatory peer-editing has been added.
Mobile phones not only increase our availability for
communication anytime, anywhere, but also interrupt us
anytime, anywhere. This paper empirically examines the role of
local context (e.g. activity/location where one receives the call)
vs. the relational context (e.g. what the phone call is about and
from whom) in how people make decisions to answer or ignore
phone call. Using both quantitative (N=101) and qualitative
(N=10) methods, we gathered data on people’s cellphone
handling practices. Analysis of the data reveals that 1) people
are influenced by the availability or unavailability of relational
context in making call handling decisions and are rarely
influenced by their local context alone; 2) people predict the
value of a call to be significantly different before engaging in
the call than the value they perceive after the call. Our
qualitative data confirmed that the low availability of relational
context information not only led to misjudgment of call value
but also suboptimal call handling decisions. Together our
findings suggest that designing cell phone interfaces that
display relational context information can support people in
accurately gauging the value of incoming calls to appropriate
response decisions in social and professional contexts.
