Why are smartphones disruptive? An empirical study of smartphone use in real-life contexts

Notifications are one of the core functionalities of smartphones. Previous research suggests they can be a major disruption to the professional and private lives of users. This paper presents evidence from a mixed-methods study using first-person wearable video cameras, comprising 200 h of audio-visual first-person, and self-confrontation interview footage with 1130 unique smartphone interactions (N = 37 users), to situate and analyse the disruptiveness of notifications in real-world contexts. We show how smartphone interactions are driven by a complex set of routines and habits users develop over time. We furthermore observe that while the duration of interactions varies, the intervals between interactions remain largely invariant across different activity and location contexts, and for being alone or in the company of others. Importantly, we find that 89% of smartphone interactions are initiated by users, not by notifications. Overall this suggests that the disruptiveness of smartphones is rooted within learned user behaviours, not devices

Smartphones as steady companions: device use in everyday life and the economics of attention

This thesis investigates smartphone use in naturally occurring contexts with a dataset comprising 200 hours of audio-visual first-person recordings from wearable cameras, and self-confrontation interview video footage (N = 41 users). The situated context in which smartphone use takes place has often been overlooked because of the technical difficulty of capturing context of use, actual action of users, and their subjective experience simultaneously. This research project contributes to filling this gap, with a detailed, mixed-methods analysis of over a thousand individual phone engagement behaviours (EB). We observe that (a) the smartphone is a key structuring element in the flow of daily activities. Participants report complex strategies on how they manage engaging with or avoiding their devices. (b) Unexpectedly, we find that the majority of EB (89%) are initiated by users, not devices; users engage with the phone roughly every five minutes regardless of the context they are in. (c) A large portion of EB seems to stem from contextual cues and an unconscious urge to pick up the device, even when there is no clear reason to do so. d) Participants are surprised about, and often unhappy with how frequently they mindlessly reach for the phone. Our in-depth analysis unveils several overlapping layers of motivations and triggers driving EB. Monitoring incoming notifications, managing time use, responding to social pressures, actually completing a task with the phone, design factors, unconscious urges, as well as the accessibility of the device, and most importantly its affordance for distraction all contribute to picking up the phone. This user drive for EB is used by providers to feed the attention economy. So far, keeping the smartphone outside of the visual field and immediate reach has appeared as the only efficient strategy to prevent overuse