Methods for interrupting a wearable computer user

Abstract

A wearable computer equipped with a head-mounted display allows its user to receive notifications and advice that is readily visible in her field of view. While needless interruption of the user should be avoided, there are times when the information is of such importance that it must demand the user's attention. As the user is mobile and likely interacts with the real world when these situations occur, it is important to know in what way the user can be notified without increasing her cognitive workload more than necessary. To investigate ways of presenting information without increasing the cognitive workload of the recipient, an experiment was performed testing different approaches. The experiment described in this paper is based on an existing study of interruption of people in human-computer interaction, but our focus is instead on finding out how this applies to wearable computer users engaged in real world tasks.