Giving the caller the finger: collaborative responsibility for cellphone interruptions

We present a system in which a cell phone decides whether to ring by accepting votes from the others in a conversation with the called party. When a call comes in, the phone first determines who is in the conversation by using a decentralized network of autonomous body-worn sensor nodes. It then vibrates all participants' wireless finger rings. Although the alerted people do not know if it is their own cellphones that are about to interrupt, each of them has the possibility to veto the call anonymously by touching his/her finger ring. If no one vetoes, the phone rings. A user study showed significantly more vetoes during a collaborative group-focused setting than during a less group oriented setting. Our system is a component of a larger research project in context-aware computer-mediated call control. Author Keywords Mobile communication, cellphone interruption, social polling, collaborative responsibility, social intelligence. ACM Classification Keywords H5.2. User Interfaces: ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Stefan Marti, Chris Schmandt
• Keywords: ACM Classification Keywords, Body-worn Sensor Nodes, CHI 2005, Human Computer Interaction, Wireless Finger Rings