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 smartphones so that they become less disruptive. We show that the social dimensions depth/importance and formality/goal orientation 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 notifications than in situations without any verbal social interaction at all. This refutes the assumption currently found in the literature that the occurrence of a conversation is a strong predictor 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. Eventually, we find that information of either kind, derived from audio, improves the accuracy of personal notification preference models substantially.