Presence versus availability: The design and evaluation of a context-aware communication client

Although electronic communication plays an important role in the modern workplace, the interruptions created by poorly-timed attempts to communicate are disruptive. Prior work suggests that sharing an indication that a person is currently busy might help to prevent such interruptions, because people could wait for a person to become available before attempting to initiate communication. We present a context-aware communication client that uses the built-in microphones of laptop computers to sense nearby speech. Combining this speech detection sensor data with location, computer, and calendar information, our system models availability for communication, a concept that is distinct from the notion of presence found in widely-used systems. In a 4 week study of the system with 26 people, we examined the use of this additional context. To our knowledge, this is the first-field study to quantitatively examine how people use automatically sensed context and availability information to make decisions about when and how to communicate with colleagues. Participants appear to have used the provided context to as an indication of presence, rather than considering availability. Our results raise the interesting question of whether sharing an indication that a person is currently unavailable will actually reduce inappropriate interruptions. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.