Tracés (May 2009)
Pragmatique de la notification
Abstract
The design of notifications in computer science is marked by a growing tension between two normative orientations, which concerns respectively the requirements of planned action, and the need for reactive, flexible behavior attuned to changing environments. The ambivalent status of interruptions reflects such a tension: disruptive (to planned behavior) or positively valued (as providing occasions to display reactivity and to reinforce adjustment to meaningful changes in context). On the one hand the designers of networked technologies, which are the source of many forms of interruptions through notifications, shape them so that they appear paradoxically as salient (so as to be noticed) and subtle (so as to allow some leeway in their treatment). On the other hand users, as shown by an empirical case study in the use of instant messaging in an organization, pattern their environments so as to prepare the way they might be interrupted and notified, the consequence of which is their situated accomplishment of finely differentiated modes of engagements in their activities. The way they do it signals the development of a culture in which it is less accepted that an activity episode or a communication event starts in the mode of a summons that requires immediate attention and response. This shows the interest for social sciences of a pragmatic approach to “notifications”.
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