Informatics researchers study cell phone disruptions

Thirty-three years after the first cell phone was invented and 22 years after being introduced to the mass public, the product has become one of the most widely used and marketed devices in the world. However, despite the benefits of having mobile communication capabilities, a recent study by computer scientists in the IU School of Informatics has shown that cell phones are increasingly becoming an annoyance as well.\nInformatics assistant professor Kay Connelly and computer science doctoral student Ashraf Khalil have recently conducted research on the problems cell phones cause in society.\nFor their study, they gathered together 20 cell phone users and randomly called them over the course of a 10-day period. The participant would then record what they were doing, who they were with and their location. The purpose was to determine the amount of privacy they were willing to surrender in order to obtain a less distracting cell phone service. \nThe study titled, "Context-aware Telephony: Privacy Preferences and Sharing Patterns" revealed new information about what people value with regards to their cell phone usage.\nAfter conducting the research, Connelly and Khalil discovered that 57 percent of all incoming calls are received during "improper" times.\n"We found that the availability rate does not only depend on the context of the receiver but also on the relationship between the caller and the receiver," Connelly said in a press release. "In fact, the social relation was found to have a main effect."\nAccording to their research, the availability rate for receivers were 75 percent for a spouse or significant other, 68 percent for friends, 63 percent for family members, bosses were 50 percent, colleagues 47 percent and unknown calls 39 percent.\nIn order to remedy the problem of poorly timed cell phone calls, Wireless Application Protocol, a form of context-aware telephony is being tested in Europe. This technology allows the receiver to provide information to all incoming callers through a phone interface. The caller then can decide whether to place the call, solely leave a message or cancel the call based upon the situation that the receiver is in. The benefit of this would be to avoid the many cell phone calls that are received at inappropriate times -- that interrupt not only the cell phone user, but also the people around them.\nConnelly said that in order for the device to be efficient, people are going to have to display what they are currently doing through the interface. This could pose a problem because cell phone users may not want all incoming callers to know their current status. \n"When people are concerned about privacy, they will selectively remove contexts from their disclosure list rather than disclose no context at all," Connelly said. "This indicates the people want to share as much information as possible without compromising their privacy in return for useful devices. This should help guide designers of context-aware telephony when they consider ways to provide users with an easy and efficient way to control their information disclosure."\nShe added the goal is to one day be able to group together callers into categories like spouse, family, friends and coworkers, allowing the ability to release different information on their current status to each of these groups.