Across my previous research and posts, interruption has appeared repeatedly as a central condition of contemporary interaction. From notifications and social media to cognitive load, emotional cost and recovery, interruption is not an exception to interaction but a structural feature of it. This final blog brings these strands together and reframes interruption as a design material rather than a problem to eliminate.
One of the most consistent findings across HCI research is that when an interruption occurs matters as much as that it occurs. Adamczyk and Bailey’s work on interruption timing demonstrates that interruptions placed at structurally meaningful moments within a task; such as boundaries between subtasks, produce significantly less frustration, annoyance, and cognitive effort than interruptions that occur mid-action.¹ This supports the idea that interruption cost is not uniform, but highly sensitive to task structure and temporal context.
From a design perspective, this challenges the dominant notification model used in many smart devices and platforms, where interruption timing is driven by system priorities rather than user activity. Treating all moments as equally interruptible ignores how users mentally segment tasks and weakens recovery. Designing for interrupted experiences therefore requires an understanding of how users perceive time, progress, and task continuity.
Liikkanen and Gómez argue that interaction design actively shapes user’s experience of time, not just efficiency or usability.² Interfaces that fragment attention, accelerate pace or constantly reset context distort temporal experience and increase the subjective cost of interruption. This aligns with earlier discussions in my research on flow and recovery: interruptions are not only breaks in attention but breaks in temporal coherence.
Recent design research responds to this by shifting focus from preventing interruption to supporting attention. Monge Roffarello et al. introduce digital attention heuristics that prioritize continuity, predictability and cognitive respect in interface behavior.³ Rather than maximizing engagement, these heuristics aim to reduce unnecessary attentional demand and help users maintain control over their focus. This approach contrasts sharply with attention capture patterns identified in deceptive interface designs, where interruption is deliberately used to redirect behavior.⁴
Designing for interrupted experiences therefore has an ethical dimension. When interruption is used strategically to capture attention, it externalizes cognitive cost onto the user. In contrast, attention supportive design acknowledges limits, supports recovery and reduces friction. This distinction becomes particularly relevant in educational and blended environments, where users report feeling constantly interrupted yet unable to disengage from digital systems. Pattermann et al. show that students experience digital interruption as both disruptive and unavoidable, reinforcing the need for design strategies that support regulation rather than escalation.⁵
Several applied design approaches address this challenge directly. Rydén’s user-centered work on designing for distraction emphasizes understanding interruption from the user’s lived experience rather than abstract performance metrics.⁶ By mapping when, why and how users feel interrupted, designers can identify points where systems should step back rather than intervene. This aligns with earlier discussions in my research on polite and adaptive systems, where responsiveness replaces control.
Taken together, these studies suggest that designing for interrupted experiences means accepting interruption as inevitable but designing it’s consequences. This includes supporting recovery, preserving context, respecting task boundaries and also making attention visible as a shared responsibility between user and system.
As a concluding position, my research does not argue for interruption free design. Instead, it proposes a shift in design intent: from capturing attention to caring for it. Designing for the interrupted means designing systems that understand timing, support memory, respect emotional cost or help users return; not just react.
This framing of mine sets the foundation for future thesis work (hopefully) that explores interruption not as a usability flaw, but as a core interaction condition that demands deliberate, human-centered design responses.
References
- Adamczyk, P. D., & Bailey, B. P. (2004). If not now, when?: The effects of interruption at different moments within task execution. Proceedings of CHI 2004.
- Liikkanen, L. A., & Gómez, R. (2013). Designing interactive systems for the experience of time. Proceedings of CHI 2013.
- Monge Roffarello, A., et al. (2025). The digital attention heuristics: Supporting the user’s attention by design.
- Monge Roffarello, A., et al. (2023). Defining and identifying attention capture deceptive designs in digital interfaces.
- Pattermann, M., et al. (2022). Perceptions of digital device use and accompanying digital interruptions in blended learning.
- Rydén, J. (Year). Designing for the distracted: A user-centered approach to explore and act on the user experience of distraction.
AI Assistance Disclaimer:
AI tools were used at certain stages of the research process, primarily for source exploration, grammar refinement and structural editing. All conceptual development, analysis and final writing were made by the author.
