The authors present Oasis, a novel system for notification scheduling that reduces disruption of the primary task by enabling the deferral of interruptions to breakpoints in the user’s task. The main innovative aspect of the approach, which is based on the authors’ extensive previous work on notification timing, is the system’s ability to infer breakpoints without relying on an explicit description of the task’s structure.

This paper contributes to a wider area of research aimed at creating information and communications technology (ICT) adapted to the limits of human perceptual and cognitive abilities [1]. Such research recognizes that multi-tasking, task switching, interruptions, and similar phenomena are not the exception but the norm for most ICT users.

Although this paper focuses on the specific aspect of notification timing, Oasis is designed so that it can serve as a component for larger systems integrating other strategies, such as relevance evaluation and adaptation of notification modality.

This very accessible paper highlights the essential conceptual and systemic issues associated with notification timing, and clearly explains the proposed system’s advantages, limits, and likely applicability.

I strongly recommend this paper to researchers and practitioners interested in interruption management, and notification timing in particular. Researchers and practitioners more generally interested in attention management will find it a very useful contribution to the literature: it is a good example of how the often-wide gap between behavioral research and human-computer interaction (HCI) may be bridged.