Attention-management tools can restrict online communication, but may cause collateral damage to their users’ fulfillment of communication expectations. This paper explores the idea of integrating attention management into instant messaging (IM), by 1) disclosing restriction status via an online status indicator (OSI) to manage contacts’ expectations, and 2) imposing communication limits to reduce communication distraction. We used a speed-dating design method to allow 43 participants to rapidly compare 48 types of OSI restriction in various conversational contexts. We identified two “tug-of-wars” that take place when attention management is integrated into IM apps: one between fulfilling one’s contacts’ expectations and protecting one’s own attention, and the other, between protecting one’s privacy and asserting the justifiability of using communication restrictions. We also highlighted the participants’ desire to be diplomatic for sustaining their positive images and maintaining relational connectedness. Finally, we provide design recommendations for integrating attention management into IM apps.

Researchers have long attempted to estimate instant-messaging (IM) users’ attentiveness, responsiveness, and interruptibility. Yet, IM users’ self-presentation of their receptivity, and their perceptions of automated adjustment/revelation of their receptivity status (e.g., Facebook Messenger’s green dot that deems a user to be “active”), remain under-explored. We therefore told our 43 participants that our IM app, IMStatus, was capable of automatically estimating and adjusting their receptivity status to responsive, attentive, or interruptible based on their smartphone activity. These statuses were also presented to their IM contacts in three different styles. Over a two-week period, the participants rarely chose the status interruptible, and when they did, it was usually to indicate low availability. Textual presentation was usually chosen to express statuses precisely, especially at high and low extremes of receptivity; while graphical and numeric presentations were preferred when self-perceived receptivity levels were more ambiguous. Conflicts between recipients’ and senders’ perspectives are also discussed.

Current mobile instant messaging (IM) applications offer limited information on the availability status of IM users, particularly, their availability for reading and responding to IM messages. Research suggests a gap between what IM recipients want to disclose and what IM senders want to see to determine when to initiate a conversation. The advancement of IM users' receptivity prediction makes it possible to present IM users' predicted availability status. In this research, we conducted user enactment, a design approach for researchers to let participants experience and reflect on possible designs of future technologies, to explore designs of IM availability status in 72 IM conversation scenarios. We explore how IM users interpret different presentations of an uncertain IM status from both the senders' and recipients' perspectives, and what they need and will act upon these presentations.