Abstract

The measurement of participant attention is a frequent by-product of mobile sensing-based studies, which typically focus on user interruptibility or the effectiveness of notification deliveries. We note that, despite the popularity of interruptibility research within our discipline, research focused on attention is surprisingly scarce. This omission may be due to (a combination of) methodological, technological, or disciplinary constraints. In this paper, we argue how attention levels can be effectively measured with existing technologies and methodologies by adapting continuous measurements of attention fluctuations. Many clinically researched technologies, as well as sensing-based analysis methods, could be leveraged for this purpose. This paper invites co-researchers to assess the use of novel ways to measure attention in their future endeavours.