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I have a number of applications that attract my attention during the day: Mail, instant messaging, IRC, calendar, software update. The total number of interrupts between them all can number in the hundreds every day. Worse, each application has a different way to signal me: my IM client chirps, my IRC client dings, software update jumps up at me, and mail does nothing unless I tell it to. To change any of these, I have to change each app’s settings to match my mood.

This is unacceptable now, and will only be getting worse. Something has to be done. Especially in my case. I have attention deficit disorder, and it’s hard enough to focus on work I need to do without all of these connections happening around me. And even harder when icons are bouncing nonstop in the Dock on my Mac, or minimized windows are flashing on my Windows taskbar. What I need is a simple system that:

• Traps the events from attention-seeking applications;
• Triages their importance relative to my preferences and/or behavior;
• Logs events in a visual and/or auditory form;
• Sends interrupts only when necessary

When I need to focus on a paper or whatever, I could (and often do) close out of the programs that could distract me. But sometimes I need to track email threads or leave a channel open for my coworkers to ping me in real time, while limiting my responses to other stimuli.

Back in 2000, I saw a poster at WWW9 in Amsterdam on “Sonification of Web servers”. The premise was that an application could be built to allow sysadmins to monitor the performance of their servers by sound. A Geiger-counter-like tick would be registered for every satisfied request; errors or other problems could register a different sound. With this, admins who couldn’t spend every moment watching for denial-of-service attacks could listen for them instead. They could even measure how many of their users were on Internet Explorer versus Netscape if they liked. And all while focusing on other tasks. I thought it was brilliant. In fact, the conference judges did too: it won the best poster prize.

That kind of thing would be handy to a lot of us who work full-time at a screen. We’ve already got glowing orbs being sold to tell us real-time information in a new way. Why not tap into the other major sense computers can satisfy? Setting subtle audio cues into the mix could allow users to determine what kind of event is happening — and how important it is at the moment — without throwing up a dialog or annoying the crap out of you with bouncing or pulsing cues. It would lower a lot of blood pressures, and give control of user interaction back to the user.

Visually speaking, I’m thinking of this application as a scroll of events along an edge of the screen. It would flow on a logarithmic scale: The last 15 minutes may take up half the length of the scroll, the next hour a quarter, and the rest would indicate major events in the last 24 hours. Or, perhaps, the present is represented in the center, and upcoming events slide in and pass by, so you can see that time-sucking meeting rolling up on you, and plan accordingly. (Maybe the attention manager could plan it for you, if you trust it.)

This application also has the potential to become an agent for users (though the term “user agent” is overloaded here). If a new message is from my boss, or contains a deadline, or language that indicates urgency (not to mention flamewars breaking out in lists I moderate), the attention manager could use louder or more striking sounds or visuals. If it’s just your buddy pinging you to chat, it could just log it, send a soft chirp, and move on. With the increasing popularity of voice-over-IP phones, Bluetooth and the like, an attention manager would even be able to control whether the phone rings, or rolls into voice mail — and then report to you if it was important. As it adapts to us, it could even recommend blog entries and the like from our feeds in the down times.

So there you have it. Build my assistive technology. I guarantee I’m not the only one who could use it.