Do I look like I want to restart? (Image: Monkey Business Images/Rex Features)

FOR procrastinators, email pop-ups and instant message notifications are a welcome distraction. But when you’re on a deadline, they’re a pain. A smart desktop that holds back notifications until it judges you’re not too busy might offer a solution.

Takahisa Tani and Seiji Yamada at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Hayama, Japan, have developed a system that monitors the pressure placed on a keyboard. By fitting a pressure-sensor mat beneath a keyboard, they found that it could tell how active the user was by detecting the change in pressure when they type. If they were deemed busy, then all notifications were held back.

The system was tested on volunteers who were asked to complete a word-processing task. Each time a notification popped up while they were typing, the volunteer could accept or reject it. After a short training period, the system was able to pick appropriate moments to interrupt, with over 80 per cent accuracy. The work was presented at the Ro-Man conference in Paris, France, on 9-13 September. The researchers plan to extend their system to other activities, such as reading. For example, a sensor mat on a desk could guess a user’s activity levels by measuring shifts in elbow pressure or how often a tea mug is picked up.