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instant messaging

Our research in instant messaging has multiple threads, each of which treats instant messaging as a rich and unique medium and treats lightweight communication as a significant and continually-evolving work practice: 

• Instant messaging as a medium to explore the potential of visual communication
• Instant messaging as a medium that incorporates multiple, conflicting sets of conventions

visual communication

With the growing number of consumer products supporting digital photography, including cameras, camera-enabled cell phones and PDAs, and webcams designed for notebook computers, there exists a renewed potential for communication with photography. We have developed an IM client, Lascaux, that supports the use of photographs as first-class conversational units. We are investigating the communicative use of photographs in this lightweight communicative medium.

the tensions of instant messaging

In our research investigating instant messaging as a medium, we have noted that conversations take on a hybrid quality – evincing characteristics of both written and verbal communication. This blurring of communicative conventions leads to tensions in the use of instant messaging. Where the conventions are ambiguous, tensions emerge in:

• persistence and articulateness
• synchronicity
• turn-taking and syntax
• attention and context
• availability and context

Where tensions emerge, designers of computer mediated communication technologies can be intentional about exploring the design space, from supporting conventions spanning between those of written and verbal communication.


Figure 2: How users construct identities to manage tensions of availability.

Figure 1: The Lascaux IM Client
 

people
Amy Voida [amyvoida@cc.gatech.edu]
Beth Mynatt [mynatt@cc.gatech.edu]
 

publications
Voida, A., Mynatt, E.D. (2005). "Six themes of the communicative appropriation of photographic images." In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005; Portland, Oregon). New York: ACM Press, pp. 171-180.

Voida, A., Mynatt, E.D., Erickson, T., & Kellogg, W.A. (2004). "Interviewing over instant messaging." In Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1344-1347.

Voida, A., Erickson, T., Kellogg, W.A. & Mynatt, E.D. (2004). "The Meaning of Instant Messaging." In the Companion Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004; Chicago, Illinois).

Voida, A., Newstetter, W.C., and Mynatt, E.D. (2002). "When conventions collide: The tensions of instant messaging attributed." In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota) New York: ACM Press, pp. 187-194. [pdf]
     

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