YAKIT

Your Awareness K.I.T

Joey J. Barrett
Fall 2006
Loyola Marymount University

Abstract

Instant messaging has exploded in popularity over the last ten years, but in form, has barely evolved in the last twenty. Numerous attempts to improve the way chat is utilized have failed primarily due to an inability to preserve a simple user interface while adding useful features to improve communication. Turn-taking, contextual, and emotional awareness -- the use of cues available in communication -- are lacking in current chat clients. YAKIT is a chat client designed to improve awareness in these areas while preserving the fluidity and comfort of use in current chat clients. YAKIT provides the following features: context for threaded chat, editable posted chat, and markup for combining text and emotion (MyText) in chat.

1 Introduction

There have been numerous failed attempts to improve the way we currently use instant messaging (chat). The failed attempts have come primarily in disregard for the current user interface and keeping its simplicity while adding useful features to improve communication. Chat has exploded with popularity in the last ten years but in form has barely evolved in the last twenty. What makes chat unique is that it is the closest to face-to-face communication of all text-based exchanges. Face-to-face communication has been well-studied, exposing the important cues that drive how we communicate during conversation. Chat lacks these cues which introduces ambiguity during our text exchanges. Some researchers argue the lack of cues and other significant differences (quasi-synchronous) make chat so different from face-to-face communication that they should not even be considered similar forms or compared as such. On the other hand, research has shown that cues can be put into chat to improve its communication qualities. Research does not argue against putting cues into chat, but it has been shown that dramatic or awkward changes to the chat user interface can take away from the type, press enter, read, type, ... loop of current chat. The question then arises: how is it to best put face-to-face like communication features into chat without altering the fluidity or changing the comfort users have in their current chat clients?

Awareness, as outlined by [22], is what a participant has when cues are available in communication. There are four major categories of awareness which arise from the types of awareness they support: presence, turn-taking, contextual, and emotional, awareness. The first of these, in one form or another is implemented in all popular chat clients. It manifests itself in the buddy list by showing which users are online/offline, idle, away (with messages, i.e. "out for lunch") and through the use of sound or visual warnings. The other three forms of awareness, turn-taking, contextual and emotional, have either no implementation or very rudimentary forms of implementation leaving much to be desired. The goal of my project is to create an improved form of awareness in these areas without taking away from the fluidity and comfort users have in their current chat clients. To do this I will use cue techniques which will provide awareness to other communication participants. Some of these techniques have been previously explored but I will use them in a novel way. Other techniques I will use are novel in implementation and themselves will be an experiment to their effect. The project will include creating a chat client with the following features: context for threaded chat, editable posted chat, and markup for combining text and emotion (MyText) in chat.

Context for threaded chat exposes the context of a message by enabling a chat participant to tie a particular message to any previously posted message(s). When a chat participant finishes composition of a message and presses the enter key they will be prompted with a list of the current threads in the chat. A chat participant can use the up-arrow followed by the enter key to select a particular thread, or hit enter again to post an non-threaded message (a non-threaded message is really considered a new thread with only a single message associated to it), or hit escape if the enter key was prematurely hit. Each chat participant will share the same output experience in the chat window—each multi-message thread of chat will have its own unique background color. Visually, context for threaded chat groups threads of conversation. However, it does not change the ordering of the messages which has been previously shown to disorient chat participants by forcing them to look in more than one area for new message arrivals. Most important is its simplicity and its ability to provide context awareness without drawing a participant's hand away from the keyboard or requiring complex key strokes. The user interface will provide a toggle switch enabling/disabling context for threaded chat. All chat participants do not need to have context for threaded chat enabled but will be able to see threads marked by other chat participants as long as they use a chat client supporting context for threaded chat.

Editable posted chat enables a chat participant to edit a message they have previously posted. A posted message may need editing for a number of reasons which include misspelled words or incomplete or mistaken message composition (note: with context for threaded chat enabled incomplete message composition should rarely happen). To edit a posted message a chat participant can press the up-arrow (or use the mouse) to highlight the message and the enter key to enable edit mode. During edit mode the previously posted message is copied into the normal message composition area and normal message editing resumes. Once the message is complete and the user hits the enter key and the new message replaces the previously posted message in its original position. A highlight to identify an edited message is displayed around the new message. Any chat participant can select a newly edited message and see the previously posted message(s). The purpose of editing messages is not meant for participants to use maliciously but rather to clear the air or correct mistakes during text exchanges. Editable posted chat minimizes the number turns used to clear up confusion caused by previously posted chats and keeps the corrections in place of the original mistake providing context awareness. It also improves floor conflicts and turn-taking awareness by not flooding the message space with message edits/corrections. It does however draw a chat participant's eyes into a new area to see updated messages although chat participants will become accustomed to seeing an incorrect message cleared with a correct one and keeping an eye out for the clearly marked changes.

MyText is a markup language designed to be used in text exchanges for the purpose of combing text and emotion. It allows a chat participant flexibility and efficiency in shorthand, on-the-fly, personalized, text-style markup. It has been shown that text-style (font, size, color, ...) can effectively communicate emotion but the current method of text-style markup is much too inefficient to be used in relatively quick text exchanges (chat). During message composition the composition area becomes an interpreter for the MyText language. A chat participant will use in-line language features to markup their message. A side window located to the right-hand side of the standard chat window will contain a listing of the current text-style markups available in the MyText library. A user can type in-line function calls or select a function from the listing. Functions in the MyText language are named such that their markup is a reflection of the name itself. In other words, if a chat participant wrote a message in anger, the anger function would be used in conjunction with the message. This helps chat participants understand the link between text-style markup and emotional awareness. MyText will contain a standard library of functions for text-style markup but will also have the feature of accepting new custom function definitions from a chat participant. MyText will improve emotional awareness through its text-style emotional markup. A toggle switch to enable/disable MyText will be include in the standard chat window and like context for threaded chat, participants do not need to have MyText enabled but will be able to see markings by other chat participants as long as they use a chat client supporting MyText.

Improvements to these three specific areas in chat will help provide awareness to chat participants during text exchanges. They help bridge the gap between text exchanges and face-to-face communication. Most important is the addition of these features while minimizing the altering of the fluidity and of the comfort users have in their current chat clients. The goal of this project is to create an improved chat client that will not fail because of it's neglect for the current user interface and its simplicity. A test of the final product will be necessary to critique the results and to ensure the ideas presented here are viable.

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