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There has been some interesting research in the area
of Instant Messaging by Don Patterson, particularly
in the shift from desktops to mobile devices. Professor
Donald Patterson was part of a research team that published
the paper “Online Everywhere: Evolving Mobile
Instant Messaging Practices.” The paper was based
on an anonymous online survey of 447 participants from
the greater UC Irvine community who are over 17 years
of age and who reported using instant messaging on a
mobile platform at least once a week. These users had
a median buddy list of approximately 100 users. Mobile
platforms include laptops, mobile phones, and PDA’s
(explicitly excluding desktop computers).
Instant Messaging (IM) is a tool which has allowed
for increased communication and collaboration. It creates
the possibility of real-time text-based communication
between two or more participants over the internet,
featuring immediate receipt of acknowledgement or reply.
Users maintain a buddy list of other users with whom
they can initiate a real-time text conversation by clicking
on a buddy’s name or icon. The Presence Awareness
feature lets the user know who is "available."
To support awareness of buddy status, buddy lists are
often augmented with real time status cues, such as
“offline,” “away,” busy,”
“online,” or a short broadcast phrase, and
are often supplemented by emoticons.
IM is not the first system to provide awareness cues.
In the physical world, a popular office awareness system
is the “in/out” board, which lets people
know if you are physically available. In the digital
world, IM provides awareness cues and supports synchronous
communication over technology-mediated channels. This
is especially important as society becomes more information-based
and we communicate within geographically dispersed areas.
But as computing and communication become more nomadic
and mobile, how does this affect Mobile Instant Messaging
(MIM) practices and behaviors? While this research team’s
motivation was to inform the designers of IM, they encountered
several interesting findings on the way.
First, users are finding that their personal computers
aren’t as private as they used to be. The semi-public
nature of laptop and cell phone screens does not always
allow for discrete communication. In fact, a large proportion
of study participants had been involved in an embarrassing
incident while using IM in a semi-public circumstance.
For instance, “Are you still in the meeting with
those losers” popped up on the screen, while one
participant was still in the meeting; or a surprise
birthday party invitation appeared in front of the person
whose birthday it was. Inappropriate or sexual language
was also cited.
Next, users are not distinguishing between a physical
desktop and virtual desktop. Respondents said they are
likely to IM their buddy regardless of what they are
reporting on their status line. Although 89% of users
indicated that they paid attention to their buddies'
away or idle status, 93% said they IM’d them anyway.
This may be happening as users are interpreting the
“busy” or “away” status as an
indication of expected response time. Or, while users
may know full well that their buddies are away, they
send them a message anyways, intending for these messages
to stay on the screen until they return and can respond
– thus transforming the desktop IM as a pile of
notes that buddies drop off for later. While a desktop
user cannot always easily manage incoming IM messages,
with mobile IM the situation is compounded. Thus, users
are being forced to turn off IM entirely in order to
accomplish their goals.
Finally, mobile IM users do not have the same degree
of attention to devote to incoming IMs. They are actively
using their computers for presentations or group work,
moving around and physically engaged in other tasks.
The study concludes and acknowledges that mobile IM
users are experiencing frictions as they evolve their
practice from the desktop model. A copy of the paper
was published in the ACM, UbiComp ’08 September
21-24, 2008.
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