Signs: Increasing Expression and Clarity in Instant Messaging

Abstract

Despite its vast popularity, commercial instant messaging has changed little in the past 15 years. Conversations are linear, immutable, and susceptible to errors in turn-taking and referent resolution. Problems of coherency occur with high frequency, yet no chat client design has emerged that is sufficiently successful to alleviate problems in discourse to achieve commercial adaption. We present Signs, our contribution of an instant messaging design philosophy and implementation. We aim to reduce confusion while increasing expressive power. Signs allows the mutation of persistent discussion spaces as a means for novel communicative acts in addition to repair of sequencing problems. This paper addresses the theory behind Signs, our specific design choices, and feedback from a brief user study.