Summary:
The article “The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in designing abstract graphical communication interfaces” explores various interfaces and how social interaction changes by what the interface looks like. Design features such as background space, individual representation, movement implementation, communication channels, and history depiction change how users communicate. When talking online, the environment is completely different than communicating in person. Design concepts have been tested through different interfaces such as Chat Circles and Chatscape, by adding certain elements to see the different social interactions. Chat Circles uses simple 2D graphics, implementing colored circles that change size and brightness level. The different elements help create different experiences for the user, but all contain the idea of making communication between users easier to understand. The visuals help text conversations become more life-like and understandable.
Reflection:
Before reading, I never thought about how the interactions through technology and in reality are so different. There are many benefits and disadvantages of communicating through online text chats. When using online chat methods, users can go back through the history of their conversations. If they are not completely invested into the conversation, users can multitask while communicating then check back and read the conversation fully later. The user’s attention can be somewhere else during the conversation. I personally like to multitask and talk to people as I am completing daily activities. However, messaging online can lose emotional context with the other users. Cues such as tone and emotion are hard to be expressed online. The invention of emojis has greatly helped this issue. Users are able to insert emotional faces into their text messages, to help the receiver understand their tone. Most people use online messaging as a primary source of contact. As technology advances, creating better visualizations for communicating is essential to clearly understanding what a person means or receiving the proper information.
Questions:
Is it possible to truly understand context and social cues through text messaging?
I know I message people via text messaging more than I talk to them in person; is it better to steer away from communicating only through texts?
In what other ways can we express emotion online? Is it needed?
