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Hubbub: a sound-enhanced mobile instant messenger that supports awareness and opportunistic interactions

Published:20 April 2002Publication History

ABSTRACT

There have been many attempts to support awareness and lightweight interactions using video and audio, but few have been built on widely available infrastructure. Text-based systems have become more popular, but few support awareness, opportunistic conversations, and mobility, three important elements of distributed collaboration. We built on the popularity of text-based Instant Messengers (IM) by building a mobile IM called Hubbub that tries to provide all three, notably through the use of earcons. In a 5.5-month use study, we found that Hubbub helped people feel connected to colleagues in other locations and supported opportunistic interactions. The sounds provided effective awareness cues, although some found them annoying. It was more important to support graceful transitions between multiple fixed locations than to support wireless access, although both were useful

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          CHI '02: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
          April 2002
          478 pages
          ISBN:1581134533
          DOI:10.1145/503376
          • Conference Chair:
          • Dennis Wixon

          Copyright © 2002 ACM

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          Publication History

          • Published: 20 April 2002

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          CHI '02 Paper Acceptance Rate61of414submissions,15%Overall Acceptance Rate6,199of26,314submissions,24%

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