Signs: Increasing Expression and Clarity in Instant Messaging

Despite its 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 incoherency occur with high frequency, yet no design has emerged that alleviates these problems in discourse sufficiently to achieve commercial adaption. We present Signs, an instant messaging design philosophy and implementation. We aim to reduce confusion while increasing expressive power. In Signs, the mutation of persistent discussion spaces facilitates repair of sequencing problems and functions as a proxy for new communication acts. This paper addresses the theory behind Signs, our specific design choices, and feedback from a brief user study.

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