CrescendoMessage: Interacting with Slow Messaging

Messaging in human communication is not only a carrier of the sender’s intention but also interplay between anticipations on both sides if we see it as an experience-centered design issue. With the power of digital technology in designing temporal forms of messages, new and fascinating applications other than instant communication have been recently proposed. In contrast to using only delayed expression for slowness, this paper introduces a crescendo expression of slowness that might be thought of as a temporally gradational exposure of a message over a period of time. The CrescendoMessage, an interactive prototype built on an existing social medium, was implemented and a user study was conducted for investigating the felt experiences with crescendo expression on digital photos in young adults’ daily messaging practices. The results demonstrate that (1) crescendo expression matters, (2) crescendo reminiscence accumulates with enriched experiences, and (3) crescendo messages encourage curiosity-driven understanding. With these findings and insights behind, we frame crescendo messaging experience as a way of evoking anticipation, which is an actively sense-making process in a dialog provoked by perceived information drawbacks of interchanged messages. crescendo messaging; non-instant message; perceived drawbacks; anticipation; slow technology; interaction design The past few decades have seen considerable attention placed on research in facilitating realtime communication. The continuing improvements in Internet technologies have led to many convenient applications, such as email, online chat, and instant messaging systems. Seeing efficiency as a major value in our everyday life, most of us uncritically accept these applications and benefit from fast and concise communication in doing our jobs, as well as