Socialising across channels : group multichannel communication

People increasingly communicate over multiple channels, such as SMS, email and IM. Choosing the channel for interaction is typically a considered action and shapes the message itself. In order to explore how people make sense of communication mediums and more generally, social group behaviour, we developed a multichannel communication prototype. Preliminary results indicate that multichannel communication was considered very useful in the group context even considering the increased quantity of messages while it was little used for person-to-person interaction.

Leveraging mundane technologies for group mobile social communication

This paper outlines results from the long-term deployment of a system for mobile group socialization which utilizes a variety of mundane technologies to support cross-media notifications and messaging. We focus here on the results as they pertain to usage of mundane technologies, particularly the use of such technologies within the context of a cross-media system. We introduce “Rhub”, our prototype, which was designed to support coordination, communication and sharing amongst informal social groups. We also describe and discuss the usage of the “console,” a text-based syntax to enable consistent use across text messaging, instant messaging, email and the web. The prototype has been in active use for over 18 months by over 170 participants, who have used it on an everyday basis for their own socializing requirements.