[Seminar] 200821 Hyeshin Chu

Ten-Minute Silence:
A New Notification UX of
Mobile Instant Messenger
Hyeshin Chu
2020. 08. 21
CHI 2019
In-geon Shin, Jin-min Seok, Youn-kyung Lim

Contents
•Overview of the Paper
•Understanding MIM Experience
•Experimental Design
•Messaging Experience Changes Depending
on Conversation Phase
•Conclusion & Future Work
•Criticism

2
Overview of the Paper
• Motivation
 To mitigate the problem of excessive notifications
 To enhance the understanding of MIM notifications
 To offer support in further expanding the role of notifications in future MIM Design
• Main Contribution
 Found that 10-minute notification rule had a much broader impact on the
messaging experience than we expected
 Found that notification design can have an impact not only before the conversation
but during all phases of the conversation, including the start, middle, and after the
conversation.
 Refined the result into 5 themes according to the conversation phases.

3
Understanding MIM Experience
• A Large Number of MIMs
 In MIM, people exchange messages more frequently, are more conversational, and
use group chats more often[1]. ⇒ 50-90% of all smartphone notifications[2, 6, 25].
 Transition from SMS to MIM
SMS Conversation MIM Conversation Transition from SMS to MIM
A single message or short
sequences
Sharing multimedia-based
messages(images and videos)
More flexible messaging and a
more conversational nature [4]
More refined messages Shorter and more fragmented
messages
More stress due to crowded
message notifications [31]
- One of the biggest differences between SMS and MIM
- For various purposes such as business communication, chatting
with friends, and other activities[4, 14, 21].
- Increases the total number of the messages received[4, 14]
Group chat [4]
 Explore messaging experience including group chat in this paper
 Many recent MIM trials[28, 29, 35] have been focused on the one-on-one chat

4
• MIM Notifications: Push and Badge
 Information about the message sender, and a snippet of the message content, along
with a sound or vibration alert, according to the user’s preference (Figure 2)
 Badge notification(number above the app icon) to provide numerical information.
 Excessive notification can cause problems, including annoyance, inattention, and
stress[5, 15, 19, 27, 31].
 This paper focuses on MIM-focused problems and solutions
• Many HCI studies [6, 17, 18, 23, 24, 33] focus on smartphone notifications in general
 A symmetric approach: The recipient and the sender share one criterion and rule.
• Messaging experience changes when the MIM notification management rule is shared.

5
 By attempting a new case by tackling notification crowdedness in MIM app use,
this study reinforces the understanding of the relationship between notifications
and MIM experience.
• Toward a Deep Understanding of the MIM Experience
 MIM chat rooms act as a dwellings reflecting human territoriality[14]
• A ‘last seen’ feature makes users concerned about sharing their availability[26]
• The ‘read receipt’ feature could cause the recipient to feel social pressure and the sender to
experience anxiety[11]

6
Experimental Design
• The Design of HelloBye
 HelloBye has a new feature called ‘Ten-Minute Silence’, which is a new notification
rule designed to resolve notification problems.
 A symmetry rule: all users share the same rule for their messaging experience

7
Experimental Design
• The Design of HelloBye
 HelloBye vs. Existing MIMs
Existing MIM apps HelloBye
Generate a notification To provide information about the sender
and content snippet
To provide information about members of
the chat rooms, and the fact that “There is a
new conversation”
Numbers on
the icon badge means
The number of unread messages The number of unread conversation sessions
Notification rule One notification per one message
: Every message generates a notification
⇒ Ten messages create ten notifications
One notification per 1 conversation session
: Ties consecutive messages into one conver
sation session
⇒ Provides only one notification when the fi
rst message is sent.

8
Experimental Design
• The Field Trial
 A two-week field trial / Total 17 participants in 4 groups
 Study Procedure
• [Before the actual trial] Invited the participants by group to the lab and introduced HelloBye
• [During the two-week field trial] The participants used HelloBye as their main MIM app
• [After the trial] The participants participated in individual interviews.
• [Data collection] 20,957 messages(1,024 conversation sessions) / 9 hours of interview data
through individual interviews.
P1-4
(age 19-20)
P5-8
(age 23-29)
P9-12
(age 22-25)
P13-17
(age 26-31)
Group 1 (friends) Group 2 (friends) Group 3 (colleagues) Group 4 (colleagues)

9
Results of Overall Messaging Practice
• Notifications affect the overall process of conversation
 Due to the much smaller number of notifications, the participants gave each
notification the larger meaning ⇒ More difficult to start, easier to end a conversation
 Shorter and faster messaging fairly, since HelloBye does not generate additional
notification during the conversation.
 The perceptional change(a notification means the start of a new conversation, not a
new message) allowed the participants to recognize the messages as a larger whole
⇒ Making it easier to access passed conversation.

10
Messaging Experience Changes
Depending on Conversation Phase
<Less Crowded Notifications>
• HelloBye prevents the annoyance and lessens burden of the participants
• Gave the participants a different perception of notifications.
 Receiving the message ⇒ The start of a conversation
Before Starting During Ending After

11
<Carefully Starting a New Conversation>
• Timing of sending messages
 The participants were concerned about whether others respond to them within 10 mins
• Relatively unimportant message
 The participants carefully think about sending messages that were not as important, since
the start of a new conversation will send a notification to the other participants

12
<Shorter and Faster Messaging>
• The participants sent a lot of messages in a row, within a short amount of time
• The messages would not result in additional notification
 In the case of the groups of friends, the tendency to send a lot of messages without
considering notification seems to be greater.

13
<Letting the Conversation End>
• When 10 minutes had passed after the last message was sent, the participants
were reluctant to create a new conversation
 Instead, they wanted to treat the previous conversation session as one that had ended.
• HelloBye’s notification rule implicitly strengthens the end of conversations.
 The conversation in existing MIM had the tendency to be endless

14
<Improved Accessibility of Past Conversations>
• HelloBye tied messages within the same session more closely.
 Due to changes in notifications and timestamps in the chatrooms
 The participants could more easily perceive subject, times and situations in conversations
• HelloBye clearly showed the pauses and recommencements of conversations
 The conversation sessions were useful for looking up something in a past conversation.

15
Conclusion & Future Work
• We need a deeper understanding of the social aspects of notifications.
• MIM notification rules: components of social interactions that influence the
overall messaging experience and the social norms between the people who use it.
 The symmetry rule between users by HelloBye is a significant difference from existing MIM
 The notification design also affects the way the users engage in conversations
• 10-minute: Need to compare them with shorter or longer intervals.
 Out of 17, 12 participants wanted to experience longer time criteria of 20 to 30 minutes,
because they wanted greater notification reduction
• Only explored the experience in group chats with up to five members.
 Smaller and extremely larger group chats need to be further explored.
• iOS only
 Comparison between HelloBye and existing MIM on the Android OS is also worth exploring.

16
Criticism
• How to estimate the stress due to the notification?
 The paper states that users feel great stress due to frequent notification while using MIM,
and HelloBye reduces the stress and pressure.
 However, there is no clear methods to estimate the amount of the stress, and numerical
grounds to prove the argument (only qualitative grounds – individual interview)
• Personal vs. business communication (friends vs. colleague group)
 User’s attitude and usage pattern for each case will be different, but the paper does not
provide detailed explanation for the two different cases (e.g. relationship between users, etc.)
 For instance, users cannot just skip the past conversation in business communication. In this
case, 10-minute rule will cause bigger stress than existing MIMs because a new notification
will be sent to all the other users due to my message ⇒ Need to specify the groups
• A symmetrical approach: Is this rule realistic or practical?
 The paper mentions a symmetry between users (a same rule is shared among all users) is one
of the key factors to control usage pattern and lessens the users’ stress
 However, we cannot control notification setting of each user(e.g. mute) in reality
 At the same time, to give customizing/privacy settings is one of the most attractive options
provided by companies. Need to clarify if controlled setting is more attractive to both users
and companies, and to suggest the solution to satisfy both parties.
• Does HelloBye’s 10-minute rule work for every user?
 Some users can feel bigger pressure to check the messenger more often (personality issue)

[Seminar] 200821 Hyeshin Chu

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