We present a design for expressive multimodal messaging on mobile platforms. Strong context, simple text messages, and crude animations combine well to produce surprisingly expressive results

Ab Abstract

Chad Redmon

Janet Galore

Jarmo Laaksolahti

Juha Hemánus

Jussi Karlgren

Mark Tierney

Panu Korhonen

Per Persson

Peter Lönnqvist

CiteSeerX

RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden

Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet - Academic Archive On-line

Swedish Institute of Computer Science Publications Database

Software institutes' Online Digital Archive

English

After the message is inserted, press ‘Talk’. Automatically, the composition will be reviewed (a 12 second message with text inserted in the written order). The review will automatically loop when finished.

After the message, the MobiPal Menu will pop-up. Choose ‘Send a Quickie’.

and the main menu appears again. Now Betty wants to reuse the script in her own skin. Choose ‘send message’ and choose ‘Janet’ as recipient.

Betty enters a new text for the message : ‘Love to see you’.

Betty receives Janet’s composition (‘I am excited to see you. Be there at ten’ in a sequence of happyjump-happy-dance).

Betty receives the message from Janet.

By pressing the top, middle button you will be able to increase the length from 4 to 8 and finally to 12 seconds (in practice this will mean 1,2 or 3 four seconds loops). Choose 12 seconds and press the ‘talk’ button.

choose ‘I am excited’ (which is the script Betty just saved).

From the Main menu, choose ‘Send a Message’ (by pressing the ‘1’ key on the phone).

In order to insert the dance at the end of the message, do the same steps as (7): After the text ‘Be there at ten’, press ‘Talk’, and choose ‘Dance’ from the menu. Next, the final sequence will be reviewed (now with the sequence happy-jump-happy- dance).

In the ‘Pick an attribute’ window, the user adds some attribute to the skin (color, texture) or possible some other attribute not present in the demonstrator (e.g. a rose or a sword). Choose the neutral skin color.

Negotiating Use: Making Sense of Mobile Technology,

Pick a Recipient’

quickies are pre-scripted sequences of events, which have been stored by the user for quick responses to expressive messages from other people. The demonstrator does not allow any choice to be made here.

Sending message?’ – press ‘Talk’ and the message will be sent.

The MobiPal menu appears –

The quickie is reviewed by Betty.

The system confirms that message is being sent.

The system confirms that the script has been saved.

This is the skin of the user’s avatar. Choose the ‘blob figure’. The figure will appear in the Preview window, which shows all the sel ections made by the user (immediate feed-back).

This will bring you to the ‘enter message’ phase in which the demo automatically simulates a user entering a message (‘I am excited to see you. Be there at ten’).

user chooses the identity and number of the basic moods the avatar can have. This will provide the basis for expressive messaging later in the demo. Choose Happy and the embodied representation of ‘happy’ will appear in the preview window.

When the animation comes to an end,

Expressive Messaging on Mobile Platforms