“Together but not together”: Evaluating Typing Indicators for Interaction-Rich Communication

Messaging is a ubiquitous digital communication medium. It is also a minimal medium of communication because of its inability to convey immediate feedback, tone, facial expressions, hesitations, and pauses, or follow the train of the other person’s thoughts. This paper combines quantitative and qualitative approaches for analyzing richer forms of typing indicators in messaging interfaces, such as showing text as it is typed. By assessing users’ subjective workload and interpreting these findings in the context of users’ experiences, we found that more expressive typing indicators were perceived as “rich in communication”, as they helped people communicate more allowing for closer connections. These indicators also increased users’ perceived co-presence. In addition, our research suggests there may be benefits of designing customized typing indicators for relationship maintenance and task-based communication.