IBM Watson Research Center

Technical Report: Chat Spaces Chat Spaces Technical Report #: 04-13 Author(s): Werner Geyer, Andrew J. Witt, Eric Wilcox, Michael Muller, Bernard Kerr, Beth Brownholtz, David R Millen Category(s): conversation, shared workspace, activity-centric collaboration, navigation, thread, chat Full Citation: Presented at DIS 2004. Copyright 2004, IBM. All rights reserved. Abstract A Collaborative User Experience Technical Report: more about CUE... Chat Spaces are rich persistent chats that provide light-weight shared workspaces for small to medium-scale group activities. Chat Spaces can accommodate brief, informal interactions (similar to Instant Messaging), and can also support longer-term complex threaded conversations including large numbers of people and shared resources. Our design maps a hierarchical thread representation onto a time-ordered two-column user interface. This mapping allows a user to follow the global dynamics of the entire thread in the chronological column on the left while being able to participate in a selected topical branch in a second column on the right. We also present a dynamic thread map that provides an overview of the entire conversation and supports quick navigation of topical branches in the thread. Full Report For more information, or to order a Technical Report, contact us.