A comparative evaluation of multiple chat stream interfaces for information-intensive environments

Authors:
Yiran Wang;Andy Echenique;Martin Shelton;Gloria Mark
Affiliations:
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2013

Citing 3
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Abstract

For information workers who monitor numerous constantly updating data streams, conserving cognitive resources is crucial. This study evaluated how an interface affects information workers' ability to grasp critical information from multiple text-based chat streams under time pressure. We designed and built a working prototype that displays ten chat streams simultaneously in standard chat windows (ST) and ticker tapes (TT). We conducted a lab experiment to evaluate differences in how these two interfaces support signal and context detection. We found that with ST, participants detected significantly more target words (SAT words) with rarer frequency and significantly more context information (disaster facts) than with TT. Our results show that while TT is potentially better for overview scanning of multiple streams, ST is likely to be better for multi-tasking. Our study informs the design of future multi-chat systems so that large amounts of information can be easier to detect and process.