Affective gesture feedback instant messaging on handheld

Mobile devices and mobile networks are becoming more data-centric (evident in Japanese I-mode); even as mobile voice network average revenue per user is declining, new streams of data services are required which must take cognisance of handheld features such as their small screen area and input/output limitations. A text only instant messaging (IM) system, built on the Internet Engineering Task Force open standard session initiation protocol (SIP) and SIP for instant messaging and presence leveraging extensions (SIMPLE), has been developed in line with our novel introduction of a user-defined text hotkey feature. Given that text communication possesses expressive discourse with some presence level, we seek to show that one-click text-gesture fast-tracking enhances text communication further. For this study, we take a hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach. Initial results show that an affective gesture approach is more likely to improve IM chat spontaneity/response rate. Enhanced input mechanisms for handheld IM system are expected to increase co-presence between handheld users and their desktop-based counterparts while in a synchronous discussion.