Amigo - bildbaserad mobil instant messaging Design, utveckling och evaluering

Abstract

This master thesis aims to provide a new input option for instant messaging (IM) on mobile devices. To make this possible we developed Amigo. Amigo is a mobile instant messaging client for handheld computers that allows handwriting as well as free-form images to be sent between people. This thesis describes the design,implementation and evaluation of Amigo. Our main issue was to examine whether uninterpreted handwriting can be a suitable input method for instant messaging on handheld devices. Our second purpose was to investigate how such an application is used.

Recent years there has been a growing interest in the area of instant messaging.The emerging mobile market has resulted in IM software recently becoming available for mobile devices. The input options for text entry on most handheld computers today are virtual keyboards or the use of handwritten text that is interpretable by a character recognizer. However, these input methods are both slow and error prone.Since IM is human-to-human communication and the IM client only is the transferring medium, the computer need not interpret the text in the messages.When adapting IM to mobile devices with a pen-based interface it is possible to use uninterpreted handwriting as input option, since it is not necessary to translate the input into text.

To evaluate Amigo we conducted a study at a local university, where 20 students used Amigo for two weeks. Our main findings are that uninterpreted handwriting functions well as input method for mobile instant messaging, and also introduces new ways for people to interact using instant messaging. These are mixed text/image sessions, collaborative drawing and instant gaming.

uninterpreted handwriting, digital ink.