Proposal for CS 377A Project: "Open Door"

Brandon Burr, Andy Szybalski

14 Apr 2005

IM software and mobile phones have focused extensively on allowing users to prevent unwanted communication. Examples of this include setting a phone to "Meeting" mode or setting an IM client to "Away." Research into future capabilities of phones has attempted to automate the process by looking at a user's calendar and blocking calls that are received during scheduled meetings [Ekman].

The IM model: it's easy to contact people and unlikely to bother them much. So, IM allows people to explicitly discourage people from messaging them via away messages. If no away message is present it's assumed that the user wants to receive messages.

The mobile phone model: it requires at least 15 seconds to place a phone call, and if the call is unwanted, social protocol requires at least another 15 seconds for the recipient to politely answer, explain that he or she is busy, and say goodbye. In addition, calling someone demands their immediate attention, while an IM allows a response time on the order of minutes rather than seconds. Since a phone call has a higher cost for both the caller and the recipient, phone users are less likely to make a call if they're not sure that their call is desired; especially when the caller just wants to chat, or when the caller and the recipient are not close friends.

What parts of the IM model translate well to mobile phones? Away messages offer little utility: when a recipient wants to reject a call entirely, it's very easy for him or her to simply not answer. However, the lack of an away message may not be enough to motivate the caller to make a call. What is needed for mobile phones, then, is not a system to discourage unwanted conversations, but a system to decrease the effort required to initiate desirable conversations.

We propose a system where a user can label himself with an "open door," which is a visible invitation to other users to contact him if they so desire. An icon would appear next to the contact list entry of every user who has labeled himself with an open door. The following scenario illustrates the potential usefulness.

Scenario 1. The Commute. Thad takes the train two hours to his office once a week. He likes to pass the time by calling friends and family on his mobile phone; however, there's no way to know if he will be bothering them by doing so. With "open door," he could simply scroll through his contact to see who wants to chat.

In addition to the "open door" icon, other icons could be available for more specific purposes. 

Scenario 2. Thursday Night. It's a Thursday night and Geoff, a college student, is done with his work for the week. He wants to go out to a bar, but his roommates are all busy. He doesn't want to have to call each of his 30 best friends to find someone to go out with him. He looks on the phone, finds that a couple of his friends have the "party hat" icon next to their names, and calls one of them. It turns out that they're already at a local bar. He drives there to meet them.

What we plan to do:

·         Implement system in J2ME

·         Test on very small scale, since it'll be hard to locate a network of friends that all have Java-capable phones. We think that this is still valid, as the system is useful on a one-to-one basis (e.g. checking availability of a significant other).

·         It might be interesting to test on Skype but that would require finding a large network of Skype users, which would be even more unlikely

·         Other ideas: it might be possible to test the effects of this on IM by encouraging a group to use "open door" or "party hat" messages, or by surveying users on how they might want to use such messages (who they would want to see them, etc)

Challenges:

·         Who can see your icons? (IM model: anyone who's not explicitly blocked. Traditional phone model: anyone who's got your number. Other: whitelist)

o        Co-workers bothering you during free time

o        People you don't like crashing the party

·         Nokia talk CS547: don't want to tell people they need your help to be social (can we learn from Nokia Sensor?)

·         Does the system make the user more reluctant to call someone who doesn't have an "open door"?

·         Are "away messages" actually useful after all?

o        Busy: in a meeting, in class (mundane)

o        Semi-busy: working, want to avoid friends who want to call and chat for a long time "keep it under five minutes"

References:

·         Ekman, P. "The Personal Phone Assistant." Thesis. http://jota.sm.luth.se/~perekm-8/project/report/thesis-report.pdf

·         Nokia Sensor. CS547 talk. 8 Apr 2005.

·         ICQ has lots of subtly different of standard away- and here-messages (do not disturb, busy, etc)