RIM: Combining Tree and Linear Structures to Support Awareness in Group Chat

Conventional Instant Messaging (IM) applications and chat tools are inefficient in facilitating a conversation of a small group discussing several topics simultaneously. This paper presents an innovative IM system, Relaxed Instant Messenger (RIM), that combines a tree layout with a linear layout to support group chat. A tree layout is used to organize chat messages in a structural order, while a linear layout supports the flow and focal point of the conversation. RIM eases the procedure of posting messages by defining an Utterance Rule-based Principle (URP) which detects automatically the location of a new message in the tree. RIM utilizes colors to code different topics of a conversation and to coherently connect messages in a tree and a linear view. A user test of RIM shows that RIM was useful in structuring group chat, supporting the control of turn-taking, and assisting users in posting answers to questions. Providing a linear layout was found useful to some extent in supporting the focal point of a conversation. URP was also found statistically useful in automatically positioning new messages.