Taxonomy of Group Chat: A Basis for Understanding and Design

Abstract

Instant messaging, or online chat, has existed for almost a decade. Today, more individuals are using chat in the work place as organizations increasingly acknowledge chat as a useful collaborative tool, particularly in distributed work environments. One organization where chat has seen overwhelming adoption is the military. Chat is ideally suited for military domains as it consumes low-bandwidth and provides nearly synchronous communication. In addition, military chat users can simultaneously monitor multiple group conversations, making chat an important situation awareness tool. Despite its extensive use, little research exists on chat use in the workplace, particularly the military, and almost none is devoted to making the chat environment more attuned to user needs. Before extensive studies on and possible improvements to chat environments can occur, an understanding of the different chat environments is needed. This paper provides an initial classification scheme for different types of chat.