Usability Study On Chat-interface Of Instant Messaging

Nowadays, Instant Messaging (IM) has become an important product on internet. This research explored the chat‐interface of IM by usability techniques, such as performance evaluation and questionnaire. And on the basis, we proposed related design principle on chat‐interface of IM. This research contains three sections included five experiments. In section one, we investigate the IM service condition, and during the experiment 1 we discovered"chat targets hard to cut"and"shortcut icons hard to manage"are the main problems that trouble IM users. Section two includes experiment 2 and experiment 3 which aimed to try to resolve the problem"chat targets hard to cut"; we compared tabbed IM with un‐tabbed IM on performance and subjective assessment in experiment 2, and we studied the user preference on IM tab location in experiment 3. Section there includes experiment 4 and experiment 5 which aimed to try to resolve the problem"shortcut icons hard to manage"; we confirmed if the performance of adaptable IM was better than the IM which was not adaptable in experiment 4, and in experiment 5 we studied the how to realize adaptable in IM.The research showed the following main conclusions:1."Chat targets hard to cut"and"shortcut icons hard to manage"are the main usability problems troubled IM users;2. Tabbed IM can enhance contract efficiency in multi targets environment;3. The subjective assessment of Tabbed IM is superior to un‐tabbed IM;4. The subjective assessment of down‐tabbed IM is better than up‐tabbed IM;5. The performance of adaptable IM was better than inadaptable IM;6. Among position adaptable, function adaptable and function+ position adaptable, the performance of function+ position adaptable was better than previous;7. Apply the supervisor to realize adaptable was better than applying right‐hand button;8. The performance of the supervisor to realize adaptable was better than apply right‐hand button regardless of moving, hiding and recovering mission.