Approaching Instant Messaging (IM) by Connecting Usage Scenario and User Interaction for More Meaningful Notification

Communication is becoming more open than ever before. Just as the world is faced with a pandemic and people are working more from home, so has our need for instant communication increased exponentially. While instant messaging is actively being researched in a range of domains notification system is a vital element of an effective Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) not just for informing a design and implementation of the interface but also for improved and advanced interfaces. For example, for instant messaging (IM) where a tremendous number of messages through e-mail and mobile instant messaging (MIM) are received often lead to disturbing notifications scenarios to users. The primary goal of this paper is to introduce relevant research questions related to the notification domain and to suggest a new instant messaging (IM) framework to reduce this disturbance, enabling both senders and recipients to be more meaningful. The paper studies notifications from two different perspectives: (i) Usage Scenario: identifying how notification alerts are designed, managed and dealing with effects on people, (ii) User Interaction: discussing meaningfulness of the notification, the value notifications can add to users, and long-term benefits users can get from being notified. The discussion will lead to opportunities for researchers to acquire relevant knowledge, assess the mechanisms of notification and evaluate the current design frameworks.