Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Didn’T You See My Message?: Predicting Attentiveness To Mobile Instant Messages, Martin Pielot, Rodrigo De Oliveira, Haewoon Kwak, Nuria. Oliver

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile instant messaging (e.g., via SMS or WhatsApp) often goes along with an expectation of high attentiveness, i.e., that the receiver will notice and read the message within a few minutes. Hence, existing instant messaging services for mobile phones share indicators of availability, such as the last time the user has been online. However, in this paper we not only provide evidence that these cues create social pressure, but that they are also weak predictors of attentiveness. As remedy, we propose to share a machine-computed prediction of whether the user will view a message within the next few minutes or …