This project focused on the integration of multiple protocols in a single instant messaging application, SIP Communicator.

Along with his mentors Raphael Wimmer and Emil Ivov, Mike Oren, PhD student in Philosophy at Iowa State University (USA), performed user research and a comparative analysis of different instant messengers.

Read on for Mike’s project report:

Summary

My project with SIP Communicator as part of the Season of Usability was to evaluate the interface of SIP Communicator, find out how SIP Communicator measured up with competing IM projects, and do an exploratory study to determine priorities for future improvements based on user requirements.

During the course of this project I work with Raphael Wimmer, my usability mentor, and Emil Ivov, creator of the SIP Communicator project, being able to work with both of these individuals helped me get a sense of the impact this work was having and would have for the future of SIP Communicator’s interface.

Process

My first task for the project was to find and briefly evaluate some of the top multi-protocol instant messengers for the features they support, their general ease of use, and how well they handle multiple protocols in a single client from a user perspective. I ranked each of these areas for all the instant messaging clients on a 5 point scale (so readers could quickly scan the document and decide what to read deeper) and then wrote a brief review of each criteria area justifying the score and stating what I felt worked or did not work well for end users; this report is located on Google Docs.

Following this evaluation, I had a series of meetings with Raphael as we worked to flesh out the criteria for a survey to assess user requirements for multi-protocol IM clients and evaluate user preferences related to some new features they were considering implementing in SIP Communicator.

The survey was 28 questions long and was hosted by SurveyMonkey with links distributed via SIP Communicator and OpenIM mailing lists as well as a post to Miranda’s forums for a total of 37 respondents (22 completing the whole survey). I wrote the findings of this study up as a report, available on Google Docs, and presented these findings to the SIP Communicator IRC community. It is my hope that the results of this work lead SIP Communicator to an enhanced user experience and, potentially, some new features to further differentiate it from competing products and to bring a greater level of intuitiveness to the,
often complex, multi-protocol instant messenger field.

Future

In terms of next steps, I would recommend a longitudinal study to better understand the usage of SIP Communicator and help ensure the accuracy of the results reported in this study. Ideally, such a longitudinal study would recruit participants who have never used SIP Communicator as well as current users of the application. It is also recommended that a study be conducted to assess the ease of finding the features not presented to the user on the toolbar of the IM window (which based on this study should be file transfer,
direct connection, adding a contact—if they aren’t in contacts, and voice connection), perhaps comparing Kopete’s method of placing those options in an IM window menu with Adium’s method of placing these features in a contextual (right-click) menu.

This project was mentored by: