April 20, 2007 — To help people manage phone messages researchers have developed an Internet-enabled, touch-sensitive screen that presents messages as graphical bubbles.
Most answering machines, even digital ones, still give and take messages the old-fashioned way: as a list. You have to navigate through each one, skipping some, saving or deleting others with no easy way to organize them.
But the BubbleBoard project, underway at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K., is exploring how otherwise invisible functions can be made visible and how technology can help people communicate in new ways. The bubbles convey caller details and can be physically grouped for message management.
"We designed this with particular attention to what we learned about family kitchen spaces. Our design is very focused on homes and not individuals," said Tim Regan, a research software development engineer.
The Bubbleboard ties an Internet-based voicemail service to a wireless touch-screen. Software downloads messages from the voicemail service and displays them as suds on the screen. The bigger the message, the bigger the bubble.
The caller's number, their photo, time of call and message length are encapsulated in the globe. Over time, each message gradually floats to the bottom of the screen, or family members can fix them into groups, categorized by person or status ("call back," for example). A whiteboard paired with the touch screen allows users to write notes to each other.
