Leveraging digital backchannels to enhance user experience in electronically mediated communication

Abstract

Rendezvous is a conference call solution that leverages Voice over IP, enterprise calendaring, instant messaging, and rich client functionality to enhance the user experience and effectiveness of distributed meetings. We describe the service, and two of its user experience innovations -- the conference call proxy and iHelp -- which function as digital backchannels. We present results from a preliminary user evaluation, and discuss our notion of digital backchannels with respect to the social translucence framework.