Public display of SMS: Beyond personal social networks and into the realm of public discourse

As ubiquitous personal communication devices, SMS enabled mobile phones have affordances to extend communication beyond the user´s personal social network and into the realm of public discourse. The author developed an interaction project, entitled Write a Story, One Line at a Time, in which users collaborated to write an SMS narrative to be displayed in a public space. The system includes visuals, audio, and time-based typography to attract and engage users to participate. Based on an experiment on anonymous public messaging, the author defined the ideas of destructive and constructive messaging. The interaction project focuses on the frameworks for constructive messaging in public. Secondary research on linguistic, social, and psychological effects of SMS informed the development of a reflexive feature for users. Users were observed and briefly interviewed during the prototype demonstration in December of 2006 to gather qualitative user feedback. The paper includes information on hardware, software, and sensor components employed, as well as potential applications of the system.