The Effects of Threads in a Chat Application and How to Design Them

Sammanfattning: The usage of online communication has increased heavily in recent times, especially chat applications. It both makes communication faster and fits well with remote work. As the chats of large chat groups can be messy with many writers there is potential for improvement in regard to the structure and organization of messages. This is the focus of this master thesis, what kind of effects using threads may have, and how to design the implementation. The research questions that were posed were the following: 1) What effects do chat threads have on text communication? 2) How do you effectively design/implement threads to make it satisfactory according to ISO 9241-11:2018 about usability? 3) How do different communication systems affect the efficiency of the teams/people using them? These were answered by a user-centered and iterative process, during which multiple methods were used to gain both qualitative and quantitative data. Such as heuristic evaluation, user tests, interviews, and surveys. This showed that threads would be appreciated by users in larger chat groups and what to keep in mind while designing this feature. The iterative process also showed which aspects of the design of threads needed to be improved while also displaying which aspects worked. Furthermore, the results indicate that if implemented correctly, with the user in mind, threads would be intuitive to learn and use. The text communication seemed to be affected in a positive manner by threads as it organized and structured messages which allowed for countermeasures against message obscuration. Lastly, the structure and organization allowed for more efficient work as it encouraged more public conversations and eased finding older and relevant messages.