Fugue: A Computer Mediated Conversational System that Supports Turn Negotiation

Computer mediated communication (CMC) systems are providing new ways to communicate. Yet many text-based CMC systems do not represent the invisible, interactive practices, such as turnnegotiation, commonly found in face-to-face (FTF) conversations. Designing new text structures may help address these problems. To explore the effects of adding rhythmic, non-verbal cues to computermediated communication (CMC), we developed Fugue, a networked environment that creates visualizations of conversations as they occur, dynamically highlighting social presence and turnnegotiating events on a two-dimensional grid. In this paper we examine traditional text-based conversation systems, the role of turn-negotiating, social presence and activity in FTF communication, and how Fugue makes these non-verbal linguistic cues explicit within a graphical display.