This presentation describes a set of research prototypes designed to improve the effectiveness of computer mediated communication. Most electronic communication today lacks the richness of face-to-face interaction. Email users quickly learn about the misunderstandings that can occur with humorous or sarcastic messages (notwithstanding the familiar "smiley-face" emoticon :-) and even experienced correspondents have difficulty conveying the proper urgency or IMPORTANCE of a message. In addition to the emotional content, face-to-face communication also provides a shared context that allows participants to easily reference topics of discussion. Speakers naturally point to images or pick out particular lines from a spreadsheet they may be talking about. Such actions have no counterparts in existing electronic messaging systems.

Our prototypes address the deficiencies of electronic communication through a number of novel human-computer interaction techniques that use naturally recorded speech to convey emotional cues and provide a context for referring to photos, documents, and other multimedia objects. The portable "StoryTrack" device, acts as a kind of digital photo album that explicitly supports the creation of stories or narratives illustrated by the digital photos. Another prototype runs in a more standard application environment and uses a "point & talk" interaction model for easily composing and viewing multimedia messages. Preliminary usage results will be presented that demonstrate the effectiveness of these designs for particular types of conversations.