Keywords: Examples , Chat , Expressing emotions with animated texts

Kinetic Typography, text whose appearance changes over time, is emerging as a new form of expression due to its ability to add emotional content to text.

Emoticons, however useful, provide only a very limited manifestation of emotion. In comparison, kinetic typography effects can greatly improve the perceived emotional content of text.

Two major challenges:
1) IM is a fast paced communication medium where users take very little time to compose their messages before sending them off. This includes the process of adding emoticons, which can either be chosen from a list or typed.
2) IM Users are often multitasking and not focused on the conversation

The authors builded a JAVA IM demonstration that used kinetic text: KIM (available in same folder as pdf document)