Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Mobile telephones are impacting societies around the world and text messaging, short type-written messages sent via mobile phones, has also garnered international research efforts. Research demonstrates that text messages are being used primarily to commence, advance, maintain or otherwise impact interpersonal relationships. The present study probes relational benefits of text messaging within familial and fraternal contexts. Specifically, the study seeks to answer the research question: How does text messaging impact feelings of “connectedness” (IJsselsteijn, van Baren & van Lanen, 2003, p. 928) within “strong-tie” (Howard, et. al., 2006), dyadic relationships? Findings from nineteen respondent interviews show that texting becomes a channel through which dialectical tensions in relationships are played out. Respondents use texting to both assert autonomy and to maintain connectedness with relational partners. Several participants noted that financial issues were an important consideration but nevertheless subscribed to texting services. Users also perceived texting as more constant and more private than mobile voice interaction. Romantic pairs vis-à-vis non-romantic dyads perceived the benefits of text messages differently.

In almost each enterprise there is a software support for business processes. With a growing number of the applications there is an increasing demand to integrate those applications in order to have an effectively working environment, which generates profit. In enterprise applications integration there are few principles, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. However, the message-oriented middleware layer proves to be the best solution to many integration scenarios. This work deals with an enterprise of applications running on multifunction embedded office devices based on Java ME platform, and introduces an in-house developed communication middleware layer to integrate those applications. The resulting software component applies principles of messaging in a printing management SOA environment to communicate with a print server using a designed set of messages.

Type 2 diabetes is a life-threatening condition, and it is rapidly growing in the world. If patients receive adequate education and support, they can manage their diabetes-related tasks effectively and reduce the severe complications of this disease. However, traditional self-management education and practices were not very effective in stimulating behaviour change and addressing patients’ diversified needs and expectations. Mobile text messaging is a promising method for type 2 diabetes self-management as it can provide continuous and customized support to these patients. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the optimal approach to designing and delivering mobile text messages. Hence, this dissertation aimed to define effective message strategies for mobile text messaging interventions targeting type 2 diabetes self-management. This manuscript-based dissertation consists of three complementary studies. The first manuscript includes a systematic review and a meta-analysis of tailored mobile text messaging interventions on type 2 diabetes self-management. It examines the tailoring strategies, message content, and structure and identifies the moderators of effectiveness in these interventions. The second manuscript includes a systematic review and a meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence on patients’ experiences and perspectives of mobile text messaging studies. The third manuscript consists of a prospective qualitative study to explore the text messaging design and delivery preferences of patients. In the first and second studies, the comprehensive search strategy included major electronic databases, key journal searches, and hand searches of the reference lists of related systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and Cochrane Collaboration's guidelines and recommended tools were used for data extraction, risk of bias and critical appraisal assessments, data analysis and reporting. Within a social marketing framework, the third study included semi-structured interviews and a thematic analysis of the main findings. In the first manuscript, 13 eligible trials were included for the systematic review and 11 eligible trials were further analyzed in the meta-analysis. This study concluded that tailored mobile text messaging interventions could improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes. The subgroup analyses revealed the importance of some moderators such as message delivery, message direction, message frequency, and using multi-modalities. In the second manuscript, the systematic review included 14 eligible studies, and the thematic synthesis included 13 eligible studies. Patients emphasized the importance of tailored text message design and delivery. They felt “supported” by using text messaging and improved their communication with family/friends and care providers. Mobile text messaging increased patients’ self-awareness, knowledge and control of diabetes. The third study explored that mobile text messages could be more effective if they are gain-framed and written in a standard format. Patients favoured the text messages that included simple and direct tone and provided statistical evidence. The findings demonstrated patients’ needs and expectations for advanced tailoring strategies in both message content and delivery. Together, the manuscripts fill a significant gap and inform research and practice for the development of more effective message strategies that could lead to reducing the spread of type 2 diabetes worldwide. / Graduate / 2022-05-12

Background and Objectives: HIV in a major public health problem in many countries of the world. Recent advances in care for people living with HIV such as the use of antiretroviral medication have reduced the mortality and morbidity associated with HIV infection. However, many people receiving antiretroviral therapy do not take it as prescribed and still experience sub-optimal health outcomes. Mobile phone text messaging is emerging as an important tool in health care, and HIV in particular. Our objectives were to explore the determining factors for adherence to antiretroviral therapy, test text messaging as an adherence enhancement tool, develop a framework for community ownership of a text messaging program and describe strategies for transfer of evidence in HIV to other conditions. Methods: This research is primarily based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and employs a variety of methodologies, including a systematic review, two cross- sectional surveys, a randomized controlled trial, an individual patient data meta-analysis, a mixed methods study and a systematic review of systematic reviews. Results and Conclusions: Two-way weekly text messaging is an effective strategy in improving adherence to antiretroviral therapy and enhancing provider-client communication. People living with HIV in Yaoundé, Cameroon like receiving text messages, and are willing to own and run a text messaging program. Text messaging interventions may be transferred to other conditions by integrating services or by copying what works in HIV. Further research on potential harms, cost effectiveness and text messaging for other chronic conditions is warranted. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis aims to find out how communication method a˙ects user experience in a formal communication with a stranger, such as a job application process. The communication methods investigated were instant messaging and email. To this end, two studies were performed. The first one based on a set of interviews with recruiters. The second one based on a questionnaire sent out to job candidates. Recruiters did not value communication method as important for the candidate to make a good first impression, but they were concerned with the need for rapid communication and needing to be constantly available when using informal communication methods. I found that candidates significantly preferred formal communication methods, results also showed that candidates felt less insecure when communicating using a formal method. Finally, we also found that younger users did not have a stronger preference for informal communication methods than older users, contrary to my expectations. / Målet med denna uppsats var att ta reda på hur kommunikationsmetod påverkar användarupplevelsen i en formell kommunikation med en främling, så som i en arbetsansökan. Kommunikationsmetoderna som undersöktes var e-post och chatt. För att ta reda på detta gjordes två studier. Den första bestod av intervjuer med rekryterare. Den andra bestod av ett frågeformulär som skickades ut till kandidater. Rekryterarna värderade inte kommunikationsmetoden i sig högt när det gällde vilket intryck de fick av en kandidat, men kommunikations-hastigheten var en viktig faktor i valet av metod. Speciellt så uppfattade de ett behov av att vara tillgänglig och kunna svara snabbt om en informell kommunikationsmetod användes, denna uppfattning delades av kandidaterna. Mina resultat visade att jobbkandidater hade en signifikant preferens för att använda formella kommunikationsmetoder, och visade sig känna sig mindre osäkra när de använde formella kommunikationsmetoder än när de använde informella metoder. Slutligen upptäckte jag att yngre användare inte visade sig föredra informella kommunikationsmetoder mer än äldre användare.

An online survey exploring the patterns of adult text-message use was completed by 150 traditional college age young adults ages 18-24 and 171 adults ages 25-68. Because youth traditionally are among the first group to adopt new communication technologies, much research has been conducted among the adolescent and young adult population regarding the prevalence and importance of text-messaging; however, a research deficit exists regarding adult textmessage use. Data gathered from this survey were categorized and analyzed for emergent content regarding the use of text-messaging, what roll texting plays in adult's communication patterns, the sociological impact of text-messaging on survey respondents, and to examine the prevalence of this technology in adults' lives.

The growth of the web increased dramatically when users were provided with applications that let them use just their browser to post and edit content on the World Wide Web. Offering users the ability to use their browser to create their own web applications, instead of just posting text and images, would cause another Internet evolution. This thesis describes the EXPPO system (Extensible Page Productions and Operations), a web application development environment for both end-users and technical-users. EXPPO leverages the end-user's previous experience with internet browsers by using a page based development experience or a Page Oriented Architecture. Because applications are structured in this architecture, components used in one application can be re-used by another, providing end-users with functionality that was created by more technical users. This thesis demonstrates how the EXPPO development environment can be used to create functionally rich web applications.

Studien undersöker Facebooks instant messaging-applikation Messenger med syfte att lokalisera de komponenter som skapar friktion i kommunikationsflödet mellan sändare och mottagare för att i sin tur undersöka hur dessa kan reduceras för att optimera gränssnittets samtliga funktionaliteter. Tidigare forskning visar att feedback-funktioner som berättar för användaren när meddelanden är lästa och när andra användare är aktiva skapar ett så kallat “social pressure” som gör att mottagaren känner sig pressad till att svara och sändaren är angelägen om att få svar. Tidigare forskning undersöker “lösningar” på detta problem med nya, relativt avancerade funktioner som en utveckling av de redan befintliga feedback-funktionerna. Dessutom visar tidigare studier på att UX-design och användarupplevelsen är viktig för att behålla användare. Vi vill därför med denna studie undersöka hur själva utformningen av applikationen kan minimera de problem som upplevs hos den nuvarande versionen av Messenger, vilket vi anser har saknats i tidigare studier om instant-messaging. Metoden bestod av en enkätundersökning och en fokusgrupp samtliga med regelbundna Messenger-användare. Efter att ha undersökt applikationens gränssnitt ur ett användarperspektiv kom vi fram till ett designförslag som vi lät deltagarna utvärdera under fokusgruppen, tillsammans med andra generella frågor och diskussioner om upplevelsen och applikationens utformning. Resultatet visar på ett antal pain points som identifierades hos användarna. Sedan skapades en low fidelity-prototyp som försöker minimera dessa pain points, bl.a. med en ny flik för ohanterade meddelanden. Prototypen utvärderades av ett antal deltagare där slutsatsen var att denna version var uppskattad. / This study looks into Facebook’s instant messaging-application Messenger with the aim to localize the components causing friction in the communication between sender and receiver, to furthermore investigate how these problems can be reduced and therefore optimize the communication-functionalities of the user interface. Previous studies have shown that the feedback-functions notifying the user when messages have been read and when other users are active create a so-called social pressure, causing the receiver to feel pressured into replying and the sender to feel anxious waiting for a reply. Previous studies examine “solutions” to this problem by introducing new and relatively advanced features as an expansion of the already existing feedback-functions. In addition, previous studies have shown that UX-design and user experience is important to keep users attracted to the application. Therefore, we want to examine how the UX-design of the application can minimize the problems identified by users of the existing version of Messenger, which we believe has been unaccounted for in previous studies regarding instant messaging. Our method consists of a small survey together with a focus group conducted with a small number of media technology-students who are regular users of the Messenger application. After looking at the UX-design of the interface we developed a design proposal which the participants were asked to evaluate during the focus group, together with other general questions and discussion topics about the user experience and the interface of the application. This resulted in three main pain points that were identified by the participants. After this, a low fidelity wireframe was created that aims to minimize these pain points. One of the changes is a new tab for unresolved conversations. The prototype was evaluated by a few participants with the conclusion that the new version was appreciated.

My research investigates three questions: How do we customize protocols and implementations to account for the unique requirement of each setting and its target community, what are necessary steps that we can take to transition secure computation tools into practice, and how can we promote their adoption for users at large? In this dissertation I present several of my works that address these three questions with a particular focus on one of them. First my work on "Hecate: Abuse Reporting in Secure Messengers with Sealed Sender" designs a customized protocol to protect people from abuse and surveillance in online end to end encrypted messaging. Our key insight is to add pre-processing to asymmetric message franking, where the moderating entity can generate batches of tokens per user during off-peak hours that can later be deposited when reporting abuse. This thesis then demonstrates that by carefully tailoring our cryptographic protocols for real world use cases, we can achieve orders of magnitude improvements over prior works with minimal assumptions over the resources available to people. Second, my work on "Batched Differentially Private Information Retrieval" contributes a novel Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocol called DP-PIR that is designed to provide high throughput at high query rates. It does so by pushing all public key operations into an offline stage, batching queries from multiple clients via techniques similar to mixnets, and maintain differential privacy guarantees over the access patterns of the database. Finally, I provide three case studies showing that we cannot hope to further the adoption of cryptographic tools in practice without collaborating with the very people we are trying to protect. I discuss a pilot deployment of secure multi-party computation (MPC) that I have done with the Department of Education, deployments of MPC I have done for the Boston Women’s Workforce Council and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and ongoing work in developing tool chain support for MPC via an automated resource estimation tool called Carousels.

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