1. Bridging Gaps: Affective Communication in Long Distance Relationships Shruti Bhandari Indiana University School of Informatics 901 E. 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47408, USA sbhandar@indiana.edu Shaowen Bardzell Indiana University School of Informatics 901 E. 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47408, USA selu@indiana.edu CHI 2008 Proceedings · Works In Progress

2. Outline Introduction User Research Initial Findings Design Concepts Future Work

3. Introduction Communication is used by non- collocated couples to exchange factual information as well as to express their emotions to each other.

4. User Research eight people two were married two were international students Three of the participants are presently collocated though they had lived away from their partners in the past. relationship period:1 to 9 years two female & six male participants Subjects:heterosexual relationship

5. Initial Findings Spent a good part of day communicating or special time cell phone Instant Messaging(IM) Surprise Messages

6. Design Concepts 1) MatchUs Board: 2) Together Aquarium: 3) CanCan: 4) Audible Gifts:

7. Diamond Touch

8. MatchUs Board

9. Together Aquarium

10. CanCan

11. Audible Gifts

12. Future Work Creating shared experiences and promoting situational awareness Extensive usability evaluation of our design concepts