Exploring 'Canned Communication' for coordinating distributed mobile work activities

Communication between physically distributed people in industrial and safety-critical domains is often spoken and mediated through walkie-talkies, or closed-circuit intercoms. Because this kind of communication is hampered by noise, radio interference, lack of persistency, etc. vital information is sometimes lost. In response to this challenge, this paper discusses the use of 'canned' text-based messaging as a supplement for improving such communication. Based on data from ethnographic studies of work activities in an industrial domain, and grounded in a theoretical model of communication, we have designed and evaluated a mobile canned communication prototype system facilitating exchange of predefined text messages, a persistent graphical representation of the operation in progress, and a filtered list of completed tasks. Results from two evaluations show that in the domain considered, canned text-based communication has a potential to supplement voice and assist in overcoming some of the inherent problems of spoken communication. Yet using a textual and persistent mode of communication also raises new challenges such as choice of modality, speed, flexibility and handling situations deviating from standard procedures.