Findings Concerning Typing Indicator Suspense
Three people are typing. The indicators have been active for forty seconds. Nothing has been sent. The indicators are still active.
FORENSIC FINDINGS: The Typing Indicator
The Evidence
At 3:14:08pm, a typing indicator appeared. Three dots, animated. The indicator means: a participant is composing a message. The message is in progress.
At 3:14:22pm, the indicator was still present. No message had been sent.
At 3:14:41pm, the indicator disappeared. No message had been sent. The participant had apparently stopped composing.
At 3:14:48pm, the indicator reappeared.
At 3:15:00pm, the message arrived: "haha yes."
The typing indicator was visible for fifty-two seconds. The message was two words and eight characters. This is either: a slow typist, a person who composed and deleted and composed again, or a three-word message that required significant revision.
The Multiple Typist Problem
At 3:15:30pm, three typing indicators appeared simultaneously. All three were active for more than twenty seconds. This creates a specific kind of attention: the reader knows that multiple people are preparing to say something. They do not know what. They are waiting.
When multiple people are typing, the first message to arrive sets the context for the others. The others, seeing the first message arrive, may revise their messages to respond to it. This creates a secondary revision cycle that the typing indicator reports without explanation.
By 3:16pm, two messages had arrived and the third indicator was still active. The third message arrived at 3:16:18pm. It said "same." The indicator had been active for forty-eight seconds for a word of four letters.
The Findings
The typing indicator provides accurate information about behavior that is more complicated than it appears to communicate. A person typing is also a person editing, reconsidering, re-typing, and navigating the context that is developing around them as they compose.
The indicator says: something is coming. The indicator does not say: what is coming, when it will arrive, or whether the current composition will survive to delivery.
This is sufficient information. The suspense it creates is a feature, not a flaw.