Communication Decisions: Why Call vs. Poke? Cheryl L. Coyle, Paulo Santos, Heather Vaughn Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent 600 Mountain Ave, New Providence, NJ 07974 USA {coyle, paulo, vaughn}@bell-labs.com Abstract. We conducted preliminary research on young adult communication behaviors, collecting a matrix of factors that influence college students’ decisions with converging communications technologies. This paper describes our early studies and the promising results that are driving our future research. Keywords: ubiquitous communication, communication behaviors 1 Introduction Why do young adults choose to poke instead of email, text message, call or IM? Why one method versus another? There have been many reasons studied, but with fewer available methods/devices converging across situations and network access [1, 2]. Although the mobile communications industry is focusing on youth (ages 5-14) [3], we are interested in young adults. This segment, while not typically early adopters of technology, can be "innovative adopters." They take existing technology and use it in ways different from other populations or what designers intended. For example, a high-frequency tone meant to deter loitering teens from stores was passed along as a ringtone for students seeking to receive calls without detection. This unintended application was quickly appreciated by youth and young adults [4]. We speculate that today’s young adults will transform communications habits later in life with their innovative adoptions, and these innovations will make an impact on others as well. For example, did designers of the first IM clients understand that “instant” messaging established presence and was a kid magnet? Workers installed IM clients for task efficiency, yet market analysis shows that youth are still the heavy users [5, 6, 7]. Will today’s youth’s IM habits fade with maturity, or will they be comfortable with, reliant upon, or deliberate with presence-based communication in adult life? [8] We plan to logistically define the communications of today’s young adults to inform the design of future services. We conducted interviews, surveys, and focus groups.