VIO appears as a small circle in the taskbar of the user’s Windows screen. When one member clicks on the circle, their partner’s circle changes to bright red. The circle dims quickly at first, and then fades slowly over time. It returns to transparent twelve hours after the circle was clicked. Pressing the button again restarts the cycle at maximum light intensity. Moving the mouse over the circle without clicking shows the current status of the remote partner’s circle.
Source: Kaye, J. ‘Jofish,’ Levitt, M. K., Nevins, J., Golden, J., and Schmidt, V. 2005. Communicating intimacy one bit at a time. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’05). ACM Press, 1529.
Kaye, J. 'Jofish.' I Just Clicked To Say I Love You: Rich Evaluations of Minimal Communication. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '06). ACM Press 363-368
