A research recently conducted by Pr. Missy Cummings on the Control Interface for the new retargetable Tomahawk missile involved instant messaging as a tool to measure situational awareness. During this study, most of the subjects tended to focus too much on the chat interface, instead of monitoring their primary task. Therefore, it is of interest to find out if the disruptiveness of IM is such that it impairs performance. A complete literature review is available: it presents a deep background on IM and its implications when used in the workplace, among other. \\ literature review: [download doc] [download pdf]