SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS AND DESIGN ISSUES IN CSCW AND HCI I203 Social and Organizational Issues of Information

Feedback on Assn3 Roundtables! Missing Reading Responses Final Paper Administrative Fun With Clipart

3 3 Technical Affordances, Social Limitations…Social Affordances, Technical Limitations… “Huggable HAL 9000” from Laura MacCary

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6 Related area in HCI: Do we treat computers as social entities?  Nass and colleagues research: Politeness, Flattery, Gender stereotyping in computers and interfaces.   Kiesler and Sproull: ‘Cooperation and Trust’ with computers and interfaces.

7 Computers as Social (Nass)  People appear to obey politeness norms with computers  People appear to prefer responses from computers that match their own personality type  Includes quality of interaction and competence  People like to be flattered by computer responses  People appear to apply gender stereotypes to computers  People appear to orient their reactions to the computer, not the programmer(s).

8 Computers as not social (Kiesler and Sproull)  We love dogs and people, but people seem to cooperate more with people-like computer partners than dog-like partners.  Our reactions may be a learned response  We have to look at the situation and our expectations to understand our seemingly “social” responses.  If we want such research to inform design, then we have to actually specify what aspect of the computer we are examining (all software? Specific interface characteristics?)

But, there is more to the story than how we behave towards technologies– What about the connection between what a technology ‘does’ and the basis for constructing such technology in the social world?

10 Challenges for design in CSCW  What is CSCW and why is it important?  Study of the various ways that individuals work in groups and the technologies (hardware and software).

11 Select Findings in CSCW (Ackerman)  Exceptions tend to be the norm in work processes  People prefer to know who else is present in a shared space, and how they are performing  Visibility of communication and information exchange can enable learning, but also works against efficiency under some circumstances.

12 Select Findings in CSCW (continued)  Norms emerge for CSCW systems, and these norms tend to be constantly re-negotiated.  Critical Mass problems  Importance of Incentives for participation and contribution in collective effort systems

13 The “Social-Technical Gap”

14 Much ado about nothing?  Common Arguments:  that the ‘gap’ is just a mistake caused by early miscommunications, or just habit of software designers/researchers.  We just have not found the proper solution with existing technologies; eventually we will so the gap is a moot point.  Instead of complaining about it, we should just change our behavior (i.e. adapt) to work with the technology the way it is supposed to be used.

15 Addressing the Problem Sitrep Project: Nick Rabinowitz

Addressing the Problem (Continued)

17 CSCW as a ‘Science of the Artificial’  “CSCW is at once an engineering discipline attempting to construct suitable systems for groups, organizations, and other collectivities, and ad the same time, CSCW is a social science attempting to understand the basis for that construction in the social world” Ackerman (2000: 13)

18 So what to do? “Moving past the naïve perspective that additional education or training would bring software engineers the insights for effectively building programs that fit the social world, software engineers could by suitably trained to understand the organizational and social impacts that could result from their designs.” Ackerman p. 14

No Silver Bullet?