Basic issues in social awareness Anders Mørch TOOL 5100, theme 10

Outline Social awareness Related work Design for social awareness Learning support with social awareness

Social awareness An overview of article by Bødker & Christiansen (2006) Social awareness is “the kind of awareness of other people that grows from overhearing and overseeing” “We gather continuously information about our colleagues and act accordingly” (Tollmar et al, 1996) Extended to virtual world and design: How this kind of awareness apply when people are distanced from each other (no longer co present)

Related work Makes a distinction between focal awareness and peripheral/subsidiary awareness, a distinction originally proposed by Polanyi (1966) Dourish and Bly (1992) on real time, distributed awareness, and (indirectly) Gutwin, Stark & Greenberg (1995) on workspace awareness

Related work cont’d Theory of social psychology and communication Strauss on ‘breadcrumb,’ traces and cues as indicators of activities of others in shared space Clark (1996) on ‘common ground’ as linguistic precondition for mutual understanding Rommetveit on intersubjectivity (not referenced) Robinson on ‘common artifacts,’ their common use and peoples’ adaptation of them to personal needs

Critique This paper is a critique of current work on computational awareness because it tries to Make something subtle explicit Giving increased attention to “secondary” (previously tacit) concerns has the side effect of missing important concerns The authors do not go “beyond being there” to identify ways to use ICT beyond modeling existing (F2F) social interaction

Research study RQ: What does it mean to be present and how to leave traces of one presence in the virtual world? Personal panels helped people to leave traces of current and pending activities Leave trace of past activities as reminders to themselves or others Display personal content like family photos

Design for social awareness Challenges for design How to put computational awareness in the background as subtle (non distracting), but still informative cues Ignore irrelevant information about peoples movement and plans Sensitivity to personal information, as material to be seen but not touched Ability to leave traces in virtual rooms

Learning support with social awareness Questions for discussion in class