From BuddySpace to CitiTag: Large-scale Symbolic Presence for Community Building and Spontaneous Play Yanna Vogiazou, Marc Eisenstadt, Martin Dzbor and Jiri Komzak Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Milton Keynes, UK 16th March 2005 SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Track

Outline Enhancing social presence Design for emergence Our principles User studies BuddySpace ‘group belongingness’ BumperCars collaborative play CitiTag emergence in the real world SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Enhancing social presence Engaging participatory social experiences – large scale Presence-aware and ubiquitous technologies: group cohesion expression of spontaneous social behaviours through play emergent group behaviours and participatory play The ‘killer apps’ of tomorrow’s mobile infocom industry won’t be hardware devices or software programs but social practices. (Howard Rheingold in Smart Mobs, 2002) SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design for emergence Unpredictable behaviours and uses of technology emerge from a combination of design and external factors through the deployment or experiment with an interactive product Emergence occurring from the unintended uses of technology. We have many examples of unintended uses of technology, such as, SMS, hijacking Bluetooth phones, radio broadcasts from iPods. SMS-dictated mobility hijacking Bluetooth phones iPod ‘Podcasts’ (time-shifted radio) Social software SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design for emergence Our aim is to study emergence in a way that it becomes as important as the interactive application itself aim to bring emergence to the forefront. Rather than a side effect that occurs from the deployment of an innovative technology emergence becomes of a primary interest in our research work. SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design for emergence The long-term goal is to try and integrate lessons learned from emergent user behaviours in future designs To understand how unexpected uses from the deployment of a new technology point to new directions and whether it is possible to incorporate those in the process of design SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design Principles Principle 1: Big scale is an asset, not a liability Flash Mobs: more people the more engaging the experience SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design Principles Principle 2: Visualizing users’ locations can enhance the sense of presence online World as a Blog NASA Earthlights HitMaps.open.ac.uk SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design Principles Ubiquitous Online Principle 3: ‘Presence’ is largely symbolic Ubiquitous Online SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

BuddySpace Our community building tool 1000 OU online forum messages: 20% location-centric! Instant Messaging with location info Automatic group and map generation Very scalable and customizable SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

BuddySpace SAC 2005 Yanna Vogiazou Ubiquitous Computing Knowledge Media Institute, OU

BuddySpace 15 evaluation questionnaires from long term users (>6months) Users were asked to rate ‘group belongingness’ engendered by 20 activities, situations, physical and digital artifacts. We asked our long-term users to rate the extent of ‘group belongingness’ engendered by a sample of 20 activities, events, and physical artifacts in the workplace, using a 7-point Likert scale (from -3 = ‘very negatively: not only do I not feel a part of this group, I feel very negatively about it’ to +3 = ‘very positively: I associate very positively with this group’). These 20 items ranged from corporate logos and political rallies (intended to provide a baseline for strong belongingness) to BuddySpace-specific items such as dots on maps, presented to the users in a randomized order. SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

BuddySpace Automatically-generated groups: most beneficial and most frequently-used feature Maps, personal rosters and group rosters ranked within top 5 (of 20) items Importantly for us, the items ‘appear as dot on an office map’, ‘appear as a dot with thumbnail photo on an office map’, ‘membership of automatically-generated list’ and ‘membership of self-created buddy list’ all ranked within the top 5 items, rivaled only in ‘belongingness-power’ by the feeling instilled by seeing one’s corporate logo in a newspaper ad! This is a strong endorsement of the notion of ‘feel-good factor’ in group identity which was one of the motivating factors of this work. BuddySpace endorses our long-term goal of fostering a sense of ‘group belongingness’ SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

BumperCar game ‘playground space’ for opportunistic, playful interaction bumping and chasing players change colour to indicate team alliance can change player speed, image background and add bot-cars to create different games overview map for scalability and presence Normal view a bumper car game, to be used as part of Buddyspace, an IM tool for community building. Alliances based on colour. Just enough of an environment. Map view SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

3 Game types Spontaneous Goal oriented Colour Jam Session 22 participants in 6 game sessions of approximately 20 minutes each. Questionnaires and video analysis were used. Colour Jam Session 3 types of games – only changing the background and the context given to participating players. From spontaneous, free expression games to goal oriented. Describe each. Collaborative Pong Group Formations Spontaneous Goal oriented SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Spontaneous collaboration …through visual communication Synchronised colour change & movement Surrounding Teamwork: defenders & attackers Some interesting observations. Participants coordinated without verbal communication, by being aware, following what others were doing at the moment. Synchronised wave-like colour changes and movements, surrounding a player, space/role divisions. SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Online ‘crowd’ behaviours Rogues and creativity Most creative individual? Rogues Emergent, unplanned behaviours. Group hug= clustering spontaneously on one spot at the end of one experiment. Rogue behaviour, e.g. place swapping. Group Hug Place Swapping Spontaneous group and individual behaviours can emerge online, even without verbal communication. SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Emergence in the real world Can spontaneous behaviours emerge in the real world through a mixed reality game? Motivation: a simple game based on symbolic presence states aiming to bring an enjoyable shared social experience, stimulated by real world interaction among players SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Design Inspiration: ‘Tag’ Touch has power in itself Social Looked at different social computing applications and games. Particularly inspired by playground games, classical tag game. Why? Instant fun and strong social aspect. Simple, spontaneous fun SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

CitiTag: a wireless location based game Two opposite teams, Reds vs Greens WiFi + GPS Looking around… Got tagged! Free a friend… SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Two user studies OU campus 9 participants, Bristol centre 16. Group interviews, questionnaires, video analysis SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

CitiTag in Bristol CitiTagBristol.mov SAC 2005 Yanna Vogiazou Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

More results Experience was different in the two locations (OU-action, Bristol-strategy) Audio cues enhance the experience and support awareness Emergent/invincible team Authorising ‘child-like play’ in public among adults SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Summary BuddySpace fosters the feeling of being part of a group Spontaneous group behaviours and coordination can emerge online through play without verbal communication Similarly such behaviours can emerge in the real world, empowered by participation in a mixed reality shared experience, based on simple game rules and symbolic presence states . SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Acknowledgements A special thanks to: Bas Raijmakers (Royal College of Art) KMi HP Labs University of Bristol Mathew Eanor Jon Linney Lewis McCann Kevin Quick Peter Scott Erik Geelhoed Richard Hull Paul Marsh Jo Reid Ben Clayton Stuart Martin …and our participants of course SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

Appendix Buddyspace features ratings: SAC 2005 Yanna Vogiazou Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU

CitiTag architecture GPS Receiver XML Socket Flash Communications Server running CitiTag application (server-side scripts) Serial data GPS Receiver Mobile Bristol Application Flash Game Client Wireless Network Access Point Flash Administration Client PocketPC 802.11b wireless connection SAC 2005 Ubiquitous Computing Yanna Vogiazou Knowledge Media Institute, OU