Technology and Effective Communication

“Micro” Social Theory Much work occurs in groups or teams of 2+ people E.g., lab groups, project teams, classes Teamwork varies along a number of dimensions, e.g.: Synchronous/asynchronous Timing (fast/slow) Nature of artifacts being manipulated (documents, objects, etc.) Interdependence of actors Assumption: Designing technology to support remote group interaction requires knowing how face-to-face teams coordinate their language and actions to achieve their goals

Coordination Mechanisms In face-to-face settings, team members use a variety of coordination mechanisms: Conversation Nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, gaze) Gestures/pointing Observation of partners’ actions and task status Technologies for remote collaboration are unlikely to be able to implement all of these coordination mechanisms Need a theory of group interaction that will allow us to predict what features of face-to-face interaction should be implemented in tools for remote collaboration and how those features should be implemented Predictions must be specific to the types of tasks work teams are performing Remote teams have to rely on a reduced set of coordination mechanisms (e.g., telephone) or substitutions for their usual mechanisms (e.g., cursors instead of hands for pointing) How can technology support remote group interaction? Selections among existing technologies Design of new CSCW technologies

Clark’s Theory of Common Ground Interpersonal communication is more efficient when people share more common ground Common ground = mutual knowledge, beliefs, goals, attitudes that people know that they share

Examples Beginning of school and a parent with a new freshman in tow comes up to you and asks, “Where is the Stephen Foster memorial?” Alterative queries: Out of towner, with foreign accent asks you on the street, Where is the Stephen Foster Memorial? Middle of the spring and a CMU student comes up to you on campus and asks, “Where is the Stephen Foster memorial?”

Clark’s Theory of Common Ground Grounding = The interactive process in a conversation by which communicators exchange evidence about what they do or do not understand. Presentation phase: Speaker presents utterance to addressee Acceptance phase: Addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of understanding People ground utterances to the extent necessary “for current purposes” Principle of least collaborative effort – the pair should do the minimum necessary for successful grounding

Dissecting 19 seconds of bike repair:. Does she know what ‘rails’ are Dissecting 19 seconds of bike repair: Does she know what ‘rails’ are? Are my instructions clear? H, Closer to your right hand, there are these things called rails H, Those two things W, Yes H, Right, slightly above where you are right now, can move your hands forward on the bike, yeah, right around there H, now back a little, yeah, right there H, Half-way down those rails, W, Yeah H, Down a little more, down a little more H, Right there Note relevance of this episode to the technology assignment – Is the visual information being used to establish common ground (use of the technical vocabulary ‘rails’) or know task status & when to offer next instruction?

Unpacking Mutual Knowledge/Common Ground Communication rests on mutual knowledge or common ground: The knowledge the parties to a communication hold in common and know they have in common Speakers are hypothesis testers. “If I say ‘X’, will listener understand ‘X’?” “If I say ‘Did you see the game?’ will listener understand ‘Did you see the Steeler’s/Bears football game last Sunday?’” Speaker does hypothesis testing at two points: Presentation phase — “What should I say?” Acceptance phase — “Did the listener understand what I meant or should I elaborate?”

B A Name these objects 100%: Circle 70%: Star 30%: Adjective Star In presentation stage: “What will listener understand if I say ‘pick the star’”

Name these objects B C A 80%: Circle 20%: White Circle 0%: Star 100%: Adjective Star 60%: Star 40%: Adjective Star In presentation phase, speakers take into account what they expect their partners to know Name objects to distinguish among similar objects which a listener (a) has in mind and (b) is likely to confuse

Referential communication task Referring to things is basic to communication Stylized game to understand reference: One person (the director) tells another (the worker) the order in which to place these Tangram figures

Demo of a Referential Communication Task Form 3-person teams: director, worker, observer Arrange partitions, so that director and worker are facing each other but can’t see each other’s puzzle or pieces Director verbally tells the worker how to arrange four figures in a row Workers arranges the figures Do this twice, once for Row 2 and Row 4 Observer observes & records: How fast & accurately the director/worker team performed. How the pair coordinated naming conventions. How director knew if the worker understood a direction. What they did to get better over time.

Partners are learning Communicators come to agree on a pair-specific description of objects With a new partner, words per object returns to close to original level

What evidence did you use to improve in the demo?

What evidence do people use for grounding? Personal knowledge Group membership Linguistic co-presence Explicit feedback Physical co-presence

Personal Knowledge Encoders describe colors or figures for self or for other. Study 1: Other is “another student” Decoders get own descriptions (self) descriptions for another (social), or someone else’s self-description (non-social) Study 2: Other is friend in experiment or stranger (“another student”) DV=% Accurate

Stimuli for Expert vs. Novice Study Empire state Chrysler Flatiron Woolworth Metlife RCA Victor 1 2 3 4 5 6

Partners can partially accommodate to differences in others knowledge Task: Order postcards of NYC landmarks Experts: New Yorkers Novices: Mid-westerns & others Experts talking to experts are more efficient than novices talking to novices Work with resources at hand Mixed pairs learn from each other Novices learn to use names Experts learn to use descriptions But adjustments are incomplete

Role of technology

Applying Grounding Theory To Technology Clark & Brennan (1991): “People should ground with those techniques available in a medium that lead to the least collaborative effort.” Hypothesis: Objective characteristics of different communication media change the costs of conversational grounding and strategies people use. Some key types of costs: Production/Reception costs: costs of producing/receiving messages Start-up costs: costs of initiating conversation Asynchrony costs: costs of timing utterances Speaker change costs: costs of turn-taking Repair costs: costs of correcting misunderstandings Should allow us to predict in advance what features new technologies should have to meet different collaborative purposes

Affordances of Communication Media (Clark & Brennan, 1991) Affordance = objective characteristics of technology that change how easy it is to accomplish certain tasks. Co-Presence Participants share physical environment, including a view of what each other is doing and looking at Visibility Participants can see one another but not what each is doing or looking at Audibility Participants can hear one another Cotemporality Messages are received close to the time that they are produced, permitting fine-grained interactivity Simultaneity Multiple participants can send/receive messages at the same time, allowing backchannel communication Sequentiality Participants take turns in an orderly fashion in a single conversation Reviewability Messages do not fade over time Revisability Messages can be revised before being sent ce

Technology changes strategies and costs of grounding Exactly how conversationalist achieve common ground depends up the details of the technology available Features of communication setting Change Needs for & costs of formulation production reception understanding start-up delay asynchrony speaker change display fault repair co-presence visibility audibility co-temporality (no lag) simultaneity (full duplex) sequentiality reviewability revisability

Affordances of Conventional Media Face-to-Face Video Conf. Phone Email Copresence ++ ? -- Visibility + Audibility Cotemporality Simultaneity Sequentiality Reviewability Revisability

Direction giving exercise Volunteer to describe a simple figure to the class, with and without feedback A B

Interactivity improves communication encoding Message decoding Sender Receiver Response/ Backchannel What does the traditional model leave out? 2 headed arrows. Want to briefly demonstrate that interactivity has major effects on communication outcome Early research I did shows that if 2 people are hearing the same story fm a speaker, but only one can provide back channel feedback & other has feedback blocked, that the active listener understand the story better, agrees more with the speaker. Speaker's story is more tailored to what the active listener's knowledge. E.g., efficient where the active listener was previously briefed, and more repetitive where active listener made confused. decoding encoding Feedback and interactivity is one effective way of achieving common ground Feedback tailors communication to an audience, making it more effective

Effects of technology on partner-specific learning Need feedback to learn from each other Some technology can disrupt the feedback Half-duplex (speakerphone) vs full-duplex audio (telephone) Even 100-250 msecs reduces coordination Video that desynchronizes audio & video channels disrupts lip-reading