Designing for collaboration and communication Chapter 4 Designing for collaboration and communication

Outline Social mechanisms in communication and collaboration Technology-mediated social phenomena

Social mechanisms Conversational mechanisms Coordination mechanisms Awareness mechanisms

Conversational mechanisms Various mechanisms and ‘rules’ are followed when holding a conversation Mutual greetings Turn-taking People use various ways to signal whether they want to hand over or take up a turn in the conversation

More conversational rules Back channeling, e.g. Uh-uh, umm, ahh Farewell rituals, e.g. Bye then, see you, see you later…. Implicit and explicit cues e.g., looking at watch, fidgeting with coat and bags explicitly saying “Oh dear, must go, look at the time, I’m late…”

Breakdowns in conversation Caused by a misunderstanding between a speaker and a listener Overcome the misunderstanding by using repair mechanisms When the listener misunderstands what has been communicated, the speaker repeats what she said earlier, using a stronger voice intonation and more exaggerated gestures

Kinds of conversations Formal Informal

Kinds of conversations Formal communication involves assigning certain roles to people and prescribing a priori the types of turns that people are allowed to take in a conversation, e.g. at a board meeting

Kinds of conversations Informal communication is the chat that goes on when people socialize. It also happens when people bumps into each other and talk briefly. In office settings, such chance conversations have been found to serve a number of functions, including, coordinating group work, transmitting knowledge about office culture, establishing trust, and general team-building (Kraut et al., 1990).

Design challenges For people who are located in different locations, a key design issue has been to determine how to allow people to carry on communicating as if they were in the same place For co-located groups of people, a design challenge has been to design collaborative technologies to help them communicate and work together more effectively, especially when creating and sharing content

Communicating in physically different locations E-mail, videoconferencing, videophones, computer conferencing, chatrooms, and instant messaging

VideoWindow system (Bellcore, 1989) Shared space that allowed people 50 miles apart to carry on a conversation as if in same room drinking coffee together 3 x 8 ft ‘picture-window’ between two sites with video and audio People did interact via the window but strange things happened (Kraut, 1990) From: www.id-book.com

Sketch of VideoWindow From: www.id-book.com

Findings of how VideoWindow System was used Talked constantly about the system Spoke more to other people in the same room rather than in other room When tried to get closer to someone in other place had opposite effect - went out of range of camera and microphone No way of monitoring whether they were being seen and heard by the others in the other room Private conversations could not be supported From: www.id-book.com

Communicating in co-located settings Smartboards, tabletops, various forms of public displays One approach has been to situate interactive shared displays in public spaces, e.g. hallways, reception areas, that are intended to encourage people to meet and socialize through posting messages or adding opinions.

Computer-mediated communication Kinds of computer-mediated communication Synchronous communication Asynchronous communication

Synchronous computer-mediated communication Conversations are supported in real-time through voice and/or typing Examples include video conferencing, VOIP, MUDs and chat From: www.id-book.com

Synchronous computer-mediated communication Benefits include: Not having to physically face people may increase shy people’s confidence Allows people to keep abreast of the goings-on in an organization without having to move from their office In offices, IM allows users to fire off quick questions and answers without the time lag of email or phone-tag Problems: Difficult to establish eye contact with images of others People can behave badly when behind the mask of an avatar From: www.id-book.com

Asynchronous computer-mediated communication Communication takes place remotely at different times It relies not on time-dependent turn-taking but on participants initiating communication and responding to others when they want or are able to do so Examples include email, newsgroups, texting From: www.id-book.com

Asynchronous computer-mediated communication Benefits include: Read any place any time Flexible as to how to deal with it Can make saying things easier Problems include: FLAMING!!! Message overload False expectations as to when people will reply From: www.id-book.com

Coordination mechanisms Takes place when a group of people act or interact together to achieve something Coordination mechanisms include: Verbal and non-verbal communication Schedules, rules, and conventions Shared external representations

Verbal and non-verbal communication Verbal (spoken or relating to words) Talk Meeting memos, agendas, minutes Non-verbal nods, shakes, winks, glances, gestures, and hand-raising Examples: arm and baton movements of an orchestra conductor, arm and baton movements of a ground marshal at an airport

Schedules, rules, and conventions Schedules used to organize regular activities in large organizations Formal rules, like the writing of monthly reports enable organizations to maintain order and keep track Conventions, like keeping quiet in a library, are a form of courtesy to others From: www.id-book.com

Shared external representations Examples include calendars, forms, checklists Presented on public noticeboards or other shared spaces, or attached to documents and folders

Shared external representations Provide information on who is working on what, when it is being worked on, where it is being worked on, when a piece of work is supposed to be finished, whom it goes to next

Shared external representations Can be readily updated by annotating Allow people to make various inferences about the changes or delays with respect to their effect on their current activities They are tangible, providing important representations of work and responsibility that can be changed and updated as and when needed

Collaborative technologies to support coordination There are a variety of software tools designed to support scheduling, planning and coordinating e.g., group calendars, electronic schedulers, project management tools, and workflow tools Need to get balance between human and system control too much system control and the users will rebel too little control and the system breaks down From: www.id-book.com

A shared external coordination representation From: www.id-book.com

Awareness mechanisms Awareness involves knowing who is around, what is happening, who is talking with whom

Awareness mechanisms A specific kind of awareness is peripheral awareness, referring to a person’s ability to maintain and constantly update a sense of what is going on in the physical and social context, through keeping an eye on what is happening in the periphery of their vision overhearing and overseeing - allows tracking of what others are doing without explicit cues

Lo tech awareness mechanism From: www.id-book.com

Collaborative technologies to support awareness Provide awareness information for people who need to work together but who are not in the same physical space Awareness information: what people are doing the progress of ongoing work

Collaborative technologies to support awareness Monitoring mechanisms Example: Potholes, developed at Xerox PARC research labs awareness information is available through monitoring other people and being monitored by others

Collaborative technologies to support awareness Notification mechanisms Examples: Tickertape, Babble awareness information is provided by explicitly letting others know about things, information about the status of shared objects and the progress of collaborative tasks people can attend to the information when they want and provide information for whom they want

Key points Social mechanisms, like turn-taking, conventions, etc., enable us to collaborate and coordinate our activities Keeping aware of what others are doing and letting others know what you are doing are important aspects of collaborative working and socialising Many collaborative technologies systems have been built to support collaboration From: www.id-book.com

Chapter 5 Affective aspects

Outline What are affective aspects? Expressive interfaces and positive emotions Frustrating interfaces and negative emotions Persuasive technologies Anthropomorphism in interaction design Models of affective aspects

Affective aspects Emotions Facial expressions Angry, happy, sad, bored Facial expressions We consider how interactive systems can be designed to provoke an emotion within the user

Expressive interfaces and positive emotions Expressive forms like emoticons, sounds, icons, and virtual agents are used to convey emotional states to elicit certain kinds of emotional responses in users, such as feeling at ease, comfort, happiness to inform the status of a system, for example, A bee flying across the screen indicates that the computer is doing something such as checking files

Expressive interfaces and positive emotions Benefit: provide reassuring feedback that can be both informative and fun Drawback: Some people may find these expressive forms intrusive, leading them to negative feelings such as annoying or even angry

User-created expressiveness The use of emoticons Happy :-) Sad :-( Playful :-P Very angry >:-(

A balance between designing pleasurable and usable interfaces Traditionally, HCI focuses on designing a usable interface without paying much attention to the affective aspects of the interface A study by Tractinsky (1997, 2000) showed that when the ‘look and feel’ of an interface is pleasing, users are likely to be more tolerant, e.g. slow download rate

Friendly interfaces Bob, agent-based software pioneered by Microsoft in hopes to support new computer users Clippy

User frustration Many reasons for negative emotions (frustration): When an application doesn’t work properly or crashes When a system doesn’t do what the user wants it to do When a user’s expectations are not met When a system does not provide sufficient information to let the user know what to do

User frustration When error messages pop up that are vague or obtuse When the appearance of an interface is too noisy, garish, gimmicky, or patronizing When a system requires users to carry out too many steps to perform a task, only to discover a mistake was made earlier and they need to start all over again

Gimmicks Amusing to the designer but not the user, e.g., Clicking on a link to a website only to discover that it is still ‘under construction’ From: www.id-book.com

Error messages Why not instead: “The application Word Wonder has unexpectedly quit due to a type 2 error.” Why not instead: “the application has expectedly quit due to poor coding in the operating system” From: www.id-book.com

Error messages Shneiderman’s guidelines for error messages include: Being courteous, indicating what users need to do to set things right Avoid terms like FATAL, INVALID, BAD Audio warnings should be under user’s control Avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers

Error messages Shneiderman’s guidelines for error messages include: Be precise rather than vague Provide context-sensitive help Should be provided at multiple levels, so that short messages can be supplemented with longer explanations

More helpful error messages “The requested page /helpme is not available on the web server. If you followed a link or bookmark to get to this page, please let us know, so that we can fix the problem. Please include the URL of the referring page as well as the URL of the missing page. Otherwise check that you have typed the address of the web page correctly. From: www.id-book.com

Waiting Websites that take forever to download can be frustrating

Upgrading software It is time-consuming Resetting preferences Checking other configurations Learning new ways of doing things

Appearance Websites that are overloaded with text and graphics, making it difficult to find the desired information and slow to access Flashing animations are very distracting, e.g. flashing banner ads and pop-up ads

Appearance Overuse of sound effects and music Excessive number of operations Childish designs that keep popping up on the screen

Dealing with user frustration Help information should be designed to guide users on what to do next Signaling at the interface indicating that the help information is available A cartoon-based agent A help icon or command activated by users is more preferable

Persuasive technologies Interactive systems are deliberately designed to change people’s attitudes and behaviors e.g. personalized messages, recommender systems

Nintendo’s Pocket Pikachu Changing bad habits and improving well being Designed to motivate children into being more physically active on a consistent basis The owner of the digital pet that ‘lives’ in the device is required to walk, run, or jump If owner does not exercise the virtual pet becomes unhappy and eventually dies From: www.id-book.com

Phishing and trust Web used to deceive people into parting with personal details e.g. paypal, ebay and won the lottery letters Allows Internet fraudsters to access their bank accounts and draw money from them Many vulnerable people fall for it The art of deception is centuries old but internet allows ever more ingenious ways to trick people From: www.id-book.com

Anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism is the propensity people have to attribute human qualities to objects People have a propensity to accept and enjoy objects that have been given human-like qualities

Anthropomorphism Well known phenomenon in advertising Dancing butter, drinks, breakfast cereals Much exploited in human-computer interaction Make user experience more enjoyable, more motivating, make people feel at ease, reduce anxiety From: www.id-book.com

Which do you prefer? 1. As a welcome message “Hello Chris! Nice to see you again. Welcome back. Now what were we doing last time? Oh yes, exercise 5. Let’s start again.” “User 24, commence exercise 5.” From: www.id-book.com

Which do you prefer? 2. Feedback when get something wrong “Now Chris, that’s not right. You can do better than that. Try again.” “Incorrect. Try again.” Is there a difference as to what you prefer depending on type of message? Why? From: www.id-book.com

Criticisms of anthropomorphism Anthropomorphic interfaces are deceptive They can make people feel anxious, resulting in them feeling inferior or stupid They can lead people into a false sense of belief, enticing them to confide in agents

Criticisms of anthropomorphism Children are no longer required to use imagination Very annoying After realizing that the agent doesn’t possess real human qualities, users become quickly disillusioned and distrust it

Research studies – positive Reeves and Nass (1996) found that computers that were designed to flatter and praise students had a positive impact on how they felt about themselves and were more willing to continue with exercises Walker et al. (1994) and Sproull et al. (1996) found that users were more pleased with and interacting with the talking-face display more

Research studies - negative Sproull et al. (1996) also found that the talking-face display made some users feel disconcerted or displeased

Research studies - negative Quintanar et al. (1982) found that students rated the personable message (“Hi there, John! It’s nice to meet you, I see you are ready now”) as less honest than the mechanistic one (“Press the ENTER key to begin session”) and made them feel less responsible for their actions

What makes an agent believable? Believability refers to the extent to which users come to believe an agent’s intentions and personality Appearance is very important Are simple cartoon-like characters or more realistic characters, resembling the human form more believable? Behaviour is very important How an agent moves, gestures and refers to objects on the screen Exaggeration of facial expressions and gestures to show underlying emotions (c.f. animation industry) From: www.id-book.com

Models of affective aspects Emotional design model Pleasure model Technology as experience framework

Emotional design model Don Norman, Andrew Ortony, and William Revelle (2004) proposed a model of emotion that explains how emotion and behavior are determined by different levels of the brain

Emotional design model Visceral level – the lowest level, parts of the brain that are pre-wired to automatically respond to events happening in the physical world Behavioral level – the next level, the brain processes that control our everyday behavior Reflective level – the highest level, the brain processes that contemplate

Visceral level Responds rapidly to surroundings and makes judgments of things around us Triggers the emotional responses to stimuli, e.g. fear, joy, anger, and sadness These emotions are expressed through a combination of physiological and behavioral responses

Behavioral level The site where most human activities occur Examples include well-learned routine operations such as talking, typing, and driving

Reflective level Entails conscious thought where we generalize across events or step back from the routine and immediate An example is switching between thinking about the narrative structure and special effects used in a Harry Potter movie and becoming scared at the visceral level when watching the movie

Claims from model Our emotional state changes how we think when frightened or angry we focus narrowly and body responds by tensing muscles and sweating more likely to be less tolerant when happy we are less focused and the body relaxes more likely to overlook minor problems and be more creative From: www.id-book.com

Implications At visceral level, make products look, feel, and sound good At behavioral level, make products usable At reflective level, take into account the meaning and personal value of a product in a particular culture

Pleasure model Based on Tiger’s (1992) framework of pleasure, Patrick Jordan (2000) proposed an affective model focuses on the pleasurable aspects of our interactions with products

Pleasure model Proposes 4 conceptually distinct types of pleasure Physio-pleasure Socio-pleasure Psycho-pleasure Ideo-pleasure (cognitive)

Physio-pleasure Refers to bodily pleasures connected to sensory experiences Example is the tactile pleasure of holding a sleek cell phone while making a call

Socio-pleasure Refers to the enjoyment of being in the company of others Example is showing photos to loved ones

Psycho-pleasure Refers to people’s emotional and cognitive reactions to a product Similar to the behavioral level of Norman’s model Example is the emotionally satisfying experience of shopping on the web using an online site that is both pleasing and easy to use

Ideo-pleasure Refers to people’s values and is similar to the reflective level of Norman’s model Entails the aesthetics of a product and the cultural and personal values a person attributes to the product

Ideo-pleasure Example: a person who buys a hybrid car may derive more ideo-pleasure using it because it is saving energy and is cheaper to run

Implications A means of framing a designer’s thinking about pleasure, highlighting that there are different kinds Does not prescribe that a product be designed to cover the complete set of pleasures But certain ones may be more important to consider for a product

Technology as experience framework McCarthy and Wright (2004) explained the user experience in terms of how it is ‘felt’ by the user

Technology as experience framework Proposed 4 core threads that make up our holistic experiences: Sensual thread Emotional thread Compositional thread Spatio-temporal thread

Sensual thread Concerned with our sensory engagement with a situation Similar to the visceral level of Norman’s model Equal to the level of absorption people have with various technological devices and applications Examples: thrill, fear, pain, and comfort

Emotional thread Emotions are intertwined with the situation in which they arise, e.g. a person becomes angry with a computer because it does not work properly Emotions also involve making judgments of values Common examples are sorrow, anger, joy, and happiness

Compositional thread Concerned with the narrative part of the experience and the way a person makes sense of them The compositional thread is the internal thinking we do during our experiences

Spatio-temporal thread Refers to the space and time in which our experiences take place and their effect upon those experiences Time: speeding up, standing still, slowing down Space: public and personal places

Implications The threads are meant as ideas to help designers think and talk more clearly and concretely about the relationship between technology and experience Can aid thinking about the whole experience of a technology rather than as fragmented aspects, e.g., its usability, its marketability, or utility

Key points Affective aspects are concerned with how interactive systems make people respond in emotional ways Well-designed interfaces can elicit good feelings in users Expressive interfaces can provide reassuring feedback

Key points Badly designed interfaces make people angry and frustrated Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities to objects

Key points An increasingly popular form of anthropomorphism is to create agents and other virtual characters as part of an interface Models of affect provide a way of conceptualizing emotional and pleasurable aspects of interaction design