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

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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Learning support with social awareness
Questions for discussion in class