1. Communicative Resources

2. How Do We Communicate? Conversation involves more than language
Face-to-face has widest range of information
Written text removes all of this additional information
Conversation as ensemble work
Should not be viewed as alternating series of actions
Listeners provide feedback during expression that crucially affects speaker

3. Conversational Organization
Local control
Turn taking as collaborative action
Ordered set of options at turnover:
Speaker selects next speaker
Self-selection
Current speaker continues
Silences are ambiguous (gap or pause)
Know people who are frustrating to talk to because they break these rules
They do not provide gaps
They step in when there is no opening
Some people apply rules to interactions with machines
To speak
To listen
Speaker cues
Turn maintaining
Turn yielding
Listener cues
Turn requesting
Turn denying

4. Sequential Organization and Coherence
Reply should be related to preceding sentence or becomes a non-sequitur
How we judge intelligence?
Absence of reply is also a reply due to social contract of conversation
Rules are neither optional or obligatory
Statements provide context for answer in unpredictable ways
“I gotta work.” or “Cream and sugar?”
Referent can be part or whole conversation

5. Locating and Remedying Trouble
Conversational pattern supports this
Gaps provide opportunities for
Requests for clarification
Statements that can indicate misinterpretation
Lack of turn taking can signify breakdown
Example of palpitations and feet
“A crucial part of interactional competence is the ability to judge whether some evidence that the recipient has misunderstood warrants the work required for repair.”

6. Specialized Forms of Conversation
Legal and medical questioning
Limits (but does not get rid of) conversational options for listener
Conversational forms can cause problems
Doctors start hypothesizing before collecting all symptoms
Relationship to human-computer communication

7. Case of the Complex Copier

8. Case of the Complex Copier
Expert help system
Maps user’s goals to job specification to plans
Goals constrained by functionality
Plans must accommodate semi-ordered actions
Plans recognized part-way points
Changes in preconditions
Some actions produce recognizable effects

9. Instructions
Following instructions turns partial descriptions into concrete actions
Instructions rely on recipient’s ability to anchor descriptions
Although system/we see only effect of that
Execution can include “unpredictable” interpretations (e.g. lucky pan)
Communicating instructions can rely on a combination of language, materials, history
Existence of interaction more important to success than whether instructions are written or spoken

10. Method Keep (video++) record of action as well as interpretations
Dual role of lists (as intended action and as performed action)
Two people working together
Motivate communication about interpretation of instructions that can be captured
Model actions vs. shared understanding
The User
The Machine
Actions not available
Actions available
Effects observable
Design rationale