Situated Social Computing 20110622

Situated Social ComputingConnecting People, Places,

Services & Screens

Joe McCarthyUniversity of Washington

User Experiences involvingPeople, Places, Services & Screens

Overview

• What is situated social computing?• What are some examples?• What are some open challenges?

• Overarching themes– Situatedness– Serendipity– Sustainability

Situated Software• Clay Shirky, March 2004

– Software designed in & for a particular social situation / context– NOT Web School: scalability, generality, and completeness– the application must be useful to the community;

the community must be useful to the application– http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html

• See also: – “Communities, Audiences & Scale”

– http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html– “What is Social Informatics and Why Does It Matter?”

– Rob Kling, D-Lib Magazine, January 1999– Socio-technical systems: people, technology, institutional & cultural

contexts

Maintaining Connections via Online Social Media

• ambient intimacy – “being able to keep in touch with people

with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to”

– Leisa Reichert– http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/– http://www.slideshare.net/leisa/ambient-intimacy

• continuous partial friendship – David Weinberger– http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may04-07.html

Opening Up Portalsin Hybrid Spaces

@

Workout places Work places Third places

Proactive Displays as Portals

• Large visual or aural displays that can sense & respond to people & activities in contextually appropriate ways

• Bring the richness of online world into the physical spaces we share with others

• Help people appreciate and [re]connect with the people, places and things around them

Examples

• MusicFX (1998)– Music in a fitness center

• GroupCast (2001)– News items in a workplace

• AutoSpeakerID, Ticket2Talk, Neighborhood Window (2004)– Names, photos, home pages at a conference

• C3 Collage (2007)– Photos in a workplace

• CoCollage (2009)– Photos, inspiring quotes in “third places”

MusicFX

MusicFX: An Arbiter of Group Preferences for Computer-Supported Cooperative WorkoutsJoseph F. McCarthy and Theodore Anagnost1998 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ‘98)

A Multi-Agent System for Meting Out Influence in an Intelligent EnvironmentM. V. Nagendra Prasad and Joseph F. McCarthyEleventh Innovative Applications in Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI ‘99)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLgXLl4uGYk

promoting awareness, agreement and enjoyment of music in a fitness center

• Database of musical preferences– 91 genres, 5-point scale

• Group Preference Arbitration algorithm– Group Preference Calculation– Candidate Identification (sort, filter)– Weighted Random Selection operator

• Environmental Events (algorithm triggers)– Entrance, exit, pref / param update, expiration

The MusicFX System

Daily operation Nov 1997 – Dec 2001

Poll results (after 6 weeks):+: increased variety, having some influence-: abrupt changes, occasional “bad” music

Evaluation

The UX of MusicFX: Fun FactsTop 10 Bottom 13

You can’t please all the people …

Situatedness, Serendipity, Sustainability

• Situatedness– “I really like opera, just not when I’m working out”

• Serendipity– Rap, Show Tunes, Chinese Music

• Sustainability– 600 users, 4+ years (until office move)– Over time: badge in to “veto”

UniCast, GroupCast, OutCast

UniCast, OutCast & GroupCast: Three Steps Toward Ubiquitous Peripheral DisplaysJoseph F. McCarthy, Tony J. Costa and Edy S. LiongosariThird International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2001)

Promoting Awareness of Work Activities through Peripheral DisplaysElaine M. Huang, Joe Tullio, Tony J. Costa and Joseph F. McCarthy2002 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2002)

promoting awareness of the interests of co-workers

UniCast / GroupCast Modules

• Headlines: 273 channels 16 categories (www.moreover.com)• Stocks: Ticker symbols (finance.yahoo.com)• Horoscopes: 12 signs of the zodiac (astrology.yahoo.com)• Weather: US zip codes (www.earthlink.com)• Traffic: Chicagoland Expressway Congestion map • Web pages: Any URL specified by the UniCast user• InfoShare: URLs shared by other group members• Announcements: Title, body and expiration date• Reminders: Visual and aural reminders of regularly scheduled events• Factoids: 363, organized into 8 categories (e.g., History, Science) • Flashcards: Short questions and answers (e.g., US State Capitols)• Artwork: 1000 images, organized into 10 categories• Pictures: Digital images uploaded to a shared directory• WebCams: 11 Axis 2100 Cameras throughout CSTaR• In/Out List: Based on infrared badges (ActiveMap)

UniCast in Action


• Situatedness– Workplace, but personal vs. shared space

• Serendipity– Intersection vs. union of interests– Relevance vs. freshness

• Sustainability– Motivation: self-interest vs. self-presentation– 2000-2002 (office move, personnel changes)

AutoSpeakerID, Ticket2Talk,Neighborhood Window

Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic ConferenceJoseph F. McCarthy, David W. McDonald, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. RashidACM 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004)

Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social EnvironmentsDavid W. McDonald, Joseph F. McCarthy, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. RashidACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions (TOCHI), Vol. 14, No. 4, January 2008

promoting awareness and interactions at a conference


• Situatedness– What do you want to share with others at this

conference?

• Serendipity– New vs. old– Provocation– “red queens”

• Sustainability– 500 attendees, 200 users, 3 days …

Ticket2Talk, v2promoting awareness and interactions at a variety of events

The Context, Content & Community (C3) Collage

promoting awareness and interactions in the workplace

The Context, Content & Community Collage: Sharing Personal Digital Media in the Physical WorkplaceJoseph F. McCarthy, Ben Congleton, F. Maxwell HarperACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008) [best paper nominee]

The ProD framework for proactive displaysBen Congleton, Mark S. Ackerman and Mark W. Newman, M. W. 21st Annual ACM Symposium on User interface Software and Technology (UIST 2008)

Impact on Relationships, Social Media

Impact on Social Media Use


• Situatedness– Personal digital media …. in physical workplace– Tags for inclusion / exclusion

• Serendipity– Mostly good

• Sustainability– 2007-present (?)

CoCollagepromoting awareness and interactions in third places

Measuring the Impact of Third Place Attachment on the Adoption of a Place-Based Community TechnologyShelly D. Farnham, Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh LindProc. of the 27th Int'l. Conf on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009)

Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social SoftwareJoseph F. McCarthy, Shelly D. Farnham, Yogi Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh LindProc. of the 4th Int’l. Conf. on Communities and Technologies (C&T 2009)

SurveyTo what extent did CoCollage increase … *

Interactions in café Sense of community in café

* on scale of 1 to 7, where 1 = “not at all” and 7 = “extremely so”

(81% > 1) (95% > 1)


• Situatedness– What do you want to share with others in this

café?

• Serendipity– Primary & secondary effects

• Sustainability– 24 coffeehouses, 1200+ users, 12+ months– But: game mechanics, hyper-local advertising

Open Challenges

• Parallel Universes• [Social] Media Saturation• Technology & Connectedness

Parallel Universes

• Device / Display Proliferation

• Online Conversation Proliferation

1st ScreenMovie Theater

2nd ScreenTelevision

3rd ScreenPC

4th ScreenPhone

5th ScreenDigital

Out-Of-Home

Social Media Saturation

Displays will be everywhere

TVs are everywhere

1.16 TVs per person in USA

Mobile devices will be everywhere

Where will that leave us?

• Self• Solitude• Substitution• Safety• Salvation

– salve: “a remedial or soothing influence or agency”

Chris Oakley, The Catalogue

The Possible Futures of Situated Social Computing

Minority Report

Thanks!• For more information:

– [email protected]– http://interrelativity.com/joe

Related Work (1)• eyeCanvas (FXPAL)

• Interactive community bulletin board• Canvas Gallery, SF• Churchill, et al., CHI 2006

• PlaceSite• Location-based web community• Three SF cafés• Savage, et al., 2006

• Jukola (Appliance Studio)• Mobile + wall displays• Selecting music in Bristol cafe• O’Hara, et al., DIS 2004

• CowCam (Intel)• Webcam + figurines + display• Urban Grind café, Portland• March, et al., CHI 2005

Related Work: Research (2)• Notification Collage (University of Calgary)

– Public display + desktop displays– University research lab– Greenberg & Rounding, CHI 2001

• PlasmaPoster (FXPAL)– Interactive community bulletin board– Corporate, conference, café contexts– Churchill, Nelson, et al., C&T 2003, …

• BlueBoard (IBM Almaden)– Shared display for collaboration– Corporate meeting space– Russell & Gossweiler, UbiComp 2001

• CityWall (Helsinki IIT)– Multi-touch screen in city center– Flickr photos tagged with “helsinki”– Interactions with, vs. through, display– Peltonen, et al., CHI 2008

Related Work: Research (3)• Meme Tags (MIT)

– Wearable, interpersonal displays– Academic sponsor meetings– Borovoy, et al., CSCW 1998

• Opinionizer (Sussex)– Shared display at social events– Interaction through typed input– Brignull & Rogers, INTERACT 2003

• Dynamo (Sussex)– High school setting– Interaction via USB disk– Brignull & Rogers, INTERACT 2003

• AgentSalon (ATR)– Interaction via PalmGuides (PDAs)– Conversations mediated by animated agents– Sumi & Maase, Autonomous Agents 2001

Related Work: Research (4)• Manhattan Story Mashup (Nokia)

– Urban game: web + phones + screen– Times Square, New York– Tuulos, et al., Pervasive 2007

• ProD Framework for Proactive Displays (U. Mich)– Generic architecture for proactive displays– Congleton, et al., UIST 2008

• Twitterspace (Indiana University)– Large display in campus lounge– Dynamic visualization of group “tweets”– Hazlewood, et al., PDC 2008

Public and Situated DisplaysO’Hara, Perry, Churchill, Russell