Transcript Chapter 4: Designing for collaboration and communication

Chapter 4:
Designing for
collaboration and
communication
Overview





What is communication?
Conversational mechanisms
Coordination mechanisms
Awareness mechanisms
Examples of technologies designed to
extend how people



talk and socialise
work together
play and learn together
What is communication?




Along with intelligence ,communication
is the one which gives us edge from
other animals.
It is a mean of transferring knowledge.
Language is a tool of communication.
Invention of printing press was the
greatest single discovery in the field of
communication before internet.
Social communication

Verbal communication.




Face to face.
Over phone.
Voice chat and Video Conferencing.
Non-verbal communication.




Mails.
Emails.
Instant Messenger
Text messaging.
(Video).
Conversational mechanisms

Various mechanisms and ‘rules’ are
followed when holding a conversation,
e.g. mutual greetings
A: Hi there
B: Hi!
C: Hi
A: All right?
C: Good, how’s it going?
A: Fine, how are you?
C: OK
B: So-so. How’s life treating you?
Conversational mechanism cont..

Turn-taking used to coordinate conversation







A: Shall we meet at 8?
B: Um, can we meet a bit later?
A: Shall we meet at 8?
B: Wow, look at him?
A: Yes what a funny hairdo!
B: Um, can we meet a bit later?
Back channelling to signal to continue and
following

Uh-uh, umm, ahh
Conversational mechanism cont..

farewell rituals


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…”
Conversational rules

Sacks et al. (1978) work on conversation
analysis describe three basic rules:
Rule 1: the current speaker chooses the next speaker
by asking an opinion, question, or request
Rule 2: another person decides to start speaking
Rule 3: the current speaker continues talking
Breakdowns in conversation

When someone says something
that is misunderstood:

Speaker will repeat with emphasis:
A: “this one?”
B: “no, I meant that one!”

Also use tokens:
Eh? Quoi? Huh? What?
What happens in technologymediated conversations?



Do same conversational rules apply?
Are there more breakdowns?
How do people repair them for:




Phone?
Email?
IM?
Text Messaging?
Designing collaborative
technologies

Challenges confronting the designers is
to consider how to facilitate different
kinds of communication where there are
obstacles preventing it from happening
‘naturally’.



The main aim is to develop systems
that allow people to communicate with
each other when they are in physically
different locations.
The key issue is how to allow people
to carry on communicating as if they
are in same place.
How to design collaborative
technologies to help co-located
groups to communicate.
Communicating in physically
different locations
Video Example
 Emails, Videoconferencing,
Videophones, Computer Conferencing,
Chat rooms and IM.
 Online MUDs and MOOs (text based)
were created to allow users
communicate exclusively using text.

Activity: how do the
conversations differ for the
same game of ZORKI?
3D virtual worlds
• The rooftop garden in BowieWorld
• Users take part by “dressing up” as an avatar, including
penguins and real people
• Once an avatar has entered a world they can explore it and
chat to other avatars
Source: www.worlds.com/bowie
Massive 3D virtual worlds

Second Life (2003)


Habbo Hotel (2000)



Over 2 million users
Over 7 million players
Massively multiplayer
online game
What kinds of conversation take place in these
environments?
Media spaces


They combine audio,video and computer
systems to “extend the world of
desks,chairs,walls ad ceilings.”
Example
Xerox Media Space, Hydra, Cruiser and
Video window system.
A typical media space node
Sketch of VideoWindow