CS 3366: Human Computer Interaction Chapter 9: Collaboration and Social Media Participation October 4, 2011 Mohan Sridharan Based on Slides for the book: Designing the User Interface (5th Edition)

Collaboration and Social Media Participation Activities carried out by small teams. Represent work-related projects. Goal-directed with a time-frame for completion. Purposeful and business-oriented. Participants typically know who they are collaborating with. Social media participation: Activities involving small (~10, chat room) to large (millions, Facebook) groups of people. Support existing relationships, help establish new relationships. Often in online world. Often no personal relationships, only lightweight intersections, e.g., tagging photos. Some users develop stronger relationships, increasingly taking up leadership positions. Common tools exist for team collaboration and social media participation: Wikipedia, discussion groups (minor and major contributors).

Characteristics and Examples of Collaboration and Social Media Participation

Collaboration and Participation Goals of Collaboration and Participation: Focused partnerships, e.g. joint authorship of paper or report. Lecture or demo: one person sharing information with many (remote) users. Conferences: distributed participants communicate. Structured work processes: people with distinct roles, e.g., journal editor. Meeting and decision support: users make simultaneous contributions. Electronic commerce: browse online prices, short-term collaborations. Tele-democracy: small groups to conduct online town-hall meetings. Online communities: distributed groups share information, play games. Collaboratories: professional groups collaborate over space and time. Telepresence: remote participants have experience of physical co-presence.

Time/Space Matrix Model of Group-Supported Work

Field Evolving over Time Collaborative interfaces and social media web sites are maturing. Difficult to evaluate their contributions to success of projects. Frequency of utilization not a good enough measure. These very useful tools are sometimes ignored. Privacy issues need to be addressed. Takes time, effort and motivation.

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Electronic mail: Can be too loosely structured. Sometimes overwhelming, transient. Tools: Filtering, archiving. Mailing lists, discussion groups. Typically text-only, but increasingly includes other structured objects: Graphics. Sounds. Animations. Web pointers/links. Video.

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time E-mail message on an iPhone Electronic mail: Email on mobile devices. Online directories. Web services with E-mail: Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Google’s web-based email (Gmail)

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Newsgroups, list servers, discussion boards, conferences, social media participation web sites, blogs, and wikis: Focused electronic discussions by group of people. USENET newsgroups: Each group dedicated (more or less) to one topic. Users read as many previous notes and related comments as they wish. Open to all. Listserv: Individual must subscribe to receive e-mail notices. May be moderated by a leader. May be mail reflector. Users can get flooded with listserv e-mails. Server machine keeps searchable archive or past notes and subscriber list. Online conference: In addition to listserv tools, may also include additional facilities: voting, online directories of users, online directories of documents Online magazines and newsletters. Web-logs/blogs and wikis.

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Visualization of the communication pattern of an “answer person” on the left, and a “discussion person” on the right (Welser et al).

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Blogs and Wikis. Make opinions known widely. Owned by creators, readers can contribute comments. Templates for people to create blogs and wikis with text and pictures. Revise content and respond to comments. Micro-blogging and mini-blogging.

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Online and networked communities: Group identity, e.g., patient support groups. Impact on offline communities, e.g., create flyers, organize discussion groups. Community policies and freedom of speech. Network communities can be controversial, e.g., hackers, hate groups, paramilitary groups. Distance education courses. Reputation managers for online stores.

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Bob’s ACL Kneeboard, a threaded discussion board for people who have suffered tears of the anterior cruciate ligaments in their knees. (http://factotem.org/cgi-bin/kneebbs.pl)

Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Different Time Starting screen for a virtual classroom from the Los Angeles County Office of Education

Synchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Same Time Synchronous distributed applications: Group editing. Shared screens for customer assistance. Give demonstrations simultaneously at multiple sites. Allow sharing of information for various applications. Interactive games.

Synchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Same Time Chat, instant messaging, and texting: CHAT, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and TALK. Flamers and MUDs. Instant Messaging, LOL etc. Twitter. Texting and cell phones.

Synchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Same Time Parental control system to oversee children’s online activities http://www.sentryparentalcontrols.com/

Synchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Same Time Audio and video conferencing: Slow response times for entering and leaving session? Distracting background audio? Difficulty in determining who is speaking? Inadequate lighting. Difficulty in making eye contact. Changed social status. Small image size? Potential invasion of privacy. Need for convenient turn taking. Need for document sharing.

Synchronous Distributed Interfaces: Different Place, Same Time Audio and video conferencing: Issues of ownership and control: Private and public workspaces. Identity of participants. Location of actions. Care with updating. Choice between audio/video conferencing, chat, IM, and texting depends on the goals and the task environment.

Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time Innovative approaches to work and learning include: Shared display from lecturer workstation. Audience response units. Text-submission workstations. Brainstorming, voting, and ranking. Benefits of electronic meeting systems: Parallel communication reduces chance of some people dominating the meeting. Anonymity mitigates fear of being judged so that issues are discussed candidly. The group memory constructed by participants enables them to reflect on opinions of others during the meeting and serves as a permanent record of what occurred. Helps focus the group on key issues and discourages irrelevant digressions and unproductive behaviors. Task support and structure provides information and approaches to analyze it.

Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time File sharing. Shared workspace. Group activities. Colab and Liveboard. SMART Board (figure). Public spaces facilitate sharing. Sharing photos is very popular. Notification systems.

Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time Electronic classrooms: Active individual learning experiences include using software during class time. Write essays in English or poems in a foreign language. Find antecedents of Impressionism in an art history library of 9000 images. Run business simulations to increase product quality. Perform psychological statistical analyses. Do landscaping with computer-assisted design and graphics packages. Compose computer programs and search the Internet. Small teams and large teams. Changes teaching style.

Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time Students in an online classroom. Activity is monitored by color: speech in yellow, hand motion in red, body motion in green. Under each student is a timeline of their individual activity and at the bottom is an activity picture (using the colors) of the class (Chen)

Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time Modulor II is a time-dependent architectural work of art in which participants create new patterns daily by collaboratively weaving colored strings through an interactive labyrinth of luminous poles. (Halkia and Local)

Questions for consideration