Awareness October 23, 2008 Dourish and Bellotti Ding and Patterson

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes What is awareness? Collocated interactions occur with a high degree of awareness of each other Media spaces were designed to provide a high degree of such type of ‘awareness’

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes What are awareness and context in CSCW? An understanding of the activities of others which provides a context for your own activity (Dourish and Bellotti) Awareness aids in coordination of the group activity Important whether distributed or collocated

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Providing Context Context is comprised of both content and character Awareness information can be either: –explicitly generated –passively collected and presented

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Synchronous and asynchronous awareness What is awareness in synchronous systems? e.g. Group editors Awareness in asynchronous systems e.g. Shared workspaces, like SharePoint

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Awareness mechanisms Informational –System explicitly has channels where people can inform each other about their activities Role-based (or role restrictive) –An individual is assigned a role in the task (e.g. editor, author) –The actions that a user can take in the system is then restricted to what their role is

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Study of ShrEdit use Groups of 3, remote, using video/and or audio Task: design an automatic post office Used ShrEdit, a shared collaborative editor Groups could freely open any number of shared windows

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes ShrEdit design Each user can have public or private windows Can edit text concurrently, each user has own cursor Private documents-only the user can see and edit text User can select text and “lock it” from other users Names of group members displayed No model of the collaboration process Coordination done with verbal communication

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Shared feedback ShrEdit provides shared feedback: presenting feedback about group members’ activities within the shared workspace Overcomes problems of other approaches: –Low overhead for provider and receiver of information –No role restrictions –Information can be provided when needed, according to context

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes What does awareness information do for collaboration? Awareness of process (character): Participants can structure their activities; avoid redundant work Awareness of content: can change/adapt content accordingly Awareness can aid group members in adapting to new roles as the situation arises –Different working styles, self-organization

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Shared feedback Shared feedback reduces burden on individuals--information is automatically shared Users can “pick and choose” that information that is most relevant for them (e.g. which edits they need to see) Awareness information is conveyed through the shared workspace, i.e. relevant information is linked to the shared object

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Other types of awareness History of use (e.g. with a document) Notifications, e.g. who has checked out a document from the shared workspace (From sensors): presence/absence of a person Current activity of a person Ambient sound

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes How much information is the right amount? Media spaces Information overload? How can users filter out the right information? What about privacy?

How to add awareness in today’s workplace?

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Nomatic*Viz Anonymous Physically situated Individual ambiguity Display ambiguity Public Persistent

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Things people do with status Meeting events Work activities Expressions of mood Non-work activities Miscellaneous

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes What did people do? How did people react? Glance Play Changing thoughts about community

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Ambiguity in Design Allows people to play with their boundaries around: privacy control of data identification presentation

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes Upcoming Tuesday – Why CSCW Applications Fail… and Why they succeed You should have your idea for what you are going to build for your project Next Thursday – Online communities