1. Technology and Effective Communication

2. “Micro” Social Theory Much work occurs in groups or teams of 2+ people
E.g., lab groups, project teams, classes
Teamwork varies along a number of dimensions, e.g.:
Synchronous/asynchronous
Timing (fast/slow)
Nature of artifacts being manipulated (documents, objects, etc.)
Interdependence of actors
Assumption: Designing technology to support remote group interaction requires knowing how face-to-face teams coordinate their language and actions to achieve their goals

3. Coordination Mechanisms
In face-to-face settings, team members use a variety of coordination mechanisms:
Conversation
Nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, gaze)
Gestures/pointing
Observation of partners’ actions and task status
Technologies for remote collaboration are unlikely to be able to implement all of these coordination mechanisms
Need a theory of group interaction that will allow us to predict what features of face-to-face interaction should be implemented in tools for remote collaboration and how those features should be implemented
Predictions must be specific to the types of tasks work teams are performing
Remote teams have to rely on a reduced set of coordination mechanisms (e.g., telephone) or substitutions for their usual mechanisms (e.g., cursors instead of hands for pointing)
How can technology support remote group interaction?
Selections among existing technologies
Design of new CSCW technologies

4. Clark’s Theory of Common Ground
Interpersonal communication is more efficient when people share more common ground
Common ground = mutual knowledge, beliefs, goals, attitudes that people know that they share

5. Examples
Beginning of school and a parent with a new freshman in tow comes up to you and asks, “Where is the Stephen Foster memorial?”
Alterative queries:
Out of towner, with foreign accent asks you on the street, Where is the Stephen Foster Memorial?
Middle of the spring and a CMU student comes up to you on campus and asks, “Where is the Stephen Foster memorial?”

6. Clark’s Theory of Common Ground
Grounding = The interactive process in a conversation by which communicators exchange evidence about what they do or do not understand.
Presentation phase: Speaker presents utterance to addressee
Acceptance phase: Addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of understanding
People ground utterances to the extent necessary “for current purposes”
Principle of least collaborative effort – the pair should do the minimum necessary for successful grounding

7. Dissecting 19 seconds of bike repair:. Does she know what ‘rails’ are
Dissecting 19 seconds of bike repair: Does she know what ‘rails’ are? Are my instructions clear?
H, Closer to your right hand, there are these things called rails
H, Those two things
W, Yes
H, Right, slightly above where you are right now, can move your hands forward on the bike, yeah, right around there
H, now back a little, yeah, right there
H, Half-way down those rails,
W, Yeah
H, Down a little more, down a little more
H, Right there
Note relevance of this episode to the technology assignment – Is the visual information being used to establish common ground (use of the technical vocabulary ‘rails’) or know task status & when to offer next instruction?

8. Unpacking Mutual Knowledge/Common Ground
Communication rests on mutual knowledge or common ground:
The knowledge the parties to a communication hold in common and know they have in common
Speakers are hypothesis testers.
“If I say ‘X’, will listener understand ‘X’?”
“If I say ‘Did you see the game?’ will listener understand ‘Did you see the Steeler’s/Bears football game last Sunday?’”
Speaker does hypothesis testing at two points:
Presentation phase — “What should I say?”
Acceptance phase — “Did the listener understand what I meant or should I elaborate?”

9. B A Name these objects 100%: Circle 70%: Star 30%: Adjective Star
In presentation stage: “What will listener understand if I say ‘pick the star’”

10. Name these objects B C A
80%: Circle
20%: White Circle
0%: Star
100%: Adjective Star
60%: Star
40%: Adjective Star
In presentation phase, speakers take into account what they expect their partners to know
Name objects to distinguish among similar objects which a listener (a) has in mind and (b) is likely to confuse

11. Referential communication task
Referring to things is basic to communication
Stylized game to understand reference: One person (the director) tells another (the worker) the order in which to place these Tangram figures

12. Demo of a Referential Communication Task
Form 3-person teams: director, worker, observer
Arrange partitions, so that director and worker are facing each other but can’t see each other’s puzzle or pieces
Director verbally tells the worker how to arrange four figures in a row
Workers arranges the figures
Do this twice, once for Row 2 and Row 4
Observer observes & records:
How fast & accurately the director/worker team performed.
How the pair coordinated naming conventions.
How director knew if the worker understood a direction.
What they did to get better over time.

13. Partners are learning
Communicators come to agree on a pair-specific description of objects
With a new partner, words per object returns to close to original level

14. What evidence did you use to improve in the demo?

15. What evidence do people use for grounding?
Personal knowledge
Group membership
Linguistic co-presence
Explicit feedback
Physical co-presence

16. Personal Knowledge
Encoders describe colors or figures for self or for other.
Study 1: Other is “another student”
Decoders get own descriptions (self) descriptions for another (social), or someone else’s self-description (non-social)
Study 2: Other is friend in experiment or stranger (“another student”)
DV=% Accurate

17. Stimuli for Expert vs. Novice Study
Empire state
Chrysler
Flatiron
Woolworth
Metlife
RCA Victor 1 2 3 4 5 6

18. Partners can partially accommodate to differences in others knowledge
Task: Order postcards of NYC landmarks
Experts: New Yorkers
Novices: Mid-westerns & others
Experts talking to experts are more efficient than novices talking to novices
Work with resources at hand
Mixed pairs learn from each other
Novices learn to use names
Experts learn to use descriptions
But adjustments are incomplete

19. Role of technology

20. Applying Grounding Theory To Technology
Clark & Brennan (1991): “People should ground with those techniques available in a medium that lead to the least collaborative effort.”
Hypothesis: Objective characteristics of different communication media change the costs of conversational grounding and strategies people use.
Some key types of costs:
Production/Reception costs: costs of producing/receiving messages
Start-up costs: costs of initiating conversation
Asynchrony costs: costs of timing utterances
Speaker change costs: costs of turn-taking
Repair costs: costs of correcting misunderstandings
Should allow us to predict in advance what features new technologies should have to meet different collaborative purposes

21. Affordances of Communication Media (Clark & Brennan, 1991)
Affordance = objective characteristics of technology that change how easy it is to accomplish certain tasks.
Co-Presence
Participants share physical environment, including a view of what each other is doing and looking at
Visibility
Participants can see one another but not what each is doing or looking at
Audibility
Participants can hear one another
Cotemporality
Messages are received close to the time that they are produced, permitting fine-grained interactivity
Simultaneity
Multiple participants can send/receive messages at the same time, allowing backchannel communication
Sequentiality
Participants take turns in an orderly fashion in a single conversation
Reviewability
Messages do not fade over time
Revisability
Messages can be revised before being sent ce

22. Technology changes strategies and costs of grounding
Exactly how conversationalist achieve common ground depends up the details of the technology available
Features of communication setting
Change
Needs for & costs of
formulation
production
reception
understanding
start-up
delay
asynchrony
speaker change
display
fault
repair
co-presence
visibility
audibility
co-temporality (no lag)
simultaneity (full duplex)
sequentiality
reviewability
revisability

23. Affordances of Conventional Media
Face-to-Face
Video Conf.
Phone
Copresence ++ ? --
Visibility +
Audibility
Cotemporality
Simultaneity
Sequentiality
Reviewability
Revisability

24. Direction giving exercise
Volunteer to describe a simple figure to the class, with and without feedback A B

25. Interactivity improves communication
encoding
Message
decoding
Sender
Receiver
Response/
Backchannel
What does the traditional model leave out? 2 headed arrows.
Want to briefly demonstrate that interactivity has major effects on communication outcome
Early research I did shows that if 2 people are hearing the same story fm a speaker, but only one can provide back channel feedback & other has feedback blocked, that the active listener understand the story better, agrees more with the speaker.
Speaker's story is more tailored to what the active listener's knowledge. E.g., efficient where the active listener was previously briefed, and more repetitive where active listener made confused.
decoding
encoding
Feedback and interactivity is one effective way of achieving common ground
Feedback tailors communication to an audience, making it more effective

26. Effects of technology on partner-specific learning
Need feedback to learn from each other
Some technology can disrupt the feedback
Half-duplex (speakerphone) vs full-duplex audio (telephone)
Even msecs reduces coordination
Video that desynchronizes audio & video channels disrupts lip-reading