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CS 3366: Human Computer Interaction

Chapter 9: Collaboration and Social Media Participation

October 4, 2011

Mohan Sridharan

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Based on Slides for the book: Designing the User Interface (5th Edition)

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Collaboration and Social Media Participation

  • Collaboration:
    • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • Common tools exist for team collaboration and social media participation:
    • Wikipedia, discussion groups (minor and major contributors).

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Characteristics and Examples of Collaboration and Social Media Participation

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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.

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    • Conferences: distributed participants communicate.
    • Structured work processes: people with distinct roles, e.g., journal editor.

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    • Meeting and decision support: users make simultaneous contributions.
    • Electronic commerce: browse online prices, short-term collaborations.

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    • Tele-democracy: small groups to conduct online town-hall meetings.
    • Online communities: distributed groups share information, play games.

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    • Collaboratories: professional groups collaborate over space and time.
    • Telepresence: remote participants have experience of physical co-presence.

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Time/Space Matrix Model of Group-Supported Work

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Field Evolving over Time

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  • Collaborative interfaces and social media web sites are maturing.

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  • Difficult to evaluate their contributions to success of projects.

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  • Frequency of utilization not a good enough measure.

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  • These very useful tools are sometimes ignored.

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  • Privacy issues need to be addressed.

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  • Takes time, effort and motivation.

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

  • Electronic mail:
    • Can be too loosely structured.

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    • Sometimes overwhelming, transient.

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    • Tools:
      • Filtering, archiving.
      • Mailing lists, discussion groups.

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    • Typically text-only, but increasingly includes other structured objects:
      • Graphics.
      • Sounds.
      • Animations.
      • Web pointers/links.
      • Video.

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

  • Electronic mail:

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    • Email on mobile devices.

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    • Online directories.

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    • Web services with E-mail:
      • Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail.

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E-mail message on an iPhone

Google’s web-based email (Gmail)

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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.

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    • 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.

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    • 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.

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    • Online conference:
      • In addition to listserv tools, may also include additional facilities: voting, online directories of users, online directories of documents

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    • Online magazines and newsletters. Web-logs/blogs and wikis.

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

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Visualization of the communication pattern of an “answer person” on the left, and a “discussion person” on the right (Welser et al).

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

  • Blogs and Wikis.

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  • Make opinions known widely.

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  • Owned by creators, readers can contribute comments.

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  • Templates for people to create blogs and wikis with text and pictures.

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  • Revise content and respond to comments.

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  • Micro-blogging and mini-blogging.

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

  • Online and networked communities:
    • Group identity, e.g., patient support groups.

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    • Impact on offline communities, e.g., create flyers, organize discussion groups.

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    • Community policies and freedom of speech.

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    • Network communities can be controversial, e.g., hackers, hate groups, paramilitary groups.

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    • Distance education courses.

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    • Reputation managers for online stores.

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

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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)

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Asynchronous Distributed Interfaces: �Different Place, Different Time

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Starting screen for a virtual classroom from the Los Angeles County Office of Education

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Synchronous Distributed Interfaces:�Different Place, Same Time

  • Synchronous distributed applications:

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    • Group editing.

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    • Shared screens for customer assistance.

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    • Give demonstrations simultaneously at multiple sites.

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    • Allow sharing of information for various applications.

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    • Interactive games.

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Synchronous Distributed Interfaces:�Different Place, Same Time

  • Chat, instant messaging, and texting:

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    • CHAT, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and TALK.

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    • Flamers and MUDs.

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    • Instant Messaging, LOL etc.

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    • Twitter.

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    • Texting and cell phones.

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Synchronous Distributed Interfaces:�Different Place, Same Time

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Parental control system to oversee children’s online activities http://www.sentryparentalcontrols.com/

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Synchronous Distributed Interfaces:�Different Place, Same Time

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  • 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.

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Synchronous Distributed Interfaces:�Different Place, Same Time

  • Audio and video conferencing:

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    • Issues of ownership and control:
      • Private and public workspaces.
      • Identity of participants.
      • Location of actions.
      • Care with updating.

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    • Choice between audio/video conferencing, chat, IM, and texting depends on the goals and the task environment.

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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.

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    • 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.

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      • 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.

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      • Helps focus the group on key issues and discourages irrelevant digressions and unproductive behaviors.

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      • Task support and structure provides information and approaches to analyze it.

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Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time

    • File sharing.
    • Shared workspace.

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    • Group activities.
    • Colab and Liveboard.

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    • SMART Board (figure).

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    • Public spaces facilitate sharing.
    • Sharing photos is very popular.

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    • Notification systems.

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Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time

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  • 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.

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  • Small teams and large teams.

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  • Changes teaching style.

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Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time

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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)

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Face-to-Face Interfaces: Same Place, Same Time

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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)

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Questions for consideration

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