Social Awareness

Carlos A. Sánchez03/04/2008

Agenda

CONCEPTS Historical Perspective 40,000 B.C.

BABBLE - LOOPS (IBM Social Computing Lab) Knowledge Management Application Social Translucence

AWARE (University of Aarhus – Denmark) Context Mediated Social Awareness in Mobile Cooperation –

Healthcare environment Java Awareness Context Framework – JACF

iSOCIALIZE (University of Aalborg – Denmark) Mobile Social Awareness amongst family and acquaintances Awareness Cues

Historical Perspective (I)

What is the percent genetic difference between humans an chimpanzees?

~ 1.23%

What is the percent critical difference?

0.01% to 0.02%

Which one is arguably the most critical difference?

Historical Perspective (II)

LANGUAGE : ~40,000 B.C.

CONVERSATION

Why is conversation important?

Synchronous Knowledge Transfer in a Social Space

What was missing?

Historical Perspective (III)

WRITING: ~ 4,000 B.C. - Cuneiform ~ 2,000 B.C. - Alphabetic Script

PERSISTENCE

What did persistence bring?

Asynchronous Knowledge Transfer

What was missing?

Historical Perspective (IV)

Printing Press: Johan Gutenberg, 1439

Mass Dissemination of Knowledge Standards : A book was the same everywhere

Who said what & when

What did the printing press bring?

Scientific Communities Industrial Revolution

What was missing?

Historical Perspective (V)

Linking computers

ARPANET X.25 - October 29th, 1969Internet TCP/IP - January 1st, 1983

Linking documents

WWW First Web Page August 6th ,1991

What did these added?Asynchronous and Synchronous Communications

Decoupling of Space and TimeInstantaneous Mass CoverageMultiple way Communications

What was missing?

Historical Perspective (VI)

Linking people : Web 2.0 - 2004

Chat rooms, collaborative filtering, mash-ups, podcasting, social navigation, social search, virtual communities,

sharing, blogs, wikis

What did Web 2.0 bring?

A Digital knowledge oriented environment where human social interactions create and share content using the

web as a platform.

What is missing?

Can we do better?

Concepts Review

Conversation, Persistence, Synchronous and Asynchronous Communications, Place decoupling, mass dissemination, who said what/when, multi-way communications, knowledge communities, and linking computers, documents and people.

What is used in IM systems? What is gained? What is lost?

Social Translucence

Babble & Loops

Social Translucence - Properties

Solid Door with “Please Open Slowly” Sign

vs. Glass Door

Visibility of Social Information Humans react faster to movement, faces and

figures than printed signs Awareness Support

I know you are in the other side. You know I’m here We both know the social rules

Accountability I know that you know that I know

Social Translucence : Translucent vs. Transparent

Power of Constraints: Private vs. Public Information

Social Translucence :Opaque Digital Systems

Digital Systems are generally opaque to social information

In the digital world we are socially blind

i.e. Waiting in Line at USPS vs.Waiting on-line for the IM tech

support at ebayWhat could be done? More on this

coming

Social Translucence - Babble

Knowledge Management SystemsCapture, Retrieval, Dissemination of and

organization’s internal information

Traditional ViewData Mining, Text clustering, database

documents

Social ViewProduction and use of knowledge is a social

phenomena

Social Translucence - Babble

Social View of Knowledge Management

Who has worked on a project? What have they done? Can we talk to them? How have they used existing knowledge? Social references for calls vs. database list

Information in databases is more useful if it provides links to enter social networks

Knowledge database vs. Knowledge Communities

Social Translucence - Babble

Conversationally Based Knowledge Community

Conversation is essential : Natural medium to create, develop and validate knowledge

Conversation is a deep interactive intellectual process

Conversation is a fundamental social process People speak to an audience People portray themselves through

conversation

Social Translucence - Conversation

Did I say that conversation is important?

Social Translucence – Digital Conversation

Digital Conversations PERSIST

Therefore

They can be synchronous or asynchronous

With an intimate or vast audienceCan be searched, browsed, replayed, annotated, visualized, restructured,

etc.

Social Translucence – Activity Support

Approaches to make Social Activity Visible

Realist i.e. Teleconferencing Problems: Scale, cost, social cues not well conveyed,

bandwidth, support Mimetic i.e.: Virtual Environments, Avatars

Problems: Scale, has to manipulate avatars to produce social cues, support

Abstract i.e.: Waiting on-line example next slide Less is more: easy to understand, implement and

maintain

Social Translucence Abstract Social Proxies

Social Translucence – BabbleKnowledge Management Community

Social Translucence – LOOPSWeb Interface

Social Translucence – LoopsBulletin Board

Social Translucence - Babble

Persistent textual representation of a conversation

Everybody knows that conversations are persistent and shared in a sequential structure

What are the challenges?

Social Translucence - Babble

Social Proxy of a Conversation

Social Translucence - Babble

Structure of a Knowledge Community

Social Translucence - Babble

Diachronic (Longitudinal) Proxies

The AWARE ArchitectureSupporting Context-Mediated social Awareness in Mobile Cooperation

AWARE Architecture

Context Aware Computing as facilitator of social awareness

CASE: Mobile Collaboration in a hospital environment

AWARE Architecture: Generic platform for supporting context mediated social awareness

JACT: Java Awareness Context Framework

AWARE Architecture: Operational Issues

Hospital buildings are large. People move around (not co-located).

Nurses spend large amount of times keeping track of physicians location and availability.

Interns need to consult frequently with senior doctors about patients.

Doctors in operating room frequently have to wait for test results before advancing. Meanwhile they perform other activities

Who to contact? When? How? Where?

AWARE Architecture:

Awareness in CSCW Goal is to minimize unwanted

interruptions through context-mediate social awareness

Interruptions 90% of brief conversations are

unplanned Only 55% of people who are interrupted

continue in the same activity Blocking calls is not an option in a

hospital 60% of phone calls fail to reach recipient

AWARE Architecture

Context-Mediated Social Awareness

In working settings people avoid interrupting each other when proper mechanisms are in place

Monitoring: The actor’s activity provide information to be monitored i.e. operating in room 103

Displaying: The actor selects what status information to be displayed i.e. at lunch.

AWARE Architecture

Awarephone requirements

Context-mediated social awareness via context cues.

Direct synchronous communications Exchange of prioritized messages by

placing virtual post-it notes on a co-worker.

AWARE Architecture

AWARE Architecture

Test Results Everybody liked the system People don’t like to provide location

information Don’t want to provide the ability to be

tracked i.e. length of the coffee breaks Cell phone is preferred to pagers

provides the ability for immediate communication

Preset messages is a desirable option

AWARE Architecture

AWARE Architecture - JACF

iSocialize

Investigating Awareness Cues for a Mobile Social Awareness Application

iSocialize

Goals of the Study

Understand the nature of social awareness between acquainted and closely related people

How technology as well as traditional methods of communication support awareness

iSocialize

Challenges

Participating families found it difficult to maintain and overview of activities of family and friends

Participants found it difficult to determine appropriate times to call or interrupt

Participants expressed concerns about sharing all kinds of information about them

iSocialize

Social Awareness Cues

Activity: Actions and whereabouts of partner

Status: Communication stateRelation : Defines the social

relation between partnersVicinity: Distance to partner – How

much effort contact requires

iSocialize

iSocialize

iSocialize

iSocialize

iSocialize

iSocialize

Evaluation

20 Subjects at Aalborg University - Denmark

Average age: 24 years old Five pairs acquainted – Five pairs

unacquainted Video recorded sessions: two

participants per session Wizard of Oz evaluation

iSocialize

Findings: Imprecise Awareness Cues: People don’t

want to provide exact location Awareness Cues Integration Challenges

Privacy Concerns i.e. location vs. activity Difficult to Maintain a mental model of

contacts Changes and updates of awareness cues Awareness cues requires previous social

construct

That’s all Folks

Thank you!