Summary:
Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes:
This paper seeks to support communication and collaboration among large groups by studying what aspects of face to face physical communication help keep it coherent compared to virtual communication. The paper also argues that allowing two parties to see each other in what they call a “socially translucent system” helps support coherent behavior. It goes on to state that a large part of how we act in face to face conversations is determined by our surroundings and an awareness of them. In order to try and fix this issue with virtual communication the paper provides three potential solutions: abstract, mimetic and realist. Abstract refers to trying to portray social information in different ways that aren’t closely tied to their physical analogs. Mimetic refers to trying to re-represent physical social cues, as literally as possible, digitally. Realist refers to trying to project physical social information digitally.
The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces:
This paper starts off talking about the evolution of text-based communications and how they are becoming more and more interactive. Then the paper goes into detail about how text-based communication may be extremely convenient but it lacks several key elements in conversation. Namely providing emotion and intention with things like body language or context are going to be absent. The paper then leads into talking about building several text-based chats including Chat Circles, Talking in Circles, TeleDirection and Chatscape. Each one using special features to convey certain things about the user or promote closer relationships between two users. For example, Chat Circles lets you apply specific colors and shapes to another user to make them stand out.
Reflection:
Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes:
When I think of issues that come up in virtual conversations compared to physical ones I usually think of more human-related issues. For example if it’s a virtual conversation over text than you may miss meaning that would otherwise be in the tone of voice. Likewise if you are in a virtual conversation that includes audio you may miss meaning that would otherwise be conveyed by body language. However, I’ve never considered how being in a physical environment with another person also plays a role in conversation beyond just what the two parties are doing.
The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces:
Interestingly some of the aspects of physical communication I mentioned in my reflection for Social Translucence ended up being mentioned in the next paper. Speaking of many different ideas for more specialized text-based communication reminded me of an old proximity-based text chat called “Pictochat” from when I was much younger. In Pictochat you could talk to other people using a Nintendo DS via text or self-drawn images, provided the other party had a DS and was physically nearby. Though in practice, forcing both parties to be physically close to each other to use a communcation service will remove the convenience of that service.
Questions:
- How much less efficient are virtual conversations at being coherent than physical ones?
- How much do you think production would increase if virtual conversations could be as coherent as physical ones?
- Which proposed solution for the issue of virtual communication sounds most promising?
- Would trying to make text-based communication more coherent remove some of it’s convenience by slowing down the process?
