Summary
In the paper, “Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes”, the author looks at the missing social components of digital technology that are present in everyday physical conversations. One of the things that is touched on is the social blindness we have when we communicate with digital technology. In person, we can read body language and adjust for a group’s actions, however, in a digital community these things we take for granted are normally missing. We need a way to be able to incorporate these “physical” things into a digital community. This idea of creating a socially translucent digital environment is what sparked Babble. Features such as a social proxy, allow digital users to better understand the conversation they are in and eliminate some of the unknowns of a conversation group in a digital community. These features create more openness in a group conversation and are the means for digital conversations to be even more rewarding than physical conversations.
The next paper, “The Chat Circles Series Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Communication Interfaces”, looked at different methodologies and benefits of some graphical communication interfaces. Chat Circles is a graphical communication interface that changes the perceived norm of messaging. Typically, a user will send a plaintext message with limited tone to a group of members with an unknown status. With an interface like Chat Circles, the user can see group information, such as who is involved in the chat, when they use it. This helps give the user a more genuine conversational feel to their group chats. Other Chat Circles variants have attempted to use conversational graphics and online speech to help foster social interaction.
Reflection
These papers helped bring awareness to me about the simplicity of our current messaging systems. While easy to use, these systems leave much to be desired when compared to everyday conversations. I have been in conversations before where the tone of a message I am trying to convey is not the tone the recipient perceives. With a lack of body movement and the assistance of audible tone, it is easy for messages to be misperceived. It would be helpful if there was some way to add physical language to a text message when it was sent. This addition would favorably be automatic, because if the user has to manually pick a physical description of themselves it is not as accurate as it would be in normal conversation. The addition of some variant of chat circles could greatly enhance a user’s knowledge of group activity and membership. Ultimately, I see that there is a major desire for more realism in digital communication. The more visible we make elements of a group conversation appear, the easier it is for users to respond appropriately.
Questions
Is it possible to eventually mimic all physical social queues in a digital conversation?
Does keeping an archive of conversations create a stigma of secrecy in digital conversations?
Is there any way to add “physical” feel to a message with recording a video or taking a picture?
Could our phone detect emotion when we send a message and attach it to our message?
