- Donath, Judith, and Fernanda B. Viégas. “The chat circles series: explorations in designing abstract graphical communication interfaces.” Proceedings of the 4th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques. ACM, 2002.
- Erickson, Thomas, and Wendy A. Kellogg. “Social translucence: an approach to designing systems that support social processes.” ACM transactions on computer-human interaction (TOCHI) 7.1 (2000): 59-83.
We have finally arrived at talking about design and its effects on interaction in social systems. The two papers closely deal with the idea of Social Translucence – making visible the social actions that are typically unseen in digital interactions – and the effects it has on the participants. Erickson et al. introduces the idea and proposes a system for knowledge sharing driven by conversations. Its aims are more formal, targeting knowledge gathering and interaction in organizations and also introduces a social proxy system that maps how conversations are going. Donath et al. covers similar ideas of Translucence through the lens of an informal chat system, which uses animated circles in a space and allows moving around and joining conversations, somewhat simulating real-life interactions.
I think the chat circles are interesting in that it seems to simulate a real-life social function while stripping away all customization, which means you can’t be judged by your appearance but only by your words and actions. But there is still a section of people who won’t want to use it: the introverts. Imagine you’re at a party. You arrive somewhat late and so almost everyone is in groups engaged in conversation. You don’t want to be that outcast standing alone at the back but you don’t want to try joining in a conversation because you start thinking: what if they don’t want me in? What should I even say? Will I just end up standing there and not get a word out and look dumb? Can I even hold a conversation? Will they think I’m weird? Are they thinking that now? They probably are, aren’t they? I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home…
The chat circle space is not that different from a party. But you want everyone to engage and have fun. How can the system serve the shy ones better? Perhaps allow the circles to change their color to green or something to show that they are open to conversation. Perhaps encourage the circles in the space to go talk to circles who seem to be by themselves. Any number of ways that can make the place be more welcoming.
Another problem we might encounter is excessive gatekeeping. This could happen in both the knowledge system and chat circles. Erickson’s knowledge system already has features for requesting entry into a community. At the same time, you don’t want those protections to be used for preventing, say, newbies who are just trying to gain knowledge or are interested. You don’t want the admins to throw their weight around the powerless. StackOverflow is already suffering from the problem of being very unwelcoming to newcomers and old hands alike that they are trying to fix [1]. The same problem could occur among congregations in chat circles where the circles in a group can tell well-meaning people off. How can one be more welcoming is a very broad question that affects a lot of social systems, not just the ones described in the papers. I don’t think there is an algorithmic solution so the best solution right now is to have community guidelines and enforce them well.
One last thing I’d like to point out is that the idea of Teledirection was very prophetic. It describes to a T what happens in IRL streaming, a genre of live streaming popularized on Twitch where the streamer (the tele-actor) goes about their day in real life outside their home and the chat (the tele-directors) make requests or gives directions on what the streamer should do. The limits on what can be done need to be enforced by the streamer. A very famous example is IcePoseidon, an IRL streamer with a rabid fanbase who cause havoc wherever he goes. His presence at any place triggers the fanbase to start disturbing the business, making prank calls, attacking the business on review sites. I find it fascinating how the paper managed to predict it so well.
[1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/
