Readings:
[1] The Chat Circles Series : Explorations in designing abstract graphical communication interfaces
Summary:
This paper focuses on the design aspects of a chat environment, which is free of limitations incurred by the more traditional text chats. The authors modified plethora of aspects of their chat environment, resulting in various different representations of appearance of a chat environment and determining user-interface interaction. Some of the primary environment elements that the authors predominantly focused on were history, movement, communication channel, context, individual representation, and the environment itself. Working with previously outlined elements, the authors devised five chat environments including Chat Circles, Chat Circles II, Talking in Circles, Chatscape, and Tele-direction. This paper was able to highlight the entire process of creating chat programs — intended to “foster rich, engaging environments for sociable communication online.”
Reflection/Questions:
I am of the opinion that real life social setting can never be transposed to the digital realm — primarily because social interactions are based on myriad of physical cues and the interpretation of which are distinct for every individual based on their upbringing, their past experiences, and their current state of mind. Howbeit, as the authors described we can come close to simulating real life social interactions, but their context might differ. A lot of our social understanding comes from interpreting not what the speaker is speaking, but their underlying tone — a big reason voice messages over wechat are so popular in China and even considered as a status symbol [1]. I think Talking in Circles is the best representation of daily informal chat program as it encompasses verbal cues with physical cues. When I started reading Tele-directions in the paper, it reminded of a game called Blue whale, which turned fatal for many souls, as the tele-director asked tele-actor to take their life in order to win the game. Ergo design, context, and environment of an application are of utmost importance. Whilst reading the paper I thought what is it that I want in a daily informal social chat program? First few quick answers were facetime, whatsapp call, and google duo; then I thought about how to enhance these experiences — having a 3-D AR rendering of the person I am talking to instead of a 2D rendering. I have only thought about chat programs where I am talking to known individuals in an informal setting — hence context coming into play.
[2 ] Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes
Summary:
This paper focused on creating a system that would enable large groups of people, over the computer networks, to communicate and collaborate. In order to create such a system the authors identified three key feature namely visibility, accountability, and awareness — that exist in the real world to aid us in social interaction. They also discourse how our individual constraints and our understanding of social constraints influence our social interaction in the physical world. The authors of the paper present a functioning platform called “Babble”, and highlight the flaws that social translucence raises, from a digital communication perspective.
Reflection/Questions:
Towards the conclusion of the paper, the authors write that “the digital world appears to be populated by technologies that impose walls between people,” and I am of the belief that these walls don’t exist because of design but because of physical strictures that digital life presents, in comparison to physical world. The walls also exist because of our heightened sense of conscious, as our activity in virtual world persists and can be used against us in future, on the flip side our words are fleeting and people forget. Unless we are able to have a full virtual reality/augmented reality set up, and all communication is verbal, these walls will continue to exist. I believe that new social rules/norms will surface with evolution of social media and our integration with the virtual world. Howbeit, we are currently in the stone age of the internet (in terms of evolution). It was interesting to read about persistence of material in social media, this reminded me of variety of cases where popular people ran into PR problems because one of their old tweets resurfaced in a different light/context. Expanding on the last point, all of us are very careful when posting on social media because companies go through our social media accounts — this problem doesn’t exist in physical world. This situation makes me think of the next social science problem that might need a solution — how to protect people from getting cyberbullied for their tweet/ message being highlighted in the wrong context? How to allow people to freely share what they would in physical world, without the fear of being harshly judged by others/ not being vetted out by companies ? The authors also write that “in the digital world we are socially blind,” I would agree with this and I would add that we are socially manipulated, for instance exposure to only happy photos/messages/memories of people evoke jealousy in us. In addition, when people take part in social media activity we are not aware of their current state of mind and hence their most recent post might not be reflective of their current emotional state, hence socially manipulating us.
[1] https://qz.com/443441/stop-texting-right-now-and-learn-from-the-chinese-theres-a-better-way-to-message/
