| Pushing relevant artifact annotations in collaborative software development | | BIBA | Full-Text | 1-4 | |
| Uri Dekel; James D. Herbsleb | |||
| Recent techniques show the benefits of attaching community generated knowledge to artifacts in an information space and presenting it to subsequent readers. We argue that such knowledge may also be relevant to the readers of artifacts which link to this target. Such situations are particularly frequent in software development, where a lack of awareness of critical directives associated with an invoked function can lead to costly errors. We describe how eMoose, a group memory-aid for this domain, addresses these problems by visually "pushing" annotated knowledge from invocation targets into the invoking code. Similar techniques could potentially be applied to other development phases and to other domains. | |||
| CoMaya: incorporating advanced collaboration capabilities into 3d digital media design tools | | BIBA | Full-Text | 5-8 | |
| Agustina Agustina; Fei Liu; Steven Xia; Haifeng Shen; Chengzheng Sun | |||
| Complex 3D digital media creation demands anytime and anywhere collaboration support. The CoMaya project aims to incorporate such advanced collaboration capabilities into Autodesk Maya. This paper reports some research findings and lessons we learned from extending the transparent adaptation approach from 2D office applications to 3D digital media design tools. | |||
| Social summarization: does social feedback improve access to speech data? | | BIBA | Full-Text | 9-12 | |
| Vaiva Kalnikaité; Steve Whittaker | |||
| We extend the notion of social tagging to construct social summaries of complex multimedia materials. Our system allows students to apply time-indexed multimedia tags such as handwritten annotations or photos to different parts of lecture recordings. These tags can be used to straightforwardly access different parts of the lecture. The social component of the interface presents information about which tags are most frequently accessed by others: allowing students to infer those parts of the lecture of most interest to others. We demonstrate the utility of the approach in a 6 week fieldwork study. Social summaries are used much more than corresponding systems that do not provide social information. In addition, social tool use was correlated with high course marks. | |||
| Imprint, a community visualization of printer data: designing for open-ended engagement on sustainability | | BIBA | Full-Text | 13-16 | |
| Zachary Pousman; Hafez Rouzati; John Stasko | |||
| We introduce Imprint, a casual information visualization kiosk that displays data extracted from a printer queue. We designed the system to be open-ended, and to support a workgroup in reflection and conversation about the data. Imprint's visualizations depict environmental issues, such as energy consumption and paper consumption of the printers, as well as social information, such as popular concepts from the printed matter. Imprint is intended to spark reflection and conversation, and to bring data into discussions about paper usage and "waste." Our goal is not to explicitly reduce paper, energy, or toner consumption, but instead to open conversations by community members. Our work highlights a design approach for semi-public displays of personal data. | |||
| Range: exploring implicit interaction through electronic whiteboard design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 17-26 | |
| Wendy Ju; Brian A. Lee; Scott R. Klemmer | |||
| An important challenge in designing ubiquitous computing experiences is negotiating transitions between explicit and implicit interaction, such as how and when to provide users with notifications. While the paradigm of implicit interaction has important benefits, it is also susceptible to difficulties with hidden modes, unexpected action, and misunderstood intent. To address these issues, this work presents a framework for implicit interaction and applies it to the design of an interactive whiteboard application called Range. Range is a public interactive whiteboard designed to support co-located, ad-hoc meetings. It employs proximity sensing capability to proactively transition between display and authoring modes, to clear space for writing, and to cluster ink strokes. We show how the implicit interaction techniques of user reflection (how systems indicate to users what they perceive or infer), system demonstration (how systems indicate what they are doing), and override (how users can interrupt or stop a proactive system action) can prevent, mitigate, and correct errors in the whiteboard's proactive behaviors. These techniques can be generalized to improve the designs of a wide array of ubiquitous computing experiences. | |||
| Mopping up: modeling wikipedia promotion decisions | | BIBA | Full-Text | 27-36 | |
| Moira Burke; Robert Kraut | |||
| This paper presents a model of the behavior of candidates for promotion to administrator status in Wikipedia. It uses a policy capture framework to highlight similarities and differences in the community's stated criteria for promotion decisions to those criteria actually correlated with promotion success. As promotions are determined by the consensus of dozens of voters with conflicting opinions and unwritten expectations, the results highlight the degree to which consensus is truly reached. The model is fast and easily computable on the fly, and thus could be applied as a self-evaluation tool for editors considering becoming administrators, as a dashboard for voters to view a nominee's relevant statistics, or as a tool to automatically search for likely future administrators. Implications for distributed consensus-building in online communities are discussed. | |||
| Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination | | BIBA | Full-Text | 37-46 | |
| Aniket Kittur; Robert E. Kraut | |||
| Wikipedia's success is often attributed to the large numbers of contributors who improve the accuracy, completeness and clarity of articles while reducing bias. However, because of the coordination needed to write an article collaboratively, adding contributors is costly. We examined how the number of editors in Wikipedia and the coordination methods they use affect article quality. We distinguish between explicit coordination, in which editors plan the article through communication, and implicit coordination, in which a subset of editors structure the work by doing the majority of it. Adding more editors to an article improved article quality only when they used appropriate coordination techniques and was harmful when they did not. Implicit coordination through concentrating the work was more helpful when many editors contributed, but explicit coordination through communication was not. Both types of coordination improved quality more when an article was in a formative stage. These results demonstrate the critical importance of coordination in effectively harnessing the "wisdom of the crowd" in online production environments. | |||
| Articulations of wikiwork: uncovering valued work in wikipedia through barnstars | | BIBA | Full-Text | 47-56 | |
| Travis Kriplean; Ivan Beschastnikh; David W. McDonald | |||
| Successful online communities have complex cooperative arrangements, articulations of work, and integration practices. They require technical infrastructure to support a broad division of labor. Yet the research literature lacks empirical studies that detail which types of work are valued by participants in an online community. A content analysis of Wikipedia barnstars -- personalized tokens of appreciation given to participants -- reveals a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. Our analysis develops a theoretical lens for understanding how wiki software supports the creation of articulations of work. We give implications of our results for communities engaged in large-scale collaborations. | |||
| Hunting for fun: solitude and attentiveness in collaboration | | BIBA | Full-Text | 57-66 | |
| Oskar Juhlin; Alexandra Weilenmann | |||
| The design of online collaborative computer games and pervasive games can learn from the everyday practice of deer hunting. We present an ethnographic study revealing how hunters fine-tune their experience through temporal and spatial organization. The hunt is organized in a way that allows the hunters to balance between forms of collaboration ranging from solitude to face-to-face interaction, as well as between attentiveness and relaxation. Thus, the hunters deal with the task -- hunting down the prey -- while managing issues of enjoyment. We argue that understanding these experiential qualities is relevant for collaborative gaming, and adds to our understanding of leisure. | |||
| Understanding collective play in an urban screen game | | BIBA | Full-Text | 67-76 | |
| Kenton O'Hara; Maxine Glancy; Simon Robertshaw | |||
| In recent years there has been a growing interest in Urban Screen applications. While there have been several deployments of these technologies in our urban environments, surprisingly little research effort has aimed to explore the detailed material practice of people's engagement and interaction with these urban screen applications. In this paper, we present a study of collaborative game play on large urban displays situated in three city locations in the UK. The study highlights ways in which collaborative play is initiated and coordinated within the context of an urban environment. These experiences are related to physical characteristics of the architectural spaces, the people populating these spaces and the interactive properties of the game itself. The study moves on to discuss issues relating to audience and spectatorship, an inherent feature of interaction in urban environments. The issues of audience and spectatorship are discussed in their own right but also in terms of their relationship to the playing experience. Finally the study considers these interactive experiences in the contexts of being hosted by a professional compere and also with no host present. Through the study we highlight factors to consider in the design of collaborative urban screen applications. | |||
| Flashlight jigsaw: an exploratory study of an ad-hoc multi-player game on public displays | | BIBA | Full-Text | 77-86 | |
| Xiang Cao; Michael Massimi; Ravin Balakrishnan | |||
| As large displays become prevalent in public spaces, they could be employed to create novel game experiences for the public. We present an exploratory study of an ad-hoc multi-player game played on such public displays. The game, Flashlight Jigsaw, was deployed in a shared lab space and a public atrium for two weeks in total. Through interviews supported by observations and system logs we explored the experiences and behaviors of players and spectators. We also investigated the interrelationship between public display games and the spaces they are deployed in. The research resulted in findings regarding game play, communication, social interaction, spectatorship, and space and location around such a game. We use our findings to develop design implications for future public display games. | |||
| EatWell: sharing nutrition-related memories in a low-income community | | BIBA | Full-Text | 87-96 | |
| Andrea Grimes; Martin Bednar; Jay David Bolter; Rebecca E. Grinter | |||
| Low-income African American communities face a disproportionate amount of diet-related health problems in the United States. To address this issue, we developed EatWell, a system that allows people to use their cell phones to create voice memories describing how they have tried to eat healthfully in their neighborhoods (e.g., at local restaurants) and listen to the memories that others have created. In this paper, we describe the results of our field trial of EatWell, specifically characterizing how our participants were able to craft stories that were both emotive and culturally-relevant, the challenges that arose in creating these memories and finally how sharing these stories facilitated a sense of community empowerment. We conclude by presenting implications for the design of future applications that facilitate the sharing of health-related experiences. | |||
| The context, content & community collage: sharing personal digital media in the physical workplace | | BIBA | Full-Text | 97-106 | |
| Joseph F. McCarthy; Ben Congleton; F. Maxwell Harper | |||
| Online social media services enable people to share many aspects of their personal interests and passions with friends, acquaintances and strangers. We are investigating how the display of social media in a workplace context can improve relationships among collocated colleagues. We have designed, developed and deployed the Context, Content and Community Collage, which runs on large LCD touchscreen computers installed in eight locations throughout a research laboratory. This proactive display application senses nearby people via Bluetooth phones, and responds by incrementally adding photos associated with those people to an ambient collage shown on the screen. This paper describes the motivations, goals, design and impact of the system, highlighting the ways the system has increased interactions and improved personal relationships among coworkers at the deployment site. We also look at how the creation of a shared physical window into online media has affected the use of that media. | |||
| Representing community: knowing users in the face of changing constituencies | | BIBA | Full-Text | 107-116 | |
| David Ribes; Thomas A. Finholt | |||
| This paper traces the use of the concept 'community' by drawing attention to the ways in which it serves as an organizing principle within systems development. The data come from an ethnographic study of participants and their activities in the Water and Environmental Research Systems Network (WATERS). WATERS is a US National Science Foundation-funded observatory and cyberinfrastructure project intended to serve the heterogeneous scientific disciplines studying the water environment. We identify four vehicles by which WATERS participants sought to know the needs, conflicts and goals of their diverse communities: engaging in vernacular discussions; organizing community forums; implementing surveys; and requirements gathering. The paper concludes that the use of community in IT development projects is substantially divorced from its traditional meanings which emphasize collective moral orientations or shared affective ties; instead, within systems development, community has a closer meaning to a 'political constituency,' and is used as a short-hand for issues of inquiry, representation, inclusion and mandate. | |||
| The emergence of online widescale interaction in unexpected events: assistance, alliance & retreat | | BIBA | Full-Text | 117-126 | |
| Leysia Palen; Sarah Vieweg | |||
| This paper examines online, widescale interaction during an emergency event of national interest. Widescale interaction describes the potential for broad, immediate, and varied participation that the conditions of online forums, and social networking sites in particular, increasingly allow. Here, we examine a group on a popular social networking site as a virtual destination in the aftermath of the Northern Illinois University (NIU) shootings of February 14, 2008 in relation to related activity that happened in response to the Virginia Tech (VT) tragedy 10 months earlier. We consider features of interactions that are enabled when a vast audience converges under such conditions. We discuss how commiseration and information seeking are interrelated, and how geographical communities that share a common experience ally in such a public, online setting. | |||
| Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response | | BIBA | Full-Text | 127-136 | |
| Irina Shklovski; Leysia Palen; Jeannette Sutton | |||
| Disasters affect not only the welfare of individuals and family groups, but also the well-being of communities, and can serve as a catalyst for innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we present evidence of ICT use for re-orientation toward the community and for the production of public goods in the form of information dissemination during disasters. Results from this study of information seeking practices by members of the public during the October 2007 Southern California wildfires suggest that ICT use provides a means for communicating community-relevant information especially when members become geographically dispersed, leveraging and even building community resources in the process. In the presence of pervasive ICT, people are developing new practices for emergency response by using ICT to address problems that arise from information dearth and geographical dispersion. In doing so, they find community by reconnecting with others who share their concern for the locale threatened by the hazard. | |||
| Resilience in collaboration: technology as a resource for new patterns of action | | BIBA | Full-Text | 137-146 | |
| Gloria Mark; Bryan Semaan | |||
| In CSCW, there has been little or no attention given to how people use technology to restore collaborations when there is a major environmental disruption. We are especially interested in studying resilience in collaboration-the extent to which people continue to collaborate with work groups or to socialize despite prolonged disruption. We conducted an empirical study of people living in two countries that experienced prolonged disruption through war in their work and personal lives. We describe how technology played a major role in providing people with alternative resources to reconstruct, modify, and develop new routines, or patterns of action, for work and socializing. People created new assemblages of technological and physical resources. We discuss how the use of new resources in creating new routines led to more of a reliance on virtual work and in some cases to deeper structural changes. | |||
| Supporting medical conversations between deaf and hearing individuals with tabletop displays | | BIBA | Full-Text | 147-156 | |
| Anne Marie Piper; James D. Hollan | |||
| This paper describes the design and evaluation of Shared Speech Interface (SSI), an application for an interactive multitouch tabletop display designed to facilitate medical conversations between a deaf patient and a hearing, non-signing physician. We employ a participatory design process involving members of the deaf community as well as medical and communication experts. We report results from an evaluation that compares conversation when facilitated by: (1) a digital table, (2) a human sign language interpreter, and (3) both a digital table and an interpreter. Our research reveals that tabletop displays have valuable properties for facilitating discussion between deaf and hearing individuals as well as enhancing privacy and independence. The contributions of this work include initial guidelines for cooperative group work technology for users with varying hearing abilities, discussion of benefits of participatory design with the deaf community, and lessons about using dictated speech on shared displays. | |||
| Comparing content and input redirection in MDEs | | BIBA | Full-Text | 157-166 | |
| James R. Wallace; Regan L. Mandryk; Kori M. Inkpen | |||
| Designers of Multi-Display Environments (MDEs) often use input redirection to allow users to manipulate content on multiple displays with a single interaction device, but users seated at sub-optimal positions (i.e., not facing the display) may find interaction difficult or frustrating. In collaborative MDEs, users should be able to choose their preferred collaborative arrangement, rather than adjusting to the limitations of the technology. We compare content and input redirection from a variety of seating positions in an MDE. Results from our studies show that content redirection does not suffer from performance loss in sub-optimal seating positions, as opposed to input redirection, which does. Content redirection provides a method for all members of a group to interact with shared content regardless of their position relative to a shared display. | |||
| Collaboration and interference: awareness with mice or touch input | | BIBA | Full-Text | 167-176 | |
| Eva Hornecker; Paul Marshall; Nick Sheep Dalton; Yvonne Rogers | |||
| Multi-touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular. An assumed benefit is that they can facilitate collaborative interactions in co-located groups. In particular, being able to see another's physical actions can enhance awareness, which in turn can support fluid interaction and coordination. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence or measures to support these claims. We present an analysis of different aspects of awareness in an empirical study that compared two kinds of input: multi-touch and multiple mice. For our analysis, a set of awareness indices was derived from the CSCW and HCI literatures, which measures both the presence and absence of awareness in co-located settings. Our findings indicate higher levels of awareness for the multi-touch condition accompanied by significantly more actions that interfere with each other. A subsequent qualitative analysis shows that the interactions in this condition were more fluid and that interference was quickly resolved. We suggest that it is more important that resources are available to negotiate interference rather than necessarily to attempt to prevent it. | |||
| Impact of seating positions on group video communication | | BIBA | Full-Text | 177-186 | |
| Naomi Yamashita; Keiji Hirata; Shigemi Aoyagi; Hideaki Kuzuoka; Yasunori Harada | |||
| In this study, we examine how changes in seating position across different sites affect video-mediated communication. We experimentally investigated the effects of altering seating positions on conversations in four-person group communication, two-by-two at identical locations: distant parties seated across from each other vs. distant parties seated side-by-side. In the latter seating arrangement, we found that speaker switches were more evenly distributed between distance-separated participants and co-located participants at points without verbal indication of the next speaker. Participants shared a higher sense of unity and reached a slightly better group solution. These findings demonstrate the importance of providing people with various seating arrangements across distant sites to facilitate different group activities. | |||
| Situated practices of looking: visual practice in an online world | | BIBA | Full-Text | 187-196 | |
| Lilly C. Irani; Gillian R. Hayes; Paul Dourish | |||
| Graphical virtual worlds are increasingly significant sites of collaborative interaction. Many argue that the simulation of the everyday environment makes them particularly effective for collaboration. Based on a study of visual practice in Second Life, we argue: first, that the practice of looking is more varied than it might at first seem; second, that we need to look beyond the virtual in understanding virtual worlds; and third, that implementations blend interactional practice. We suggest that the value of virtual worlds as sites of collaboration might lie more in their richness and openness to appropriation than in their simulation of everyday interaction. | |||
| Eye-tracking for avatar eye-gaze and interactional analysis in immersive collaborative virtual environments | | BIBA | Full-Text | 197-200 | |
| William Steptoe; Robin Wolff; Alessio Murgia; Estefania Guimaraes; John Rae; Paul Sharkey; David Roberts; Anthony Steed | |||
| Participants' eye-gaze is generally not captured or represented in immersive collaborative virtual environment (ICVE) systems. We present EyeCVE, which uses mobile eye-trackers to drive the gaze of each participant's virtual avatar, thus supporting remote mutual eye-contact and awareness of others' gaze in a perceptually unfragmented shared virtual workspace. We detail trials in which participants took part in three-way conferences between remote CAVE systems linked via EyeCVE. Eye-tracking data was recorded and used to evaluate interaction, confirming the system's support for the use of gaze as a communicational and management resource in multiparty conversational scenarios. We point toward subsequent investigation of eye-tracking in ICVEs for enhanced remote social-interaction and analysis. | |||
| Effect of restarts and pauses on achieving a state of mutual orientation between a human and a robot | | BIBA | Full-Text | 201-204 | |
| Hideaki Kuzuoka; Karola Pitsch; Yuya Suzuki; Ikkaku Kawaguchi; Keiichi Yamazaki; Akiko Yamazaki; Yoshinori Kuno; Paul Luff; Christian Heath | |||
| In this paper we consider the development of a museum guide robot that has both autonomous and remotely controlled features. We focus on the capabilities such a robot could have to help focus the attention of a visitor on an object or artefact. Inspired by studies of social interaction, which investigate whether the robot could deploy "restarts" and "pauses" at certain moments in its talk to first elicit the visitor's attention/gaze towards the robot. We report an experiment where we deployed such a robot to interact with real visitors to a science museum. These experiments show that such a strategy does seem to have a significant impact on obtaining the visitor's gaze. | |||
| Evaluating the deployment of a mobile technology in a hospital ward | | BIBA | Full-Text | 205-214 | |
| Charlotte Tang; Sheelagh Carpendale | |||
| Since health care teams are often distributed across time and location, information sharing is crucial for effective patient care. Studying the use of a mobile information technology in a local hospital ward at two months and eleven months after its deployment identifies both short- and long-term phenomena and reveals a mismatch between the intentions behind the deployed mobile technology and the nurses' current work practices. We contrast the new mobile technology with the paper artifacts that were previously relied upon in nursing work. Finally, in light of these findings, we suggest design directions for future technology to support the nursing shift work. | |||
| Transactive memory in trauma resuscitation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 215-224 | |
| Aleksandra Sarcevic; Ivan Marsic; Michael E. Lesk; Randall S. Burd | |||
| This paper describes an ethnographic study conducted to explore the possibilities for future design and development of technological support for trauma teams. We videotaped 10 trauma resuscitations and transcribed each event. Using a framework that we developed, we coded each transcript to allow qualitative and quantitative analysis of the trauma teams' collaborative processes. We analyzed teams' tasks, interactions, and communication patterns that support information acquisition and sharing. Our results showed the importance of team transactive memory, but also pointed to inefficiencies in communication processes, which enable the functioning of this collective memory system. Based on quantitative and qualitative observations of trauma teamwork, we present opportunities for technological solutions that may reduce the cognitive effort needed for maintaining the working memory of trauma teams. | |||
| Moving patients around: a field study of coordination between clinical and non-clinical staff in hospitals | | BIBA | Full-Text | 225-228 | |
| Joanna Abraham; Madhu C. Reddy | |||
| Effective coordination is central to work in organizations. We conducted a field study examining challenges to coordination between clinical and non-clinical staff in the patient transfer process of a major academic hospital. We present one major challenge: lack of information sharing between these staff members and discuss the reasons for and consequences of this challenge to the work in the hospital. | |||
| The microstructures of social tagging: a rational model | | BIBA | Full-Text | 229-238 | |
| Wai-Tat Fu | |||
| This article presents a rational model developed under the distributed cognition framework that explains how social tags influence knowledge acquisition and adaptation in exploratory ill-defined information tasks. The model provides integrated predictions on the interactions among link selections, use and creation of tags, and the formation of mental categories. The model shows that the quality of tags not only influences search efficiency, but also the quality of mental categories formed during exploratory search. In addition, the model shows that aggregate regularities can be explained by microstructures of behavior that emerged from the adaptive assimilation of concepts and categories of multiple users through the social tagging system. The model has important implications on how collaborative systems could influence higher-level cognitive activities. | |||
| Influences on tag choices in del.icio.us | | BIBA | Full-Text | 239-248 | |
| Emilee Rader; Rick Wash | |||
| Collaborative tagging systems have the potential to produce socially constructed information organization schemes. The effectiveness of tags for finding and re-finding information depends upon how individual users choose tags; however, influences on users' tag choices are poorly understood. We quantitatively test competing hypotheses from the literature concerning these choices, using data from del.icio.us (a collaborative tagging system for organizing web bookmarks) and a computer model of possible tag choice strategies. We find evidence that users choose tags in a pattern consistent with personal information management goals, rather than as a result of social influence. | |||
| Game design principles in everyday fitness applications | | BIBA | Full-Text | 249-252 | |
| Taj Campbell; Brian Ngo; James Fogarty | |||
| The global obesity epidemic has prompted our community to explore the potential for technology to play a stronger role in promoting healthier lifestyles. Although there are several examples of successful games based on focused physical interaction, persuasive applications that integrate into everyday life have had more mixed results. This underscores a need for designs that encourage physical activity while addressing fun, sustainability, and behavioral change. This note suggests a new perspective, inspired in part by the social nature of many everyday fitness applications and by the successful encouragement of long term play in massively multiplayer online games. We first examine the game design literature to distill a set of principles for discussing and comparing applications. We then use these principles to analyze an existing application. Finally, we present Kukini, a design for an everyday fitness game. | |||
| Small details: using one device to navigate together | | BIBA | Full-Text | 253-256 | |
| Derek F. Reilly; Bonnie Mackay; Carolyn R. Watters; Kori M. Inkpen | |||
| We present results from a study examining the sensitivity of group navigation strategies to changes in route presentation on a shared mobile device. Two content-equivalent interfaces are compared. An interface providing textual instructions linked to regions on a route map yields reliance on text primarily, encouraging route planning and a divide-and-conquer strategy we term 'navigator and scout'. An interface combining text instructions with map segments on individual pages yields less planning, still permits nav/scout, and sees an increase in an ad-hoc 'sync and go' strategy involving more gathering around the device. Finally, when the route map is used without text, the frequency of the nav/scout strategy drops markedly as sync and go increases. | |||
| "Are you watching this film or what?": interruption and the juggling of cohorts | | BIBA | Full-Text | 257-266 | |
| Peter Tolmie; Andy Crabtree; Tom Rodden; Steve Benford | |||
| A proliferation of mobile devices in everyday life has increased the likelihood of technologically mediated interruptions. We examine ethnographic data from an SMS-based pervasive game in order to explicate the situated character of interruption. Ethnomethodological analysis of gameplay in the context of participants' everyday lives shows that interruption handling is shaped by its accountability to the various people or 'cohorts' whose concerns participants need to juggle simultaneously. Findings inform existing approaches to design where certain presuppositions regarding the nature of interruption prevail. Accordingly, we propose an approach to interruption handling that respects the ways in which people orient to and reason about interruptions locally in the conduct of situated action. | |||
| The computational geowiki: what, why, and how | | BIBA | Full-Text | 267-276 | |
| Reid Priedhorsky; Loren Terveen | |||
| Google Maps and its spin-offs are highly successful, but they have a major limitation: users see only pictures of geographic data. These data are inaccessible except by limited vendor-defined APIs, and associated user data are weakly linked to them. But some applications require access, specifically geowikis and computational geowikis. We present the design and implementation of a computational geowiki. We also show empirically that both geowiki and computational geowiki features are necessary for a representative domain, bicycling, because (a) cyclists have useful knowledge unavailable except from cyclists and (b) cyclist-oriented automatic route-finding is enhanced by user input. Finally, we derive design implications: for example, user contributions presented within a route description are useful, and wikis should support contribution of opinion as well as fact. | |||
| Linguistic mimicry and trust in text-based CMC | | BIBA | Full-Text | 277-280 | |
| Lauren E. Scissors; Alastair J. Gill; Darren Gergle | |||
| This study examines the relationship between linguistic mimicry and trust establishment in a text-chat environment. Twenty-six participant pairs engaged in a social dilemma investment game and chatted via Instant Messenger (IM) after every five rounds of investment. Results revealed that, within chat sessions, lexical mimicry (repetition of words or word phrases by both partners) was significantly higher for high-trusting pairs than for low-trusting pairs, but that lexical mimicry across chat sessions was significantly higher for low-trusting pairs than for high-trusting pairs. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed. | |||
| Mind your Ps and Qs: the impact of politeness and rudeness in online communities | | BIBA | Full-Text | 281-284 | |
| Moira Burke; Robert Kraut | |||
| Little is known about the impact of politeness in online communities. We use an inductive approach to automatically model linguistic politeness in online discussion groups and determine the impact of politeness on desired outcomes, such as increased reply rates. We describe differences in perceived politeness across a variety of groups and find that, controlling for group norms of responsiveness and message length, politeness increases reply rates in some technical groups, but rudeness is more effective in some political groups. The perceived politeness scores will be used to validate linguistic politeness strategies from theory and to inform the creation of a machine learning model of linguistic politeness that can be applied as a "politeness checker" to educate newcomers to write in ways likely to elicit response from specific communities or as a rudeness detection tool for moderators. | |||
| IM waiting: timing and responsiveness in semi-synchronous communication | | BIBA | Full-Text | 285-294 | |
| Daniel Avrahami; Susan R. Fussell; Scott E. Hudson | |||
| Responsiveness, or the time until a person responds to communication, can affect the dynamics of a conversation as well as participants' perceptions of one another. In this paper, we present a careful examination of responsiveness to instant messaging communication, showing, for example, that work-fragmentation significantly correlates with faster responsiveness. We show also that the presentation of the incoming communication significantly affects responsiveness (even more so than indicators that the communication was ongoing), suggesting the potential for dynamically influencing responsiveness. This work contributes to a better understanding of computer-mediated communication and to the design of new tools for computer-mediated communication. | |||
| I'm sad you're sad: emotional contagion in CMC | | BIBA | Full-Text | 295-298 | |
| Jeffrey T. Hancock; Kailyn Gee; Kevin Ciaccio; Jennifer Mae-Hwah Lin | |||
| An enduring assumption about computer-mediated communication is that it undermines emotional understanding. The present study examined emotional communication in CMC by inducing negative affect in one condition and neutral affect in another. The results revealed that 1) participants experiencing negative affect produced fewer words, used more sad terms, and exchanged messages at a slower rate, 2) their partners were able to detect their partners emotional state, and 3) emotional contagion took place, in which partners interacting with participants in the negative affect condition had significantly less positive affect than partners in the control condition. These data support a relational view of CMC. | |||
| The language of emotion in short blog texts | | BIBA | Full-Text | 299-302 | |
| Alastair J. Gill; Robert M. French; Darren Gergle; Jon Oberlander | |||
| Emotion is central to human interactions, and automatic detection could enhance our experience with technologies. We investigate the linguistic expression of fine-grained emotion in 50 and 200 word samples of real blog texts previously coded by expert and naive raters. Content analysis (LIWC) reveals angry authors use more affective language and negative affect words, and that joyful authors use more positive affect words. Additionally, a co-occurrence semantic space approach (LSA) was able to identify fear (which naive human emotion raters could not do). We relate our findings to human emotion perception and note potential computational applications. | |||
| Minimum movement matters: impact of robot-mounted cameras on social telepresence | | BIBA | Full-Text | 303-312 | |
| Hideyuki Nakanishi; Yuki Murakami; Daisuke Nogami; Hiroshi Ishiguro | |||
| Recently, various robots capable of having a video chat with distant people have become commercially available. This paper shows that movement of these robots enhances distant people's presence that the robot operator feels. We conducted an experiment to compare the degrees of social telepresence produced by fixed, rotatable, movable, and automatically moving cameras. In this experiment we found that forward-backward movement of the camera significantly contributed to social telepresence, while rotation did not. We also found that this effect disappeared when the camera moved automatically. We propose the user-controllable movement of cameras as a fundamental function for video-based communication systems. | |||
| Asymmetry in media spaces | | BIBA | Full-Text | 313-322 | |
| Amy Voida; Stephen Voida; Saul Greenberg; Helen Ai He | |||
| In any collaborative system, there are both symmetries and asymmetries present in the design of the technology and in the ways that technology is appropriated. Yet media space research tends to focus more on supporting and fostering the symmetries than the asymmetries. Throughout more than 20 years of media space research, the pursuit of increased symmetry, whether achieved through technical or social means, has been a recurrent theme. The research literature on the use of contemporary awareness systems, in contrast, displays little if any of this emphasis on symmetrical use; indeed, this body of research occasionally highlights the perceived value of asymmetry. In this paper, we unpack the different forms of asymmetry present in both media spaces and contemporary awareness systems. We argue that just as asymmetry has been demonstrated to have value in contemporary awareness systems, so might asymmetry have value in media spaces and in other CSCW systems, more generally. To illustrate, we present a media space that emphasizes and embodies multiple forms of asymmetry and does so in response to the needs of a particular work context. | |||
| Empirical evidence of information overload constraining chat channel community interactions | | BIBA | Full-Text | 323-332 | |
| Quentin Jones; Mihai Moldovan; Daphne Raban; Brian Butler | |||
| Prior work has demonstrated that the impact of individual information-processing limits can be observed in dynamics of mass interaction in asynchronous collaborative systems (Usenet newsgroups and email lists). Here we present the first evidence of such impacts on synchronous social interaction environments through the analysis of an Internet Relay Chat network. We highlight how shared public discourse in chat channels appears to be limited to 40 posters in any 20 minute interval, even as the number of channel users increases well into the hundreds. We discuss our findings in terms of understanding the relationship between online community space types and the user interaction dynamics they support. | |||
| Being online, living offline: the influence of social ties over the appropriation of social network sites | | BIBA | Full-Text | 333-342 | |
| Bernd Ploderer; Steve Howard; Peter Thomas | |||
| Research on social network sites has examined how people integrate offline and online life, but with a particular emphasis on their use by friendship groups. We extend earlier work by examining a case in which offline ties are non-existent, but online ties strong. Our case is a study of bodybuilders, who explore their passion with like-minded offline 'strangers' in tightly integrated online communities. We show that the integration of offline and online life supports passion-centric activities, such as bodybuilding. | |||
| Leadership in online creative collaboration | | BIBA | Full-Text | 343-352 | |
| Kurt Luther; Amy Bruckman | |||
| Leadership plays a central role in the success of many forms of online creative collaboration, yet little is known about the challenges leaders must manage. In this paper, we report on a qualitative study of leadership in three online communities whose members collaborate over the Internet to create computer-animated movies called "collabs." Our results indicate that most collabs fail. Collab leaders face two major challenges. First, leaders must design collaborative projects. Second, leaders must manage artists during the collab production process. We contrast these challenges with the available empirical research on leadership in open-source software and Wikipedia, identifying four themes: originality, completion, subjectivity, and ownership. We conclude with broader implications for online creative collaboration in its many forms. | |||
| Jumpstarting relationships with online games: evidence from a laboratory investigation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 353-356 | |
| Laura A. Dabbish | |||
| The popularity of online games, particularly casual games, has increased tremendously in recent years. Often these game experiences involve partner-based or multi-player interactions. Previous work has shown that computer-mediated interactions and online activities with a stranger have the potential to impact attitudes and liking for that person. Can experiences in online games have a similar impact? This paper presents results from two experiments suggesting that cooperative online game experiences (even without any direct communication interactions) can significantly impact liking for another person and perceptions of that person's characteristics. Implications for the design of online "team-building" style game experiences are briefly discussed. | |||
| Blissfully productive: grouping and cooperation in world of warcraft instance runs | | BIBA | Full-Text | 357-360 | |
| Shaowen Bardzell; Jeffrey Bardzell; Tyler Pace; Kayce Reed | |||
| Gaming has attracted growing interest in both CSCW and HCI in recent years. We contribute to this line of research by analyzing collaboration in 5-person instance runs in World of Warcraft, an aspect of the game that is considered routine and mundane work by players yet remains largely unexamined in current literature. Using a combination of ethnographic observation, interview, chat and video log analysis, we unpack the conditions under which players can produce the most effective outcomes while having fun, and offer a three-level model of successful instance runs. | |||
| Context-linked virtual assistants for distributed teams: an astrophysics case study | | BIBA | Full-Text | 361-370 | |
| Sarah S. Poon; Rollin C. Thomas; Cecilia R. Aragon; Brian Lee | |||
| There is a growing need for distributed teams to analyze complex and dynamic data streams and make critical decisions under time pressure. Via a case study, we discuss potential guidelines for the design of software tools to facilitate such collaborative decision-making. We introduce the term context-linked to characterize systems where both task and context information are included in a shared space. We describe a novel, lightweight, context-linked event notification/virtual assistant system developed to aid a cross-cultural, geographically distributed team of astrophysicists to remotely maneuver a custom-built instrument under challenging operational conditions, where critical decisions must be made in as little as 45 seconds. The system has been in use since 2005 by a major international astrophysics collaboration. We describe the design and implementation of the event notification system and then present a case study, based on event log analysis and user interviews, of its effectiveness in substantially improving user performance during time-critical science tasks. Finally, we discuss the implications of context linking for supporting common ground in distributed teams. | |||
| A hybrid cultural ecology: world of warcraft in China | | BIBA | Full-Text | 371-382 | |
| Silvia Lindtner; Bonnie Nardi; Yang Wang; Scott Mainwaring; He Jing; Wenjing Liang | |||
| We analyze online gaming as a site of collaboration in a digital-physical hybrid. We ground our analysis in findings from an ethnographic study of the online game World of Warcraft in China. We examine the interplay of collaborative practices across the physical environment of China's Internet cafes and the virtual game space of World of Warcraft. Our findings suggest that it may be fruitful to broaden existing notions of physical-digital hybridity by considering the nuanced interplay between the digital and physical as a multi-dimensional environment or "ecology". We illustrate how socio-economics, government regulations and cultural value systems shaped a hybrid cultural ecology of online gaming in China. | |||
| Where did we turn wrong?: unpacking the effect of culture and technology on attributions of team performance | | BIBA | Full-Text | 383-392 | |
| E. Ilana Diamant; Susan R. Fussell; Fen-ly Lo | |||
| Computer-mediated collaboration is becoming an increasingly prevalent form of work ([22]). At the same time, organizations are relying more and more on culturally diverse teams to staff knowledge-intensive projects (e.g., software development, customer service, corporate training). We conducted a laboratory study examining the role of collaborative technologies and culture on 2-person team members' attributions of causes for their collaborative performance. Pairs of American, Chinese, and intercultural American-Chinese students collaborated on two map navigation tasks using one of three technologies: video, audio, or IM. As predicted, culture and technology interacted to affect the extent to which members attributed performance to dispositional factors (e.g., personality or mood) vs. situational factors (e.g., the technology or task difficulty). We discuss the implications of our results for cross-cultural collaborative work. | |||
| Public vs. private: comparing public social network information with email | | BIBA | Full-Text | 393-402 | |
| Ido Guy; Michal Jacovi; Noga Meshulam; Inbal Ronen; Elad Shahar | |||
| The goal of this research is to facilitate the design of systems which will mine and use sociocentric social networks without infringing privacy. We describe an extensive experiment we conducted within our organization comparing social network information gathered from various intranet public sources with social network information gathered from a private source -- the organizational email system. We also report the conclusions of a series of interviews we conducted based on our experiment. The results shed light on the richness of public social network information, its characteristics, and added value over email network information. | |||
| Social networks and context-aware spam | | BIBA | Full-Text | 403-412 | |
| Garrett Brown; Travis Howe; Micheal Ihbe; Atul Prakash; Kevin Borders | |||
| Social networks are popular for online communities. This paper evaluates the risk of sophisticated context-aware spam that could result from information sharing on social networks and discusses potential mitigation strategies. Unlike normal spam, context-aware spam would likely have a high click-through rate due to exploitation of authentic social connections. Context-aware spam could lead to more insidious attacks that try to install malware or steal passwords. In this paper, we analyzed Facebook, a popular social networking website. Our goal was to determine how many users were vulnerable to context-aware attack email and understand aspects of Facebook's design that make such attacks possible. We also classified different kinds of email attacks based on certain pieces of data such as birthdays, lists of friends, wall posts, and user news feeds. We analyzed Facebook starting from a single university e-mail address to calculate the number of users who would be vulnerable to each type of attack. We found that a hacker could send sophisticated context-aware email to approximately 85% of users. Furthermore, our analysis shows that people with private profiles are almost equally vulnerable to a subset of attacks. Finally, we discuss defense strategies. Some strategies would require users to coordinate their privacy policies with each other. We also suggest design improvements for social networks that may help reduce exposure to context-aware attack email. | |||
| I know something you don't: the use of asymmetric personal information for interpersonal advantage | | BIBA | Full-Text | 413-416 | |
| Jeffrey T. Hancock; Catalina L. Toma; Kate Fenner | |||
| With the widespread use of social networking sites, it is easy to acquire a great deal of personal information about someone before meeting them. How do people use this information when initiating relationships? In the present study, participants either had access to an unknown partner's Facebook profile or did not, and were instructed to get their partners to like them in a short instant messaging conversation. Participants used social network and profile information in two ways: probes, asking questions whose answer they already knew, and implicit mentions, referencing information that made them seem more similar to their partner. These strategies successfully increased interpersonal attraction. Participants, however, frequently rated these strategies as deceptive, raising important concerns about the use of asymmetrical personal information for interpersonal gain. | |||
| Coordinating high-interdependency tasks in asymmetric distributed teams | | BIBA | Full-Text | 417-426 | |
| Petra Saskia Bayerl; Kristina Lauche | |||
| Teams working on highly interdependent yet geographically distributed tasks need to closely coordinate their activities across distances. This field study in the upstream oil and gas industry illustrates that apart from geographical distribution, the onshore and offshore teams are confronted by considerable challenges due to asymmetries in tasks related, demographic, and cultural attributes. While with the industrywide move towards real-time data and video communication physical distances have become easier to bridge, other asymmetries still require attention. Using semi-structured interviews and observations, coordination requirements between subgroups, interdependencies, and task-specific asymmetries were identified. Implications for media requirements to support distributed asymmetric teams are discussed. | |||
| Cutting into collaboration: understanding coordination in distributed and interdisciplinary medical research | | BIBA | Full-Text | 427-436 | |
| Saeko Nomura; Jeremy Birnholtz; Oya Rieger; Gilly Leshed; Deborah Trumbull; Geri Gay | |||
| Coordinating goals, schedules, and tasks among collaborators is difficult, and made even more so when there are disciplinary, geographic and institutional boundaries that must be spanned. Designing CSCW tools to support coordination in these settings, however, requires an improved under-standing of the constraints and conflicts that impede effective collaboration. We present findings from a study of distributed collaborations between academic surgeons and biomedical engineering researchers. These two groups differ significantly in their work priorities and institutional contexts, but are nonetheless able to work together and co-ordinate effectively. They accomplish this via human mediation, frequent ad hoc communication, and optimizing the use of their limited face-to-face interaction opportunities. | |||
| Who collaborates successfully?: prior experience reduces collaboration barriers in distributed interdisciplinary research | | BIBA | Full-Text | 437-446 | |
| Jonathon N. Cummings; Sara Kiesler | |||
| Two recent studies of over 500 interdisciplinary research projects have documented comparatively poor outcomes of more distributed projects and the failed coordination mechanisms that partly account for these problems. In this paper we report results of an analysis of dyadic data from the most recent of these studies. The question we asked is, "Does prior experience with a collaborator reduce the barriers of distance or interdisciplinarity?" Analyses of 3911 pairs of collaborators found an answer: "In part, yes!" A prior project with a collaborator predicts greater strength of a current collaborative work tie. Prior experience also reduces the negative impact of distance and disciplinary differences. We discuss the implications of these results for CSCW, given the lack of evidence that today's technology eliminates collaboration barriers in distributed research. | |||
| The effects of local lag on tightly-coupled interaction in distributed groupware | | BIBA | Full-Text | 447-456 | |
| Dane Stuckel; Carl Gutwin | |||
| Tightly-coupled interaction is shared work in which each person's actions immediately and continuously influence the actions of others. Tightly-coupled collaboration is a hallmark of expert behavior in face-to-face activity, but becomes extremely difficult to accomplish over distributed groupware. The main cause of this difficulty is network delay that disrupts people's ability to synchronize their actions with another person. In this paper we report on two studies that explore local lag as a way of reducing this problem. When applied to visual feedback, local lag synchronizes the visual environments of the local and remote clients, preventing one person from getting ahead of the other. We tested the effects of local lag in several delay conditions: we found that the technique significantly improved performance, and that users did not rate local lag as more difficult or frustrating to use. Our studies improve our understanding of local lag and of how it improves tightly-coupled interaction in distributed groupware. | |||
| Meeting mediator: enhancing group collaboration using sociometric feedback | | BIBA | Full-Text | 457-466 | |
| Taemie Kim; Agnes Chang; Lindsey Holland; Alex Sandy Pentland | |||
| We present the Meeting Mediator (MM), a real-time portable system that detects social interactions and provides persuasive feedback to enhance group collaboration. Social interactions is captured using Sociometric badges [17] and are visualized on mobile phones to promote behavioral change. Particularly in distributed collaborations, MM attempts to bridge the gap among the distributed groups by detecting and communicating social signals. In a study on brainstorming and problem solving meetings, MM had a significant effect on overlapping speaking time and interactivity level without distracting the subjects. The Sociometric badges were also able to detect dominant players in the group and measure their influence on other participants. Most interestingly, in groups with one or more dominant people, MM effectively reduced the dynamical difference between co-located and distributed collaboration as well as the behavioral difference between dominant and non-dominant people. Our system encourages change in group dynamics that may lead to higher performance and satisfaction. We envision that MM will be deployed in real-world organizations to improve interactions across various group collaboration contexts. | |||
| Effects of communication media on the interpretation of critical feedback | | BIBA | Full-Text | 467-476 | |
| Matthew J. Bietz | |||
| This paper presents an experimental study of how interpersonal critical feedback is interpreted and used in electronically mediated communication environments. In a pair of experiments, Writers receive feedback about a document from Critics over instant messaging (IM) or videoconferencing. The results suggest that when Writers cannot see and hear the Critic, they interpret feedback to be more negative and less credible, and are less likely to incorporate suggested changes. | |||
| Can you ever trust a wiki?: impacting perceived trustworthiness in wikipedia | | BIBA | Full-Text | 477-480 | |
| Aniket Kittur; Bongwon Suh; Ed H. Chi | |||
| Wikipedia has become one of the most important information resources on the Web by promoting peer collaboration and enabling virtually anyone to edit anything. However, this mutability also leads many to distrust it as a reliable source of information. Although there have been many attempts at developing metrics to help users judge the trustworthiness of content, it is unknown how much impact such measures can have on a system that is perceived as inherently unstable. Here we examine whether a visualization that exposes hidden article information can impact readers' perceptions of trustworthiness in a wiki environment. Our results suggest that surfacing information relevant to the stability of the article and the patterns of editor behavior can have a significant impact on users' trust across a variety of page types. | |||
| Enhancing collaborative web search with personalization: groupization, smart splitting, and group hit-highlighting | | BIBA | Full-Text | 481-484 | |
| Meredith Ringel Morris; Jaime Teevan; Steve Bush | |||
| Collaboration on Web search is common in many domains, such as education and knowledge work; recently, HCI researchers have begun to introduce prototype collaborative search tools to support such scenarios. We analyze data from a collaborative search experiment, and based on these data we propose three techniques that can enhance the value of collaborative search tools using personalization: groupization, smart splitting, and group hit-highlighting. | |||
| Towards a model of understanding social search | | BIBA | Full-Text | 485-494 | |
| Brynn M. Evans; Ed H. Chi | |||
| Search engine researchers typically depict search as the solitary activity of an individual searcher. In contrast, results from our critical-incident survey of 150 users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service suggest that social interactions play an important role throughout the search process. Our main contribution is that we have integrated models from previous work in sensemaking and information seeking behavior to present a canonical social model of user activities before, during, and after search, suggesting where in the search process both explicitly and implicitly shared information may be valuable to individual searchers. | |||
| A wiki instance in the enterprise: opportunities, concerns and reality | | BIBA | Full-Text | 495-504 | |
| Catalina Danis; David Singer | |||
| We describe the design and deployment of a wiki-based application that supports yearly planning work by members of a globally distributed, 900-member research organization. The goal of the ResearchWiki is to enable greater transparency in the work of the organization and to provide a basis for broader collaboration among researchers. We motivate the design based on results from 40 interviews and discuss two cycles of usage of the ResearchWiki based on analyses of logs and an additional 20 interviews. We conclude with a discussion of the interplay of technology, work practice and organizational change and with design recommendations. | |||
| Operationalization of technology use and cooperation in CSCW | | BIBA | Full-Text | 505-514 | |
| Pei-Ju Liu; James M. Laffey; Karen R. Cox | |||
| Research in CSCW faces challenges for assessing constructs of technology use and cooperation in context. This study examines a system in a healthcare context, and uses activity as the unit of analysis. An innovative approach to measuring technology use and cooperation is applied that has potential for replication across other systems and contexts. The findings provide evidence that technology use and cooperation can be operationalized and examined in context and demonstrate how it can be done reliably. The results show the importance of understanding the participation of different roles within a CSCW context and the factors of technology use impact levels of cooperation. | |||
| Steps toward a typology for health informatics | | BIBA | Full-Text | 515-524 | |
| Ellen Balka; Pernille Bjorn; Ina Wagner | |||
| In this paper we outline a typology, which will be useful for those engaged in the design and customization of information systems in healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic case studies conducted in six healthcare settings in two countries, the typology outlined here is intended to identify possible sources of local variability of health care work practices, which need to be accommodated in local configurations of generic information systems. | |||
| "Garbage in, garbage out": extracting disease surveillance data from epr systems in primary care | | BIBA | Full-Text | 525-534 | |
| Monika Alise Johansen; Jeremiah Scholl; Per Hasvold; Gunnar Ellingsen; Johan Gustav Bellika | |||
| This paper presents an interpretive case study on extraction of disease surveillance data from Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) in primary care. The General Practitioners (GPs) use of the EPR system, and the effect this has on data content, such as symptoms reported by patients and diagnoses reported by GPs, is discussed. The paper contributes to greater understanding of sociotechnical issues related to disease surveillance, and contains illustrative examples of many issues important to CSCW. This includes how data collected in one context may be applied to a different context, and the delicate interplay between organizational and technical design challenges. | |||
| Can markets help?: applying market mechanisms to improve synchronous communication | | BIBA | Full-Text | 535-544 | |
| Gary Hsieh; Robert Kraut; Scott E. Hudson; Roberto Weber | |||
| There is a growing interest in applying market mechanisms to tackle everyday
communication problems such as communication interruptions and communication
overload. Prior analytic proofs have shown that a signaling and screening
mechanism can make senders and recipients of messages better off. However,
these proofs make certain assumptions that do not hold in real world
environments. For example, these prior works assume that there are no
transaction costs in a communication market and that monetary incentives are
the only motivators in communication between strangers.
This research builds upon prior analytic work and empirically tests the validity of the claim that signaling and screening mechanisms will improve communication welfare. Our results show that while these types of markets can indeed improve communication welfare, a simpler, less expressive fixed-price market can lead to higher welfare than a more expressive, variable pricing and screening mechanism. Findings from this study also provide valuable insights for technology designs. For example, these results suggest the need to reduce cognitive overhead in using communication markets. | |||
| Network structure, position, ties and ICT use in distributed knowledge-intensive work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 545-554 | |
| Kenneth Chung; Liaquat Hossain | |||
| In this study, we develop a theoretical model based on social network theories and the social influence model to understand how knowledge professionals utilise technology for work and communication. We investigate the association between egocentric network properties (structure, position and tie) and information and communication technology (ICT) use of individuals in knowledge-intensive and geographically dispersed settings. Analysis from data collected using a reliable and validated questionnaire show that task-level ICT use is significantly associated with degree centrality and functional tie-diversity; and communication-level ICT use is negatively associated with efficiency. Implications of these associations for knowledge-intensive work are discussed in conclusion. | |||
| Investigating the effect of discussion forum interface affordances on patterns of conversational interactions | | BIBA | Full-Text | 555-558 | |
| Yi-Chia Wang; Mahesh Joshi; Carolyn Penstein Rosé | |||
| We investigate how the affordances provided by alternative interfaces for on-line discussion forums affect the structure of the discourse that unfolds. In order to investigate this impact, we compare the predictive power of time related and text similarity related features for identifying parent-child links between messages. The results from this work using this methodology suggest that interfaces that make parent-child relationships between messages explicit and do not constrain the choice of previous messages that users can reply to allow patterns of conversational behavior that violate the assumptions of traditional, tree-structured models of discourse where time related and similarity related features are highly predictive. An implication for future work is that because there is evidence that interface affordances affect the form of conversational contributions, techniques that process on-line communication data may need to be adapted for different communication interfaces. | |||
| The logic of practices of stigmergy: representational artifacts in architectural design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 559-568 | |
| Lars Rune Christensen | |||
| In their cooperative design practices, architects form series of interwoven representational artifacts. On the basis of a field study of architectural design, this article presents an analysis of these practices and shows how they are partly coordinated directly through the material field of work. This is described as 'practices of stigmergy'. Furthermore, the article considers the practical logic and the economy of second order effort in such practices. In doing so, it outlines an approach to the investigation and conception of such practices of stigmergy. | |||
| From individual to collaborative: the evolution of prism, a hybrid laboratory notebook | | BIBA | Full-Text | 569-578 | |
| Aurélien Tabard; Wendy E. Mackay; Evelyn Eastmond | |||
| We report on our studies of the evolving work practices of biologists and the role paper and electronic lab notebooks play in supporting their individual and collaborative activity. We describe the participatory design and longitudinal field testing of Prism, a hybrid laboratory notebook that lets biologists capture, visualize and interact with cross-linked streams of physical and electronic data. We used Prism as a technology probe that users could adapt to integrate additional activity streams and share information from other biologists. Our key findings include the use of master notebooks, whether paper or electronic, which act as a reference point for handling and organizing the diverse strands of personal activity, and the importance of redundancy, which biologists use to make sense of their data. Prism provides a flexible, extensible tool that supports individual and collaborative reflection in creative work. | |||
| Communication networks in geographically distributed software development | | BIBA | Full-Text | 579-588 | |
| Marcelo Cataldo; James D. Herbsleb | |||
| In this paper, we seek to shed light on how communication networks in geographically distributed projects evolve in order to address the limits of the modular design strategy. We collected data from a geographically distributed software development project covering 39 months of activity. Our analysis showed that over time a group of developers emerge as the liaisons between formal teams and geographical locations. In addition to handling the communication and coordination load across teams and locations, those engineers contributed the most to the development effort. | |||
| The view from the trenches: organization, power, and technology at two nonprofit homeless outreach centers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 589-598 | |
| Christopher A. Le Dantec; W. Keith Edwards | |||
| Nonprofit social service organizations provide the backbone of social support infrastructure in the U.S. and around the world. As the ecology of information exchange moves evermore digital, nonprofit organizations with limited resources and expertise struggle to keep pace. We present a qualitative investigation of two nonprofit outreach centers providing service to the homeless in a U.S. metropolitan city. Despite similar goals shared by these organizations, apparent differences in levels of computerization, volunteerism, and organizational structure demonstrate the challenges in attempting to adopt technology systems when resources and technical expertise are highly constrained. | |||
| Colour management is a socio-technical problem | | BIBA | Full-Text | 599-608 | |
| Jacki O'Neill; David Martin; Tommaso Colombino; Frederic Roulland; Jutta Willamowski | |||
| This paper describes how achieving consistent colour reproduction across different devices is a complicated matter. Although there is a technological infrastructure for managing colour across devices this is very rarely used as intended. This infrastructure has been created by modelling the problem of colour management as a wholly technical one. In this paper we illustrate the importance of understanding the management of colour as a socio-technical problem, by describing the findings of a multi-sited ethnography of designers and print shops. Our analysis of the ethnography reveals that designers build up practical, tangible, visual understandings of colour and that these do not fit with the current solution, which requires users to deal with colour in an abstract manner. This paper builds on previous research in CSCW which has considered the importance of socio-technical systems, bringing the work into a previously unexplored domain. It shows how an understanding of the social can also be central when designing technical infrastructures. | |||
| Assistance: the work practices of human administrative assistants and their implications for it and organizations | | BIBA | Full-Text | 609-618 | |
| Thomas Erickson; Catalina M. Danis; Wendy A. Kellogg; Mary E. Helander | |||
| Assistance -- work carried out by one entity in support of another -- is a concept of long-standing interest, both as a type of human work common in organizations and as a model of how computational systems might interact with humans. Surprisingly, the perhaps most paradigmatic form of assistance -- the work of administrative assistants or secretaries -- has received almost no attention. This paper reports on a study of assistants, and their principals and managers, laying out a model of their work, the skills and competencies they need to function effectively, and reflects on implications for the design of systems and organizations. | |||
| Are you sleeping?: sharing portrayed sleeping status within a social network | | BIBA | Full-Text | 619-628 | |
| Sunyoung Kim; Julie A. Kientz; Shwetak N. Patel; Gregory D. Abowd | |||
| Within a group of peers, it is often useful or interesting to know whether someone in the group has gone to bed or whether they have awakened in the morning. This information, naturally integrated as a peripheral augmentation of an alarm clock, allows people to know whether it is appropriate to make a call or feel more connected with someone living remotely. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of such an alarm clock, the BuddyClock, and describe how it enables users in a small social network to automatically share information about their sleeping behaviors with one another. Through 3-6 week deployment studies of this technology with five different social networks, we found that the alarm clock affected participant behaviors and allowed them to feel more connected to those with whom they shared their sleeping behaviors. | |||
| SPARCS: exploring sharing suggestions to enhance family connectedness | | BIBA | Full-Text | 629-638 | |
| A. J. Bernheim Brush; Kori M. Inkpen; Kimberly Tee | |||
| Staying in touch with extended family members can be a challenge in part because of the time and effort required, even with the help of current technologies. To explore the value of sharing suggestions in sparking communication and facilitating sharing between extended families, we iteratively built SPARCS, a prototype that encourages frequent sharing of photos and calendar information between extended families. Results from a five-week field study with 7 pairs of families highlight a number of important features for an ideal sharing system to help families stay connected, including asynchronous chat and easily configurable sharing suggestions. | |||
| Deploying research technology in the home | | BIBA | Full-Text | 639-648 | |
| Peter Tolmie; Andy Crabtree | |||
| Deploying research technology in real homes is an important way of uncovering new possibilities for design. We reflect upon the deployment of a simple technological arrangement which might be construed of as a 'breaching experiment' that reveals significant challenges for technology deployment in the home. Of particular issue is the extent to which research deployments resonate with existing infrastructure and disrupt ordinary processes of domestication; the degree of ownership household members exercise over research prototypes and how this constrains domestication; and the nature of research practice and the limits this places on our understanding of domestication. | |||
| Understanding the implications of social translucence for systems supporting communication at work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 649-658 | |
| Agnieszka Matysiak Szostek; Evangelos Karapanos; Berry Eggen; Mike Holenderski | |||
| In this paper we describe a study that explored the implications of the Social Translucence framework for designing systems that support communications at work. Two systems designed for communicating availability status were empirically evaluated to understand what constitutes a successful way to achieve Visibility of people's communicative state. Some aspects of the Social Translucence constructs: Visibility, Awareness and Accountability were further operationalized into a questionnaire and tested relationships between these constructs through path modeling techniques. We found that to improve Visibility systems should support people in presenting their status in a contextualized yet abstract manner. Visibility was also found to have an impact on Awareness and Accountability but no significant relationship was seen between Awareness and Accountability. We argue that to design socially translucent systems it is insufficient to visualize people's availability status. It is also necessary to introduce mechanisms stimulating mutual Awareness that allow for maintaining shared, reciprocical knowledge about communicators' availability state, which then can encourage them to act in a socially responsible way. | |||
| Providing awareness in multi-synchronous collaboration without compromising privacy | | BIBA | Full-Text | 659-668 | |
| Claudia-Lavinia Ignat; Stavroula Papadopoulou; Gérald Oster; Moira C. Norrie | |||
| When involved in collaborative tasks, users often choose to use multi-synchronous applications in order to concurrently work in isolation. Hence, privacy of their changes is maintained until they decide to publish their contributions. Not being aware of changes made by their collaborators, they often create concurrent modifications which might generate conflicts or lead to redundant work. We propose an awareness mechanism that solves this problem by computing and providing awareness in multi-synchronous collaboration while at the same time respecting user privacy by allowing users to specify the detail of information made available to their collaborators. The computation of awareness is based on metrics that measure the effect of changes for the different types of changes, on the different syntactic document levels and document parts. For the visualisation of awareness, we employ the concept of edit profiles. | |||
| Family accounts: a new paradigm for user accounts within the home environment | | BIBA | Full-Text | 669-678 | |
| Serge Egelman; A. J. Bernheim Brush; Kori M. Inkpen | |||
| In this paper we present Family Accounts, a new user account model for shared home computers. We conducted a study with sixteen families, eight who used individual profiles at home, and eight who shared a single profile. Our results demonstrate that Family Accounts is a good compromise between a single shared profile and individual profiles for each family member. In particular, we observed that because Family Accounts allowed individuals to switch profiles without forcing them to interrupt their tasks, family members tended to switch to their own profiles only when a task required some degree of privacy or personalization. | |||
| An examination of daily information needs and sharing opportunities | | BIBA | Full-Text | 679-688 | |
| David Dearman; Melanie Kellar; Khai N. Truong | |||
| A person often has highly context-sensitive information needs that require assistance from individuals in their social network. However, a person's social network is often not broad enough to include the right people in the right situations or circumstances who can satisfy the needs. The ability to satisfy context-sensitive information needs depends on a person's ability to seek the answers from appropriate individuals, who must then provide a response in a timely manner. To gain an understanding of how to better support the sharing of information, we conducted a four-week diary study examining 20 people's perceived daily information needs and sharing desires. We provide a structured framework for understanding the types of information people need and discuss when and how people are able to satisfy their needs. Using these findings, we discuss research and design opportunities for addressing the shortcomings of the existing information sources by connecting information altruists with an audience by leveraging weak ties through situation and circumstance, and providing a timely asynchronous connection to these sources. | |||
| Charitable technologies: opportunities for collaborative computing in nonprofit fundraising | | BIBA | Full-Text | 689-698 | |
| Jeremy Goecks; Amy Voida; Stephen Voida; Elizabeth D. Mynatt | |||
| This paper presents research analyzing the role of computational technology in the domain of nonprofit fundraising. Nonprofits are a cornerstone of many societies and are especially prominent in the United States, where $295 billion, or slightly more than 2% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (i.e. total national revenue), was directed toward charitable causes in 2006. Nonprofits afford many worthwhile endeavors, including crisis relief, basic services to those in need, public education and the arts, and preservation of the natural environment. In this paper, we identify six roles that computational technology plays in support of nonprofit fundraising and present two models characterizing technology use in this domain: (1) a cycle of technology-assisted fundraising and (2) a model of relationships among stakeholders in technology-assisted fundraising. Finally, we identify challenges and research opportunities for collaborative computing in the unique and exciting nonprofit fundraising domain. | |||
| The confusion of crowds: non-dyadic help interactions | | BIBA | Full-Text | 699-702 | |
| Vandana Singh; Michael B. Twidale | |||
| Help-giving interactions in open source technical support often involve more people than the conventional help-giver help-seeker pair. Contributions include lightweight but useful me-too contributions from fellow help-seekers. Problems with the reuse of help documentation may be resolved by contextualized discussions, and those discussions themselves are found to be substantially reused. | |||
| It's all 'about you': diversity in online profiles | | BIBA | Full-Text | 703-706 | |
| Casey Dugan; Werner Geyer; Michael Muller; Joan DiMicco; Beth Brownholtz; David R. Millen | |||
| User profiles on today's social networking sites support only a small set of predefined questions. We report on an alternative way for users to richly describe themselves, by entering not only responses, but their own questions as well. Data from 10 months of usage shows that users of a social networking site created thousands of diverse questions and reused existing questions from other users. Our findings suggest that those with highly diverse user profiles have a higher number of friends. | |||
| Network patterns: designing effective user interfaces for connections management at work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 707-710 | |
| Qinying Liao; Qicheng Li | |||
| New collaborative technologies are making modern work a highly social process in the era of Web 2.0, yet as a result, it is increasingly challenging for workers to maintain knowledge of and manage their connections. Former netWORKing studies have suggested integrating communication and information with models of social networks. To elucidate these netWORK processes and explore the viability of organizing connections at work in terms of a social network of contacts, we conducted field studies investigating patterns of people's subjective ego-centered netWORKs. Different netWORK categorizing and structuring strategies are identified and user interface design implications are proposed for connections management systems. | |||
| Motivations for social networking at work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 711-720 | |
| Joan DiMicco; David R. Millen; Werner Geyer; Casey Dugan; Beth Brownholtz; Michael Muller | |||
| The introduction of a social networking site inside of a large enterprise enables a new method of communication between colleagues, encouraging both personal and professional sharing inside the protected walls of a company intranet. Our analysis of user behavior and interviews presents the case that professionals use internal social networking to build stronger bonds with their weak ties and to reach out to employees they do not know. Their motivations in doing this include connecting on a personal level with coworkers, advancing their career with the company, and campaigning for their projects. | |||
| Changes in use and perception of facebook | | BIBA | Full-Text | 721-730 | |
| Cliff Lampe; Nicole B. Ellison; Charles Steinfield | |||
| As social computing systems persist over time, the user experiences and interactions they support may change. One type of social computing system, Social Network Sites (SNSs), are becoming more popular across broad segments of Internet users. Facebook, in particular, has very broad participation amongst college attendees, and has been growing in other populations as well. This paper looks at how use of Facebook has changed over time, as indicated by three consecutive years of survey data and interviews with a subset of survey respondents. Reported uses of the site remain relatively constant over time, but the perceived audience for user profiles and attitudes about the site show differences over the study period. | |||