Chapter 4: Designing for collaboration and communication

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Chapter 4 Designing for collaboration and
communication
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Overview

• What is communication?
• Conversational mechanisms
• Coordination mechanisms
• Awareness mechanisms
• Examples of technologies designed to extend how
  people
• talk and socialise
• work together
• play and learn together

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What is communication?

• Along with intelligence ,communication is the one
  which gives us edge from other animals.
• It is a mean of transferring knowledge.
• Language is a tool of communication.
• Invention of printing press was the greatest
  single discovery in the field of communication
  before internet.

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Social communication

• Verbal communication.
• Face to face.
• Over phone.
• Voice chat and Video Conferencing.
• Non-verbal communication.
• Mails.
• Emails.
• Instant Messenger
• Text messaging.

(Video).
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Conversational mechanisms

• Various mechanisms and rules are followed when
  holding a conversation, e.g. mutual greetings
• A Hi there
• B Hi!
• C Hi
• A All right?
• C Good, hows it going?
• A Fine, how are you?
• C OK
• B So-so. Hows life treating you?

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Conversational mechanism cont..

• Turn-taking used to coordinate conversation
• A Shall we meet at 8?
• B Um, can we meet a bit later?
• A Shall we meet at 8?
• B Wow, look at him?
• A Yes what a funny hairdo!
• B Um, can we meet a bit later?
• Back channelling to signal to continue and
  following
• Uh-uh, umm, ahh

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Conversational mechanism cont..

• farewell rituals
• Bye then, see you, see you later.
• implicit and explicit cues
• e.g., looking at watch, fidgeting with coat and
  bags
• explicitly saying Oh dear, must go, look at the
  time, Im late

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Conversational rules

• Sacks et al. (1978) work on conversation analysis
  describe three basic rules
• Rule 1 the current speaker chooses the next
  speaker by asking an opinion, question, or
  request
• Rule 2 another person decides to start speaking
• Rule 3 the current speaker continues talking

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Breakdowns in conversation

• When someone says something that is
  misunderstood
• Speaker will repeat with emphasis
• A this one?
• B no, I meant that one!
• Also use tokens
• Eh? Quoi? Huh? What?

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What happens in technology-mediated conversations?

• Do same conversational rules apply?
• Are there more breakdowns?
• How do people repair them for
• Phone?
• Email?
• IM?
• Text Messaging?

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Designing collaborative technologies

• Challenges confronting the designers is to
  consider how to facilitate different kinds of
  communication where there are obstacles
  preventing it from happening naturally.

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• The main aim is to develop systems that allow
  people to communicate with each other when they
  are in physically different locations.
• The key issue is how to allow people to carry on
  communicating as if they are in same place.
• How to design collaborative technologies to help
  co-located groups to communicate.

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Communicating in physically different locations

• Video Example
• Emails, Videoconferencing,
• Videophones, Computer Conferencing, Chat rooms
  and IM.
• Online MUDs and MOOs (text based) were created to
  allow users communicate exclusively using text.

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Activity how do the conversations differ for the
same game of ZORKI?
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3D virtual worlds
The rooftop garden in BowieWorld Users take
part by dressing up as an avatar, including
penguins and real people Once an avatar has
entered a world they can explore it and chat to
other avatars Source www.worlds.com/bowie
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Massive 3D virtual worlds

• Second Life (2003)
• Over 2 million users
• Habbo Hotel (2000)
• Over 7 million players
• Massively multiplayer online game
• What kinds of conversation take place in these
  environments?

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Media spaces

• They combine audio,video and computer systems to
  extend the world of desks,chairs,walls ad
  ceilings.
• Example
• Xerox Media Space, Hydra, Cruiser and Video
  window system.

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A typical media space node
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Sketch of VideoWindow