Computermediated Social Awareness and Perception in Everyday Environments

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Computer-mediated Social Awarenessand Perception
in Everyday Environments

• Nitin Sawhney
• Ph.D. Oral Presentation
• June 12, 2000

Orals Committee Chris Schmandt Mark
Ackerman Trevor Darrell
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Motivation Connecting Physical
Communities Everyday Settings
Connected Families
Connected Workspaces
Connected Commuters
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Challenge Design for Changing Social
Distance Everyday Settings
Awareness
Connected Families
Privacy
Communication
Connected Workspaces
Interruption
Connected Commuters
The action is on the Street!
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Research Approach Presentation Outline

• Part I Social Life of the Street
• Self-Expression Behavior in Public Places
• Cognitive Cultural Probes Elderly Settings
• Part II Computer-mediated Social Awareness
• Design of Awareness Spaces Privacy Issues
• Exploratory Prototype Aware Community Portals
• Role of Perception Audio/Visual Scene Analysis

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Part I Social Life of the Street Social
Behavior - Role of Self-Expression, Place, Media
and Culture
Images Source Presence Project, 1997
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Self Expression in Public Erving Goffman 59

• How does an individual in everyday situations
  present himself in the presence of people?
• Key Notion Theatrical Performance
• Expressive Behavior - Given and Given-Off
• Asymmetry of Communication - cycle of revelation
  concealment
• Roles and Social Front - Setting, Appearance,
  Manner
• Region Behavior - Front Stage vs. Back Stage vs.
  Outside
• Role of Electronic Media Meyrowitz 85
• Blurring prior social roles overlapping
  public/private spheres
• Patterns of information flow between continuum of
  regions

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Social Behavior in Public Places William Whyte
70s-80s Street Life Project

• "What attracts people most, in sum, is other
  people many urban spaces are being designed as
  though the opposite were true.
• Spontaneous Encounters
• High Incidence 30 meetings unplanned
• Conversational Gravity in 100 Locations
• Trajectories of conversations centered around
  100 Locations
• Dynamic Social Distances
• Crowding makes crowding more tolerable.
• Mayors as Communication Hubs
• Notice regular routines and assure sense of
  safety
• Design of Spaces
• Supply creates Demand
• Relationship to the Street - Transition Spaces
• Temporal Rhythms and Sense of Place

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Cumulative Sighting Map William Whyte, 1972
The New York Public Library, July 1972 Activity
for 4 days 1230 PM and 130 PM
Source The New York Times / January 2, 2000
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Ethnographic Study of Elderly Communities Altman
83

• Ethnographic Studies of Elderly
• Gerontology Surveys not effective
• View Lifestyles in Personal and Historical
  Context
• Colton Study - over 4 year period, community of
  400 elderly
• Rhythm in Space
• Bimodal Pattern of Activity in Surroundings
• Trips meaningful as a Social Activity
• Regularized Daily Routines and Paths - Supportive
  Function
• Cognition of Space
• Hierarchy of Zones of decreasing intensity away
  from home
• Surveillance zone, localized social spaces,
  community functions
• Maintaining Social Context
• Conducive to being well known and knowing others
  in community.
• Geographic dispersion of family - telephone is
  critical medium.

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Cultural Probes Presence, 97-98

• Presence EU-funded project to increase presence
  of elderly in community
• Three test sites Oslo, Peccioli and Bijlmer
• Two design centers Royal College of Art (U.K.)
  Domus (Italy)
• Cultural Probes
• Provoke responses from diverse sites for
  experimental design
• Package of maps, postcards, disposable camera,
  media diary
• Goal Informal analysis, chance observation,
  cultural context
• Changing expectations creating a dialogue with
  elderly
• Results Design Proposals
• Little communication between ethnic groups
• Connect Public Places with A/V links Displays
  to publish values
• Elderly interest in being a resource to local
  community visitors
• Neighborhood soft-surveillance informal help
  chains reminders
• Mediated discussions in libraries and
  disseminated via Trams

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Designing for the Street Themes Issues

• Observational Methodology
• Ethnographic approaches for social/cognitive
  patterns
• Cultural Probes - understanding context/ design
  inspiration
• Expressive Behavior
• Control over staging of communication
• Recognize different roles and fronts in different
  settings
• Behavior in Physical Space
• Flow in spaces Transition areas for engaging
  users
• Supporting Temporal Rhythms in Physical Settings
• Recognizing Spontaneous encounters and 100
  locations
• Dynamic Social Distances
• situated communication/interruption
• cognitive zones for social engagement
• privacy is not binary, graded levels of privacy
  for context

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Part II Computer-mediated Social Awareness -
Design
Part II Computer-mediated Social
AwarenessDesign of Awareness Spaces Role of
PerceptionAudio/Visual Scene Analysis
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Design of Awareness Spaces

• Evolution of Media Spaces
• Informal Communication
• Peripheral Awareness
• Privacy in Context
• Design Exploration Aware Community Portals

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From Hole-in-Space to Place in a Hole
Changing Notions of Media Spaces

• Key Idea Continuous Connections and Creating
  Social Spaces
• Video Spaces PARC Portland Link, Portholes,
  Cruiser, RAVE, ClearBoard, Reflection of Presence
  Face Gaze
• Audio Spaces Thunderwire and VoiceLoops
  Peripheral
• Dealing with mediated Face-to-Face Interaction
  vs. Audio Spaces
• Problems Affordances of Gaze Awareness
  Ishii92
• Task Completion doesnt need video, few prefer
  audio. Chapnis75
• Co-evolution of Communicative Practices
  Dourish96 Ackerman97
• Notions of Space vs. Place Harrison92

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Informal Communication

• Definition Brief, unplanned and frequent - 88
  Opportunistic Kraut93
• Co-located researchers more likely to co-publish
• Frequent opportunistic conversations vital in
  planning
• Problems Portland Link despite 70 drop-ins,
  brief encounter less likely to provide extended
  interaction vs. face-to-face.
• Absence of adequate shared resources, context
  culture
• Coordinating Remote Interactants
• Lack of Perceived Intrusiveness
• Another view One long intermittent conversation
  with multiple unplanned fragments.
  Whittaker94
• Regenerating context between intermittent
  interactions
• Asynchronous co-ordination to achieve co-presence
• Glancing/Eavesdropping to see if recipient busy,
  before initiation

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Peripheral Awareness

• Awareness Understanding of the activity of
  others, which provides a context for your own
  activity. Dourish Bellotti 92
• Social Facilitation People use others visible
  activities in framing their own goals,
  motivations and actions. Ackerman 95
• Light-weight and Implicit - gathered passively
  and does not require response - makes it hard to
  evaluate impact.
• Extending perceptual reach beyond visual space -
  auditory awareness
• Coordination - predict interruptability of
  recipients Portholes cognition of shared
  representations Hutchins 95
• Community - people around, how busy is the space,
  context of activity.
• State Flow of Events - Cues to work progress
  from movement of people Bellotti 96 tempo of
  processes in Air-Traffic flight strips Hughes
  92
• Synchronous vs. Asynchronous - Cycle of
  divergence sync

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Privacy in Context

• Key Factors Level of Privacy Needed depends on
• Social Setting
• Physical Situation
• Perceived Value of Information
• Cost of False Alarm
• Criteria Evaluating Privacy Support in Systems
  Bellotti Sellen 93
• Trustworthy
• Learnability
• Reciprocity
• Disembodied Context
• Perceptible and Timely Feedback
• Unobtrusive and Light-weight
• Implicit or Default Control

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Situated Impromptu Interaction Glancing and
Lingering
Aware-Portals

• Capturing a glance
• Showing a close-up ...

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Social Awareness Capturing Frozen Glances

• Facial Timelines for articles browsed.
• Whats interesting in the news lately?
• Is Geek around today?
• So Walter likes reading about Linux!

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Temporal Awareness Community Activity Rhythms?
Aware-Portals

• Traces of activity on a shared timeline
• Creating a living memory of the workspace
• Noticing periodic, novel and anomalous
  patterns

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Privacy Protocols in Aware Portals

• Trustworthy? Hallway-only camera and Social
  Trust
• No recording or transmission
• Anonymous Face Detection
• But no Explicit Privacy Statement Shown
• Reciprocal Video Mirror
• Goes a long way!
• Perceptible Timely Feedback Gradual Face
  Capture Protocol
• Learnability? Not obvious for novice user
• Disembodiment from Context? Unintended
  association with articles?
• No means to disassociate face

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Part II Computer-mediated Social Awareness -
Role of Perception
Part II Computer-mediated Social
AwarenessDesign of Awareness Spaces Role of
PerceptionAudio/Visual Scene Analysis
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Role of Perception for Social Awareness

• Activity Abstraction of Social Activity
• audio/visual cues of sync/async activity - IR,
  motion, audio
• Context Classify Social/Physical Context
• Location in Auditory Sawhney, Clarkson, Visual
  Schiele98
• Identity Detecting Persons Identity
• Face Rec. Rowley, Speaker ID Wilcox, Floor ID
• Salience Detect Salient Audio/Visual Events -gt
  Trigger Human
• A/V Scene cuts, Affect in Speech Slaney,
  biometric signals
• Summary Summarize Activity in Temporal Scenes
• Clustering color histograms, speech skimmer
  Arons96
• Pattern Recognize Recurring and Anomalous
  Patterns
• Modeling events motion histograms Davis97,
  HMMs Oliver99

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Role of Perception for Social Distance

• Preserving Privacy
• Hiding Activity, Context, Identity, Masking
  Content
• Shadow-Views Low-disturbance Audio Smith
  Hudson 96
• Garble-Phone
• Minimize Interruption
• Scaleable Notification Model Nomadic Radio
• Conversation/Ambient Classification Clarkson98

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Perceptual Scene Analysis Research Directions

• Features - determined for specialized everyday
  tasks baby in a crib?
• Representations - for Audio/Visual Salience in
  Scenes
• Event Formation - Fusing A/V data into single
  perceptual events
• Evidence Integration - combining cues from
  multiple modalities prior sources
  Bayesian Networks
• Summarizing Scenes from Auditory cues - Affect,
  background sounds?
• Modeling Long-term Context Recognizing
  Anomalies
• Human-assisted Scene Understanding?