Designing Computer Mediated Communications

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Designing Computer Mediated Communications

• David Nguyen
• UC Berkeley

CS160 Berkeley, CA October 29th, 2007
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My Lab
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My Lab Mates
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My Research
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My Teachings
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My Extra Time
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My University
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My Expectations

• Everyone will
• focus on the presentation
• want to answer questions
• have questions to ask
• want to participate in the exercises I have
  planned.
• laugh at my jokes

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• Introduction
• CMC and Trust
• User Generated Content and the Tragedy of the
  Commons
• Social Networking and Presentation of Self
• Where do we go from here?

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CMC Systems
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Computer Mediated Communications
Psychology Social cognition, interpersonal perception, attraction
Sociology Group dynamics, social structure, reputation, trust
Communication Mediation, signaling, media richness
HCI Interfaces for social interaction
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Social Theory vs. User-Centered Design
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• Introduction
• CMC and Trust
• User Generated Content and Collective Action
• Social Networking and Presentation of Self
• Where do we go from here?

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Common CMC Systems
If you had to negotiate a 1 million deal, how
would you do it?
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Trust

• Trust reduces the need for costly control
  structures, thus enabling exchanges that could
  otherwise not take place, and makes social
  systems more adaptable.
• (Uslaner 2002, quoted in Riegelsberger et al.
  2007)

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What is Trust?
http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/
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How do you measure trust?Prisoners Dilemma

• You and your partner each have a chocolate.
• Both you and your partner must independently
  decide whether or not you want to keep your
  chocolate or share your chocolate.

2 No Trust 3 Half Trust 4 Full Trust
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Prisoners Dilemma and Conditions of Trust

• Risk by sharing my candy, I risk losing it all
• Optimism I am not sure my partner will share
  with me.

Potential for Betrayal by betraying me, my
partner stands to gain by getting a lot of candy
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Trust Formation(Bos et al., 2002)

• Trust development was delayed in audio/video
• Defections were more likely with video/audio than
  FTF communication.
• Little difference between video and audio

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Common CMC Systems
If face-to-face is so good, why even have the
others?
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Trust Measurement vs. User-Centered Design
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• Introduction
• CMC and Trust
• User Generated Content and Collective Action
• Social Networking and Presentation of Self
• Where do we go from here?

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WikiPedia
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YouTube
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BitTorrent
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Where does all that stuff come from?
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(No Transcript)
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Public Good
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Tragedy of the Commons
If all individuals do A, every individual as a
member of the community would derive a certain
advantage. But now if all individuals less one
continue to do A, the community loss is very
slight, whereas the one individual refraining
makes a personal gain far greater than the loss
that he incurs as a member of the community.
--Pareto 1935, vol. 3, sect. 1496, pp. 946-7
What happens if EVERYONE thinks this way?
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User Generated Content
In most online communities, 90 of the users are
lurkers who never contribute, 9 of the users
contribute a little, and 1 of users account for
almost all the action. Jacob Nielsen, 2006
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Designing User Generated Content Systems

• As is, expect about 1 of users to contribute
  most of your content. Dont count on more!
• Though its only 1 of your users who are
  contributing content, youd better make sure that
  the contribution system is damn good!
• If that wont work for you, you need to build in
  incentive systems (payment, recognition,
  entertainment)

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Amazon.com
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Entertainment Peekaboom
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Peekaboom
In the FIRST 30 days, 14,153 people played this
game These people generated 1,122,998 pieces of
data. Each person tagged an average of 160
images. Top 10 scorers averaged 53 hours of game
play for one month.
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Collective Action vs. User-Centered Design
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• Introduction
• CMC and Trust
• User Generated Content and Collective Action
• Social Networking and Presentation of Self
• Where do we go from here?

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• All the worlds a stage, and all the men and
  women merely players.

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Erving Goffman
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Presentation of Self
I am hip
Hes so lame
Hes so hip
Im wearing jeans
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Facebook

• Sept 5, 2006 Facebook introduces a new feature
  called News Feeds
• Sept 5, 2006 Students Against Facebook News
  Feeds forms with over 700,000 members (the
  largest at the time).
• Sept 5, 2006 Mark Zuckerberg told everyone to
  calm down.

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This is information people used to dig for on a
daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so
people can learn about the people they care
about.
Your friends can still see your activity it
hasn't changed.
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Facebook

• Sept 5, 2006 Facebook introduces a new feature
  called News Feeds
• Sept 5, 2006 Students Against Facebook News
  Feeds forms with over 700,000 members (the
  largest at the time).
• Sept 5, 2006 Mark Zuckerberg told everyone to
  calm down.
• Sept 8, 2006 Mark Zuckerberg sends out message
  apologizing and introduces privacy control
• Present Everyone seems pretty happy

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Facebook
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Facebook
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Presentation of Self vs.User Centered-Design
How could Mark Zuckerberg have avoided all of
this?
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• Introduction
• CMC and Trust
• User Generated Content and Collective Action
• Social Networking and Presentation of Self
• Where do we go from here?

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Augmented Reality
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Virtual Worlds
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• Theres still a lot of technology out there. How
  are they going to affect the way we communicate?
• Theres a lot of ways people communicate out
  there. How can we design technology to support
  that?

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Questions?
David Nguyen nguyendt_at_eecs.berkeley.edu