Social Perspectives on HCII:aka social mini

Course Overview

• Goals– Broad introduction to social perspectives on HCI &

Information Systems• CSCW, Small groups, IT & Organization, Online communities

– Reading intensive • 42 articles• ~ 1000 pages

– History of the field(s)• Classic articles• Important perspectives• Sampling of important topics• Less emphasis on cutting edge research

Orientation

• Syllabus & topics• Course requirements

– 6 readings/week– Lead class session– Lit review– Wikipedia improvement– Final exam

• Discussion abt class structure– More integrative discussion of papers– 2 student/presenters pre class session

Media Richness: Key Take-aways

• Technology isn’t just hardware & bits• Concept of ‘fit’ between technological

attributes and X (e.g., communication) needs• What makes good theory• Along the way:

– Understanding & evaluating media richness theory– Understanding & evaluating Clark’s collaborative

language model

Media Richness

• 40 year research tradition on the value of communication modalities on communication success. E.g., – Human Factors tradition:

• Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. New York: Wiley.

• Chapanis, A. (1975). Interactive human communication. Scientific American, 232, 36-42.

– Organizational behavior tradition:• Van de Ven, A., Delbecq, A., & Koenig, R. (1976). Determinants of coordination

modes within organizations. American Sociological Review, 41, 322-338.

• Katz, R., & Tushman, M. (1979). Communication patterns, project performance, and task characteristics: An empirical evaluation and integration in an R&D setting. Organizational behavior and human performance, 23(2), 139-162.

• Daft, R., & Lengel, R. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554-571.

Cisco Telepresence Application

• Will this technology improve distributed work?• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akzNWS5dygQ&feature=related

• Multiple 2-person referential communication tasks

• E.g., Find nearest MD on map• E.g., Build trash cart

• Common results: • Voice speeds solutions

compared to typing• Faster times• More turns• More words

• Visual channel doesn't help (in a talking head set-up)

Solution time0

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Face to face

Voice

Writing

Typing

Solution time0

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VoiceVoice+videoWritingWriting+videoTypingTyping+video

(fm Chapanis, 1972)

Referential Communication Results

Why doesn’t “talking-heads" video improve referential communication?

• Most of the content is in the words• Gestures may be pre-verbal, rather

than illustration• For emotion, video and audio channel

can be redundant• Rich media may be useful for handling

ambiguous and conflictful topics• E.g., Images change lie-detection,

but help liar over the lie-detectorSeeing your partner doesn'timprove ability to communicate about objects in the world:

Human Factors Tradition

• Main effect predictions:– Humans evolved with Face-to-Face

communication– Deviations from Face-to-Face lead to worse

communication performance

Fit

Fit

Organizational information processing requirements from goals, environment, technology and size.

Organizational effectiveness

Information processing capacity of structural design choices (vertical & horizontal linkages, departmental groupings, types of communication)

Fit btw Technology & Need

Fit (Tushman)

Tushman: Fit between task and peer-to-peer communication

• Departments are more successful when their style of communication matches their task & interdependence

Research

0 4 8 12 16 20

Predicting "richer" communica-tion

Low Perform

Ratio peer-to-peer communication to managerial communication

Hi

Low

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Low PerformHigh Perform

Ratio peer-to-peer communication to manage-rial communication

Inte

rdep

ende

nce

Uncertainty vs Equivocality

• What’s the difference?• Will same type of technology for coordination

aid them both?

Uncertainty vs Equivocality

• Uncertainty=Information deficit between information is needed to perform tasks and information that is available– Based on features of the task

– On information in hand

• Equivocality=Ambiguity or existence of multiple & conflicting interpretations of an organizational situation

Media Richness Theory in a Nutshell:Fit btw structure & needs

Is this a good theory?

• Criteria?

How do you evaluate media richness theory?

• Conceptually: – Is the uncertainty/equivocality distinction valid?– Is the concept of richness well specified?– Is the theory connecting equivocality and media

well defined? E.g., What is the mechanism?

• Empirically: Do predictions about choice and effectiveness hold?

One Test• Lab experiment varying equivocality & media richness

– Equivocality: • High equivocality : Undergrad admissions problem,

witharguments about weighting SATs,

GPA, extracurricular activities, jobs,

residency, etc.• Low equivocality: SAT problem solving questions

– Richness:• Immediate feedback: Full duplex vs. half-duplex

audio/video Chat vs. email

• Multiplicity of cues: Full duplex audio/video vs. chat Half-duplex audio/video vs. email

– Outcomes: Time, Consensus, Decision quality, SatisfactionDennis, A. R., & Kinney, S. T. (1998). Testing media richness theory in the new media: The effects of cues, feedback, and task equivocality. Information Systems Research, 9(3), 256-274.

Results

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Lo Equiv Hi Equiv

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Fewer cues

Multi-cue

• Faster with– Multiple cues– Interactivity

• Contingency effects– No effects on decision quality– No effects on consensus– No effects on communication

satisfaction– Interaction between

multiplicity of cues & equivocality on completion time, but inconsistent with theory

• Multiple cues improves performance most for SAT task, not admissions task

Media richness X Task equivocality

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Non-interactive

Interactive

Clark’s Theory of Cooperative Language Use to Explain Media Effects

Clark’s Theory of Common Ground

• Interpersonal communication is more efficient when people share greater common ground

• Mutual knowledge, beliefs, goals, attitudes that people know that they share

• Grounding = The interactive process by which communicators exchange evidence about what they do or do not understand over the course of a conversation, as they accrue common ground.

– Presentation phase: Speaker presents utterance to addressee

– Acceptance phase: Addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of understanding

• People ground utterances to extent necessary “for current purposes”

• Principle of least collaborative effort - provide the minimum necessary for successful grounding

Grounding in a Bicycle Repair Task

A: Next you have to put the clamp on.B: The clamp?A: Yeah, see those pieces over there?B: Yeah.A: It’s the long one.B: Ok I got it.

Mutual Knowledge or Common Ground

• Communication rests on mutual knowledge or common ground: – The knowledge the parties to a communication hold in

common and know they have in common• Speakers as hypothesis testers.

– “If I say ‘X’, will listener understand ‘X’?”– “If I say ‘Did you see the game?’ will listener understand

‘Did you see Sunday’s AFC Championship football game?’”

• Speaker does hypothesis testing at two points:– Presentation phase — “What should I say?”– Acceptance phase — “Did the listener understand what

I meant or should I elaborate?”

Name these objects

A B

100%: Circle 70%: Star30%: Adjective Star

Name these objects

A B C

80%: Circle20%: White Circle

60%: Star40%: Adjective Star

0%: Star100%: Adjective Star

• Speakers take into account what they expect their partners to know– Name objects to distinguish among similar objects

which a listener (a) has in mind and (b) is likely to confuse

Referential communication task• One person (the director) tells another (the worker) in what

order to place these Tangram figures• Observer notes what the team does to improve over time

– How did the pair coordinate naming conventions?– How did the director know if the worker understood a direction?

• Up to four trials, with four figures per trial

• Communicators come to agree on a pair-specific description of objects

• With a new partner, words per object returns to close to original level

Partners are learning

What evidence do people use for grounding?

• Personal knowledge• Group membership• Linguistic co-presence• Explicit feedback• Physical co-presence

Stimuli for Expert vs. Novice Study

1 2 3 4 5 6

• Task: Order postcards of NYC landmarks

•Experts: New Yorkers

•Novices: Mid-westerns & others

• Experts talking to experts are more efficient than novices talking to novices

• Work with resources at hand

•Mixed pairs learn from each other

•Novices learn to use names

•Experts learn to use descriptions

•But adjustments are incomplete

Partners can partially accommodate to differences in others knowledge

Role of technology

Applying Grounding Theory To Technology

• Clark & Brennan (1991): “People should ground with those techniques available in a medium that lead to the least collaborative effort.”

• Hypothesis: Objective characteristics of different communication media change the costs of conversational grounding and strategies for doing so.

• Some key types of costs:– Production/Reception costs: costs of producing/receiving messages– Start-up costs: costs of initiating conversation– Asynchrony costs: costs of timing utterances– Speaker change costs: costs of turn-taking– Repair costs: costs of correcting misunderstandings

• Should allow us to predict in advance what features new technologies should have to meet different collaborative purposes

Affordances of Communication Media(Clark & Brennan, 1991)

Co-PresenceParticipants share physical environment, including a view of what each other is doing and looking at

VisibilityParticipants can see one another but not what each is doing or looking at

Audibility Participants can hear one another

CotemporalityMessages are received close to the time that they are produced, permitting fine-grained interactivity

SimultaneityMultiple participants can send/receive messages at the same time, allowing backchannel communication

SequentialityParticipants take turns in an orderly fashion in a single conversation

Reviewability Messages do not fade over time

Revisability Messages can be revised before being sent

Affordances of Conventional Media

Affordance Face-to-Face

Video Conf. Phone Email

Copresence ++ ? -- --

Visibility ++ + -- --

Audibility ++ ++ ++ --

Cotemporality ++ + ++ --

Simultaneity ++ + ++ --

Sequentiality ++ ++ ++ --

Reviewability -- -- -- ++

Revisability -- -- -- ++

Exactly how conversationalist achieve common ground depends up the details of the technology available

• formulation• production• reception• understanding• start-up• delay• asynchrony• speaker change• display• fault• repair

• co-presence• visibility• audibility• co-temporality (no lag)• simultaneity (full duplex)• sequentiality• reviewability• revisability

Features of communication setting

Needs for & costs of

Change

Technology changes strategies and costs of grounding

Exploring the Role of Shared Visual Information

• What features of physical space influence its value?– Fidelity of views– Hypotheses: Delay, rotation & host of other factors that

make views dissimilar will degrade collaborative performance

• When is shared visual context most important?– Visual complexity– Hypothesis: When task is complex enough that language

itself is insufficient to efficiently describe events

Cooperative Jigsaw Puzzle Task

• Helper has picture of target and gives instructions to worker, who moves pieces to match target

• Subjects communicate via audio & shared computer screens

TargetShared view

Work area Staging area

ManipulationsTask complexity

Visual fidelity– None: Audio only– Partial

• Shared screen with a 3-second delay• Shared screen with rotation

– Immediate: Shared screens with no delay & no rotation– Field of view: From identical to none

Simple Complex

Primary colors Tartan plaids

Static colors Changing colors

Pieces abutted Pieces overlapped

Experimental ManipulationsFidelity of the Visual Space

• Immediate• Delayed (3 seconds)• None

• Other studies– Rotation of the spatial perspectives– Discontinuous, “push to see” images

Visual difficulty:• Static vs. Dynamic Tasks

• Other studies– Spatially easy vs. difficult puzzles– Easy versus difficult to name objects – Same vs. different visual perspective

Immediate condition

No SVS condition

Summary of Multiple Experiments

• Task performance– Shared visual space improved task performance

(speed & accuracy) in all experiments– Improved performance most for visually complex

tasks

• Shifted conversational strategies– Shared visual space improved improved efficiency of

reference (e.g., words/reference)– Lack of shared visual space forced many workarounds

Two Distinct Coordination Processesfor Joint Action

• Situational awareness: – In a changing environment, parties need to understand

current state of task vis-à-vis goals in order to plan next action

• Conversational grounding:– When using language to coordinate action, pair needs to

understand what a communication partner understands now to assess success of last utterance & to plan new ones

• Is this distinction theoretically important?• Do the data support the distinction?

Visual Feedback Most Helpful with Linguistically Complex Tasks

Grounding vs Situational Awareness

Difficultygrounding

DifficultySA

EasySA

Easygrounding

Influence of Visual Alignment on Deistic Reference & Task Alignment

Spatial references Task references

Influence of Field of View on Deistic Reference & Task Alignment

Spatial references Task references