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Social Issues and Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Social Issues and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. IST 331.1 Spring 2003 Lecture 11. CSCW Issues and Theory. All computer systems have group impact not just groupware! Ignoring this leads to system failure We look at several levels from minutiae to large-scale

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Social Issues and Computer Supported Cooperative Work

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  1. Social Issues and Computer Supported Cooperative Work IST 331.1 Spring 2003 Lecture 11

  2. CSCW Issues and Theory • All computer systems have group impact • not just groupware! • Ignoring this leads to system failure • We look at several levels from minutiae to large-scale • face-to-face communication • conversation • text-based communication • group working • organizational issues

  3. Face-to-Face Communication • Most primitive and subtle form of communication • Speech • Hearing • Body language • Eye gaze • Often seen as the paradigm for computer mediated communication

  4. Face-to-Face Communication • Transfer effect • Carry expectations into electronic media • May cause problems – rudeness • Personal Space when conversing • Eye Contact • Conveys interest and establishes social presence • Video may spoil eye contact but is better than audio only

  5. Face-to-Face Communication • Gestures and Body Language • Much of our communication is through our bodies • Deictic reference – ‘this’ or ‘there’ indicated by gestures or eye gaze • Head and shoulders video loses this

  6. Face-to-Face Communication • Back Channels – provide information at a level below turn-taking • Nods and grimaces • Shrugs of the shoulders • Grunts and raised eyebrows Alison: Do you fancy that film …er…’The Green’ um …it starts at eight. Brian: Great!

  7. Face-to-Face Communication • Restricting media restricts back channels • Video – loss of body language • Audio – loss of facial expressions • Half duplex – lose most voice back channel responses • Text base – nothing left

  8. Face-to-Face Communication • Turn-taking • Speaker offers the floor – how? • Listener requests the floor – how?

  9. Conversation • Smallest unit is the utterance • Turn taking – utterances usually alternate • Simplest structure – adjacent pair such as • A question and an answer • A statement and an agreement

  10. Conversation • Utterances are highly ambiguous • We use context to disambiguate • Two types of context • Internal context – references to a previous part of the conversation • External context – references to the environment, i.e., pointing to something

  11. Conversation • Often contextual utterances involve indexicals – ‘that’, ‘this’, ‘he’, ‘it’ • Resolving context requires participants to have a shared knowledge and meaning • Conversation constantly negotiates meaning – grounding

  12. Conversation • Utterances are assumed to be • Relevant – furthers the current topic • Helpful – comprehensible to listener • Breakdown and focus recovery Alison: Oh, look at your roses … Brian: Mmm, but I’ve had trouble with greenfly. Alison: They’re the symbol of the English summer. Brian: Greenfly? Alison: No roses silly!

  13. Conversation • Breakdowns happen at all levels • Breakdowns are frequent • Redundancy, frequency of turn-taking, back channels – contribute to detection of breakdown and rapid repair • Electronic media may cause more breakdowns and reduce our ability to recover from them

  14. Speech Act Theory • Specific form of conversational analysis • Utterances characterized by what they do – they are acts ‘I’m hungry’ – has a certain propositional meaning; feeling hungry May carry the meaning ‘Get me food’

  15. Speech Act Theory • Basic conversation acts illocutionary points • Promises, requests, declarations • Speech acts need not be spoken • Silence interpreted as acceptance • Generic patterns of acts can be identified • One example is conversation for action (CfA) • State diagram on pg. 525

  16. Speech Act Theory • CfA was basis for groupware product – Coordinator • Structured e-mail system • Users must fit within CfA structure • Theory of communication led the design of the product • Not liked by users

  17. Text-based Communication • Most common media for asynchronous groupware • Exceptions: voice mail and answerphones • Familiar, similar to paper letters • In groupware, acting as a speech substitute

  18. Text-based Communication • Four types: • Discrete – directed messages like e-mail • Linear – message is added in order to the end • Non-linear – messages linked in hypertext fashion • Spatial – messages arranged on a 2 dimensional surface

  19. Text-based Communication • Loss of face-to-face back channels • Difficult to convey • Affective states – happy, sad, angry, humorous • Illocutionary force – urgent demand or a deferential request • E-mail users created tokens of the affective states - :-) :-( ;-)

  20. Text-based Communication • Culture of e-mail has replaced: • Formal letters • Memos • Notes • Conversation in the hall • Culture dictates how you respond to an e-mail

  21. Text-based Communication • Grounding constraints (Clark & Brennan) • Cotemporality – instant feedback • Simultaneity – send and receive messages at the same time • Sequence – utterances are ordered • These constraints are weaker in text-based interactions when compared to face-to-face interaction • May cause occasional breakdown in communication

  22. Text-based Communication • Context is difficult to maintain • Groupware systems strive to maintain WYSIWIS • Can’t use deictic reference ‘that one’ • E-mail systems lack sequentiality – users overcome this by appending to a previous message • Hypertext allows for parallel conversations

  23. Text-based Communication Hypertext conversation structure Alison: Brian’s got some lovely roses. Brian: I’m afraid they’re covered in greenfly. Clarise: I’ve seen them, they’re beautiful.

  24. Text-based Communication • Pace of conversation – rate of turn-taking • Face-to-face – every few seconds • Telephone – half a minute • Email – hours or days • Lower pace – less feedback; less interactive • Coping strategies tend to increase granularity ( send more with each message)

  25. Grouping Dynamics • Work groups constantly change: • In size / membership • In structure • Several groupware systems have explicit roles which prevent flexibility

  26. Grouping Dynamics • Physical environment • Face-to-face work radically affected by the layout of the workplace • Thinking takes place in interactions with other people and physical environment - Distributed Cognition

  27. Grouping Dynamics • Distributed Cognition – implications for work groups • Importance of mediating representation – drawings on a whiteboard • Group knowledge greater than the sum of the parts – creation of new knowledge • Groupware design focus on external representation

  28. Organizational Issues • Organizational factors can make or break groupware • Before installing a system, the designer must understand: • Who will benefit? • Who puts in effort? • Balance of power in the organization. • How will it be affected? • Difficult to measure the success of a system

  29. Organizational Issues

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