A Conceptual Model for Supporting Social Groups with Ubiquitous Computing

1. A Conceptual Model for Supporting Social Groups with Ubiquitous Computing A Thesis by John Bodily

2. Motivation • Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp) environments promise to support us seamlessly working alone or in unison.[1] • Context-aware computing should adapt functionality to social factors (Social Contexts) that affect group interaction. • Need to represent and leverage Social Contexts in order to support groups by: • Developing collaborative context-aware applications to act as an interface for social interactions. • Network devices into ephemeral groups Anytime/Anywhere.

3. Definitions • Situation[9] - Relative position or combination of circumstances at a certain moment • Social Context[2] – Information relevant to the characterization of a situation that influence the interactions of one user with one or more other users.

4. Contributions • Presented a general model for supporting the social activities of groups[2] using: • Context-aware computing • Profiles to store social contexts obtained from the end-user • Activity Theory to help design profiles and application functionality • Ephemeral device groups

5. Contributions • Principles for supporting social groups in a Ubicomp environment: • Active feedback about the current state of the context and how it is used to support group interactions is part of minimizing distraction. • Collaborative Group Sessions add contexts that context-aware applications can utilize. • User’s formal and informal group memberships can be used by context-aware collaborative group software to support group interaction and expand social networks. PRIORITY 1 MESSAGE! You have a new message.

6. Presentation Outline • Background • A Conceptual Model to Support Social Groups [2] • A Prototype Collaborative Group System • Usability Evaluation of the prototype • Future Work and Conclusions

7. Background

8. Activity Theory • Psychological model of cognition to study how people learn to perform activities[5]. • Unit of analysis is an Activity. • Example Activities: • Soccer Tournament • Software project. • Studies the individual and the community of people he/she is interacting with. • Activities broken down into actions, and seamless operations. • Actions take more cognitive effort, and contain operations. • Over time as people learn actions become operations.

9. Elements of Activity Theory Mediating Relationship Transformation Tools Subject Object Outcome Community Work Division Rules

10. Group support in Ubicomp • Location and Identity awareness • Active Documents[3] • PEPYS[4] • Support for Social Functions, Use of User Profiles • IM as an interface for group support[11]. • Customized conference displays based on user-profiles[10].

11. A Conceptual Model to Support Social Groups

12. The Social Group DefSocial Group [6] – A number of individuals, defined by formal or informal criteria of membership who share a feeling of unity or are bound together in relatively stable patterns of interaction. • Users have either formal or informal membership. • Course enrollment • Past times (interests) • Stable patterns of group interaction • Class schedule (time and location) • Friends (identity)

13. Supporting a Social Group • Example – “Consider an introductory college class in a large lecture hall” • Questions cannot be easily addressed due to number of students. • Students that have access to PDAs could text the TA questions. • Devices should network together to support question/answer session for the appropriate times and location.

14. Challenges • Using context-aware computing to: • Predict the start of an interaction. • Predict the end of an interaction. • Support groups despite varying computer infrastructure.

15. System Model • Several Ubicomp devices per user with wireless capabilities. • Users will collaborate using peer-to-peer software. • No Byzantine failures, interactions will happen between trusted partners. • Clock drift will not fall outside application specific requirements.

16. Two types of groups in the model: User Group – The Social Group. Device Group – Networked Ubicomp devices. Two types of Contexts Social contexts understood by user group. Device Context - Detectable and configurable contexts processed by context-aware software in device group. Group Model

17. Profiles to store Social Context • User Group Profile • Used to store social contexts about the subject. • Ex. Name, email, class schedule, interests. • Group Session Profile • Contexts needed to characterize the start and end of a group interaction between community subjects. • Ex. Time, location, identities needed to be present.

18. Relationship Between the User and Device Groups Social Context (Time, Location, CSE 100 class) User Group UGP (Name, Email, CS Student) GSP (CSE100, MHALL101, 10a.m. ,10:50 a.m.) Input Feedback Device Context Location, Time DeviceGroup

19. Supporting User Perception • GSP forms and disbands device groups to support User Group Sessions as they take actions on the objective of an activity. • UGP supports customized functionality based on user’s social contexts during a user group session. GSP = Active Location, Time

20. Activity Theory Provides Input for the Group Model • After studying an activity: • Requirements for how application functionality uses contexts can be designed. • Contexts important to the subject factored into the UGP. • Contexts important to the Community are factored into the GSP.

21. A Prototype Collaborative Group System

22. Prototype Group Collaboration system • Designed and built using the Social Group model. • Users can chat and exchange files. • UGP includes: username, first and last names, email address • GSP includes: Group Purpose, Location, start and end time.

23. Platform • Proc: Intel XScale • Speed: 400 MHZ • RAM: 64 MB • ROM: 48 MB • Wireless Card: Dell TrueMobile 1180 (802.11b)

24. Prototype Applications Group Manager – Used to create and distribute groups between peers using GSPs. Group Chat – Allows groups to chat and share files peer-to-peer using a device group formed by GSPs.

25. Prototype Services • Situation-Aware Ephemeral Group (SAEG) – Forms device groups based on GSPs. • User Profile Distribution (UPD) – Distributes UGPs between peers when you enter an area. GSP = Active Rich, rich.bodily@gmail.com John, john.bodily@gmail.com

26. Usability Evaluation of the Prototype

27. Usability Test Plan • Test guidelines[7]: • First scenario should be one-on-one with facilitator. • 30 minutes a test session. • 4 users were recruited for testing[8]. • Heuristics evaluation – Enhanced passive feedback to the end-user about detected contexts. Group creation was made more user-friendly. • Scenario Testing Rounds: • One-on-one group chat • Chatting as a group • Leaving groups

28. Group Manager: Enhanced UI Before After

29. Group Manager: Enhanced UI After Before User: “It was easy to set time, duration, and location of groups.”

30. How to Join A Group • Create a GSP by defining the group name, and the location at which the group is active. • Set a time that the group will be active during. • Select the GSP and then “Send”, next select the users that you want to transmit the GSP to. • If the context is correct the GSP will activate and a device group will form allowing users to chat.

31. Usability Problems : Joining Groups Was there anything about using the Group Manager utility you found confusing, or difficult when creating groups? • “Understanding how people connect to groups and join them.” • “I found it a bit difficult to send a group to another person.” • “I had a hard time adding users to the first group I created but, after that it was easier”.

32. Usability Problems : Joining Groups Time taken to learn how to create, and form a group using a GSP. • 3 out of 4 observed to spend approx. 30-50% of that time learning how to send a GSP.

33. Joining Groups: Suggestions • “Have public and private groups, allow users to see a list of public groups.” • “Provide notification when a new group is in the area and a link to join.” • “Add a class schedule feature, if other people are in the class they will show up.” • “Use interests from user profile to locate, and join groups.”

34. Leaving Groups • Tested user reactions to having chat group interactions end based on changes in location and time. • Using passive feedback a user can tell why a chat group session ended. • User’s requested an active approach to inform them of what caused the application to end a chat group session.

35. Proper Feedback User:“Whether I was being kicked out as a result of location or time.” • Context-aware applications need proper feedback to make the user feel in control when changes in the environment are detected. • An application fades-away into the background when it meets user expectations about how/when to notify them.

36. Feedback: From Action to Operation Cognitively, proper feedback even if will first be an action but become an operation.

37. Group Chat: Active Feedback UI Before After

38. Using Group Session Existence as a Context • Users want to view active group sessions, and explore more proactive ways of joining/using them. • Group-centric means of joining a group. • Examples: Scheduling a room, Finding a discussion group.

39. Group Membership as a Context “You have to select the group and then choose who to send it to. I wanted to select the person and invite them.” • The formal and informal group memberships of a nearby user is a context. • Formal membership: Class schedule • Informal membership: Interest “motorcycles” • User-centric means of joining/forming a group.

40. Privacy • The existence of some group interactions should remain secret. • Some group memberships should remain secret. • Ex: complete class schedule, past-times

41. Future Work and Conclusions

42. Next Steps • Need to factor into the prototype user’s expectations for how groups work based on: • Locating existing group interactions. • User-centric means of finding users to proactively form groups with: schedules, interests. • Privacy

43. Social Context Distribution Service • A peer-to-peer service for storing and distributing GSPs. • Public group interactions get stored by a local instance on a device or at a server node. • Provides a means to browsing and distribute GSPs based on contexts in the GSP. • Used to create GSPs for informal group membership and sessions based on interests in a UGP.

44. Conclusions • Collaborative context-aware applications need to support feedback with the proper mix of passive/active feedback. • Studying, and using social contexts is part of creating the perception for users that devices can store and understand their view of the world. • When supporting interactions with sensitive social implications including user studies into a software development lifecycle can help.

45. Questions?

46. References • M. Weiser. The computer of the twenty-first century. Scientific American, 265(3):66-75, Sept. 1991. • B. Wang, J. Bodily, and S. Gupta. Supporting persistent social groups in ubiquitous computing environments using context-aware ephemeral group service. In Percom 2004. • P. Werle, F. Kilander, M. Jonsson, P. Lonnqvist, and C. G. Jansson. A ubiquitous service environment with active documents for teamwork support. In Ubicomp 2001, 2001. • M. L. W. Newman, M. Eldridge. Pepys: Generating autobiographies by automatic tracking. In Second European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1991. • K. Kuutti. Activity theory as a Potential Framework for Human-Computer Interaction Research, The MIT Press, 1996.

47. References • G. Marshall and et al. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press, Great Britain, 1994. • J. Fleming. User testing. www.ahref.com, Mar. 2006. • J. Nielsen. Why you only need to test with 5 users. Useit.com, Mar. 2006. • Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, April 2006, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/situation • M. e. a. Terry, Social net: Using patterns of physical proximity over time to infer shared interests. in CHI, 2002. • S. O. A. Ferscham C. Holzman. Context awareness for group interaction support. Mobiwac, pages 88-97, 2004.