Coye Cheshire & Andrew Fiore //

Computer-Mediated Communication

Media Richness and Visual Interfaces

15 February 2012

Projects and Assignment #1

Assignment 1 is a short 2-3 page description of your group project idea and the division of labor within the group.

Due Feb. 22 at beginning of class (one assignment per group, 2 printed copies)

Groups will be signing up for a meeting with us to discuss the project the following Wednesday.

http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i216/s12/assignment1.php

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Theoriesof mediated

communication

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Cues Filtered Out

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unsealedprophecy.wordpress.com

Social presence:Lower bandwidth Less warm, others seem less salient

Lack of non-verbal cues — disinhibition and hostility (e.g., flaming)

Is this the experience of online interaction?

Social Identity/Deindividuation Theory(Cues About Us, Not You or Me)

Visual anonymity “deindividuation” salience to group identity

“Overinterpreting” based on limited info could lead to greater social attraction based on in-group status, stereotyping.

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[C]apacity to facilitate the

formation of shared

meaning within a given time

interval.

“

”— Dennis & Kinney

Media richness —

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A plausible ranking?

Face-to-face

Synchronous video

Synchronous audio / asynch. video

Synchronous text / asynch. audio

Asynchronous text

Richer

Leaner

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RichElements of richness Multiplicity of cues (bandwidth) Immediacy of feedback Use of natural language Personal focus

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Lean

Elements of richness Multiplicity of cues (bandwidth) Immediacy of feedback Use of natural language Personal focus

Channel: conduit for a particular type of info,e.g., for voice or text

Cue: “any feature of the world, animate or inanimate, that can be used ... as a guide to future action” (Donath 2007) —i.e., informative, not necessarily intentional

Signal: a cue meant to indicate an otherwise hidden quality

Channel

Cue

Signal

Channels, cues, and signals

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Some types of social cues

Textual Production cost to encode

meaning equivalent to FTF in text

Verbal

Beyond FTF?

Non-verbal

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Feedback

Type of feedback Acknowledgment — understanding Repair — correction or clarification Proxy — completion

Immediacy of feedback Concurrent:  synchronous nods, mm-hmms

a.k.a. backchannel

Sequential:  brief interjection

Media choice vs. use (Cues to Choose By)What medium would you choose for a given task?

vs. What medium “performs” best?

Media Richness (the theory) originally examined media choice and use in organizations.

Claim: Managers should choose medium based on task to be effective. More ambiguous tasks need richer medium.

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Media choice vs. media use

Types of tasks “Uncertain” — missing information “Equivocal” — ambiguous

interpretations

“Best” medium for an (un)equivocal task What do managers choose? What do they say they would choose? What yields the best performance?

P.S.: What is “best performance”?

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Dennis & Kinney hypotheses

H1a: Performance improves as multiplicity of cues increases …

H1b: … more for more equivocal tasks.

H2a: Performance improves as immediacy of feedback increases …

H2b: … more for more equivocal tasks.

Dennis & Kinney experiment

TasksLow-equivocality: SAT-type questionsHigh-equivocality: College admissions

Media

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Cues: Low Cues: High

Feedback: Delayed

Text chat(turn-based)

Video(half-duplex)

Feedback: Immediate

Text chat(live typing)

Video(full-duplex)

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Mean decision time (D&K)

High cues (AV) Low cues (CMC)

Task Immed. Delayed Immed. Delayed

Low equiv. 12.21 17.00 26.29 31.53

High equiv. 13.14 14.35 18.71 23.71

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— Clark & Brennan (1991)

Social Information Processing (Cues Filtered In)

Walther (1992) re-examined early CMC research:“Given sufficient time and message exchanges for interpersonal impression formation and relationship development to accrue, and all other things being equal, relational [quality] in later periods of CMC and F2F communication will be the same.”

Users compensate for attributes of CMC (e.g., emoticons to replace non-verbal affective displays)

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Hyperpersonal communication(Cues Bent and Twisted)Contributing factors: Selective self-presentation

Shared group membership

Channel effects

Feedback effects

Bottom line: Perceptions more extremely positive (or negative) than FTF in the face of limited information

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The sensorial parsimony of plain text

tends to entice users into engaging their

imaginations to fill in missing details while,

comparatively speaking, the richness of

stimuli in fancy [systems] has an opposite

tendency, pushing users’ imaginations

into a more passive role.— Curtis (1992)

“

”

Walther, Slovacek, & Tidwell 2001

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Long-term, no photos

Short-term, photos

Long-term, photos

Short-term, no photos

So

cial

at

trac

tio

n

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Farnham & Riegelsberger 2004

Text profiles Photo profiles

Gaming partner preference(1 = Don’t want to play with, 7 = Want to play with)

Cou

nt

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The study of CMC effects is not best served by

blanket statements about technology main

effects on social, psychological, and

interpersonal processes, nor by proclamations

that online relationships are less rewarding

than FTF ones. Rather, qualities of CMC are …

more often the product of interesting and

predictable interactions of several mutual

influences than main effects of media.

— Walther et al. (2001)

“

”

Abstract visual interfaces

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Social translucence

Visibility: make social information apparent Awareness: knowing based on what you see Accountability: knowing that I know you know

Why? To recreate a “social physics.”

Why not “social transparency”?

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“[T]ranslucence … stands in for the notion that, in the physical world, cues are differentially propagated through space — something which, as social creatures, we understand and make use of in governing our interactions. Thus, we know that those across the room may see we are talking, but will be unable to hear what we say; and we adjust our interactions to take advantage of this.”

— Erickson et al.

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Babble social proxy“provide cues about the presence and activity of those in the current conversation”

“Socially useful ambiguity”

Pretending to pay attention, e.g., clicking the Babble proxy to feign attention to the conversation

Plausible deniability: consider the fallibility of cell phones, email/spam filtering, etc. — tech. limitations, not design decisions, but the social utility of these devices would change without them.

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Lecture proxy

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Auction proxy

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Waiting-in-line proxy

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Chat Circles 2

The Chat Circles avatar

Vaguely humanoid form, but stylized, not realistic — no faces!

Words centered in/around the form — ties words to identity, “face”

2D location allows proximity

Size tied to length of utterance

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Temporality and spatiality Utterances vanish after a few seconds Hearing range: can see only nearby utterances

What is the real-world effect mimicked here?

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Movement

Rhythm of conversation: growing and shrinking circles set the pace

Proximity:friendliness, intimacy, or aggression

Expressivity:fidgeting, dancing, leading, following, playing

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Traces

Movement traces Speech traces

Visual indicator of social history of the chat space

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History

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Faces

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What are faces good for?Conveying, among other things:

Social presence Individual identity Social identity Emotion Gaze

By means of: Structure Dynamics Decorations

Source: galante.com

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Characteristics of basic emotions1. Distinctive universal signals 2. Distinctive physiology 3. Automatic appraisal4. Distinctive universals in antecedent events 5. Distinctive appearance developmentally 6. Presence in other primates 7. Quick onset 8. Brief duration 9. Unbidden occurrence 10. Distinctive thoughts, memories images 11. Distinctive subjective experience

Basic emotions Anger Disgust Fear Joy Sadness Surprise Contempt

Ekman (1999) Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth (1972)(and many others)

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Action unitsFacial muscles

Facial expressions:Emotions revealed

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PFqzYoKkCc

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Representing the face: 

“Being close may be worse.”

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The Uncanny Valley

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKTAJBQSm10

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“being there” vs. “beyond being there”

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Chernoff faces

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The New York Times and Prof. Steve C. Wang

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Indeed, the 2007 managerial statistics, as presented in an annual register published by the baseball analyst Bill James, are a relatively dull grid of digits. But the facial maps make comparisons much easier to grasp.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ Tony La Russa, known as a constant tinkerer, had his National League-leading 150 different batting orders (in 162 games) translate into an elongated head and wider eyes.

By contrast, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Charlie Manuel — who said this spring that he used far fewer lineups because he preferred to “get into a routine and stay with it” — had a much squatter face and dots for eyes.

— The New York Times

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Designing with faces and bodies

We read meaning in lots of things, but especially human forms!

There is no such thing as neutral.

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Faces ininterfaces

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Chit Chat Club

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(Karahalios and Dobson)

Chit Chat Club

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Second Life facial expressions

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Second Life expression plug-in

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Facial Expression Analysis

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(Mateos: http://dis.um.es/~ginesgm/fip/problems.html#expression)

Eyes

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2/15/12 Cheshire & Fiore — Computer-Mediated Communication 67Kobayashi & Kohshima 2001

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Video chat

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The gaze angle problem, or…

Source: http://staffx.webstore.ntu.edu.sg/personal/astjcham/Web/Research/percepter.htm

Why so glum?

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Source: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7126627.html

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Yang & Zhang 2004

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Source: D. Nguyen

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Cameras

Projectors

MultiViewDisplay

Source: D. Nguyen

Lag, lip synch, social judgments When audio precedes video by 5 video fields, viewers

evaluate people on television more negatively (e.g. less interesting, more unpleasant, less influential, more agitated, less successful).

Audio-video asynchrony has no effect on viewer's memory for audio information.

Viewers can accurately tell when a television segment is in perfect synch, and when it is 5 fields out of synch. Viewers cannot accurately tell the same segments are 2.5 fields out of synch.

Even though detection is low when asynchrony is moderate (2.5 fields), viewer evaluations are still affected.

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(Reeves and Voelker 1993)

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For next Wednesday…Visualizations and Visual Interfaces

Monmonier, M. (1996) Chapters 3 and 10. In How to Lie with Maps. Chicago, Ill.: University Of Chicago Press.

Erickson, T. (2003) Designing visualizations of social activity: six claims. In Extended abstracts of ACM Computer-Human Interaction.

Donath, J. (2011) Visualizing Conversation.

Narayan, S., Cheshire, C. (2010) Not too long to read: The tldr Interface for Exploring and Navigating Large-Scale Discussion Spaces. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (HICSS). Computer Society Press.

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