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Effective communication in organizations: Issues regarding choices between

F2F, voice-telephony, IM, email and real-time video

Lill Kristiansen, Dept. of Telematics, ntnu

Egil Østhus, Tandberg

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What is Tandberg?

From Tandberg.com: ” TANDBERG is the market share leader and the fastest

growing company in the video conferencing industry. We hold the highest market share for video infrastructure products as well as video endpoints, whether measured in terms of revenue or unit volume”

From Aftenposten 14th Febr. 2010: All new employees:

3 days course in culture Picture: From night event in

Vigelandsparken (Monolitten) 1640 employees in 49 countries,

500 in Oslo (Lysaker)

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About the presenters

Lill Kristiansen Former employed in Telenor R&D and Ericsson (IP-

telephony) Now prof. in Telematics

Teaching now: ttm4130: Service intelligence and mobility ttm7: Convergence

Research: Technical research (incl. Techno-Business relations) research on coordination and communication from a ’softer’ side

(CSCW:Computer Supported Coop Work)

Not representing Tandberg, indepent academic person

Egil Østhus, MSc. In telematics, 2005 Since then employed in Tandberg with SIP, UC, .. See also: http://www.komtek.ntnu.no/komtekerejobb_egil

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About the presentation

Background material Some existing applications and prototypes

On ’soft issues’ Organizational and human issues, some concepts and

theories

Technology and infrastructure: Standardization vs proprietary solutions?

Showing the film: PDA in Hospital

Presentation of two solutions ENME and PPCom

We invite you to work out scenarios / business plan for Simple-PPCom

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Acronyms: a few from technology...

BT Bluetooth (Blåtann in Scandinavian language) CMC Computer Mediated Communication F2F Face to Face FMC Fixed Mobile Convergence IETF Internet Engineering Task Force (std.body, IP)

(mostly ignoring charging and QoS) IM Instant Messaging IMS Multimedia Subsystem

(based on SIP, but with a business modell more similar toGSM, defined in 3GPP /ETSI (who also defined GSM)

MMoIP Multimedia over IP (or VVoIP with video and more,as we will be using today (hopefully!))

QoS Quality of Service (e.g. Reservation of bandwidth or radio resources etc. related to charging)

SD Service Discovery SIP Session Initiation protocol (’call setup’ within

IP-networks) (an IETF protocol) VC Video Conferenceing VAS Value Added Service (sometimes called supplementary service)

(related to / on top of) a more basic service like basic call or VoIP) VoIP Voice over IP ( ”IP-telephony” )

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Acronyms and terms: a few from health care

Discharge letter (Norsk: ”epikrise”) A written report from hospital til GP

EPR (Norsk: EPJ) Electronic patient record (/journal)

GP General Practitioner (norsk: ”fastlege”)

Pager (Norsk: ”personsøker”) a device still in use in health care in Norway this device is one way only

(and not integrated with phone in/out)

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Terminologies from telco and comp.sci

Conversational service is used by 3GPP (IMS) to describe non-same place real time communication where the timing requirements support fully natural conversation between two humans.

Synchronous communication is communication taking place at the same time (as opposed to traditional mail, voicemail etc).

Real time communication is by some regarded as synonymous to synchronous communication Note [1] . However, it may also be used somewhat differently for communication with strict timing requirements (such as lip synchronization, detailed jitter requirements etc.), and this is the way it is used in telecom.

Note [1] It seems that e.g. Bardram use the term ‘real time’ in this sense without specifying any strict timing requirements.

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Some applications for comm.&coord and a classification system

Same place Different place

Diff. time

Same time

Time

Place

High

Medium Low

Medium

yellow notesPaper based patient journal

snail mailemailEPR

project room

voice callsvideo conf. (planned ornon-planned)

Face to Face (F2F)(planned oropportunistic)

(example: room, corridor, bed ward, same house, ..

Perip

heral

Aw

areness

IM

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Some presence / IM systems with GUI

(1:from Cisco2:from http://missig.org/julian/projects/jabber/

3:MSN: note online (PC) vs Mobilegeneral: note combined use of fixed icons (red, green) and free text

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Presence/awareness in hospital today (for nurses) Note: anonymous presence

Ceiling in corridor

Consoles by the door (old/new)Lamp outside of room (some nurse present)

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Presence / awareness: ihospital.dk (research)

Locationstatus of operationvideo from op.plan for new op.fixed screen chat++dedicated for surgical department

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Status+location+ activityinto a phonebook-application on phones

From AwarePhone www.ihospital.dk(implemented on Nokia GSM phones with Java)

Status: Relying on manual input(ex. Operation)

Location (ex. OP1)Relying on a location tracking infrastructure

Activity (ex. Oper. (9-12):Fetched from a calendar

Send text messageCall

/contact

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”Business relationship” of AwarePhone

Endpoint (phone) supports ’click-to-call’ from addressbook application

Endpoints like big screens and PC via fixed IP network

VAS / applications for location and status + texting (with priority) on top of a local IP network

IP (WiFi/GPRS)

IP (WiFi/GPRS)

Public GSM networkPublic GSM network

No relationship (API) hereno location or call control to/fromGSM (TelenorFusion.no: offeringinterfaces for such use (and more)

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Compare to VoIP: two business models

Skype (global, proprietary) and Telio (SIP based) Offers VoIP over a best effort IP network,

Telio for a fixed monthly rate NOT by charging per minute

Assumes that enduser has a separate relationship with the ISP (Internet Service Provider)

NO RELATIONSHIP between application (VoIP) provider and the ISP (network provider). Two relationships for enduser

Supports nomadic users (enduser needs to find/establish relationship with local ISP by himself)

IMS: IP Multimedia Subsystem (SIP-based mobile system) more bundling of network connectivity and the application (VoIP)

into one service to the enduser More similar to GSM, supports roaming via one customer

relationship

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Soft issues (humans and organizations)

Media Richness Theory Social translucence (or selective transparency)

Affordance (much used for UI/GUI)

Mobility work / overhead caused by mobility or similar overhead to maintain right status

Workarounds

Our choice: Humans shall have the final control no totally automatic ’smart’ call divert to voicemail or

similar ’smartness’ in the application relying instead on good use of social translucence /

utilizing social rules obeyed by persons

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Media richness theory

Media richness is defined in terms of how well a medium can communicate equivocal or ambiguous information (e.g. video of the face of the speaker, body language.

‘grounding’ etc)

Face-to-face and video telephony is ‘rich’, and then comes voice telephony, other synchronous media and then asynchronous text.

Note: Voice telephony (VoIP) and video telephony (VVoIP) is differentiated regarding media richness.

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Oral or written?

Robert and Dennis (2005) argues that non same time (asynchronous) communication will allow the receiver to carefully consider the arguments and that this makes well suited in many types of arguments and discussions. (even though not rich according to media richness theory (the ‘paradox of richness’).

Inside a hospital doctors use much meetings and oral communication (in addition to written EPR)

Note: discharge letter from hospital to GP is always written text which in general is less suited (that oral/ F2F) to

communicate equivocal or ambiguous information

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Social translucence

Eriksson and Kellogg:http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/Papers/SocialNav.pdf

ICT-solutions supporting accountability

”I know that you know, hence I behave properly” Example 1: A door with a small window (orally) Example 2: Communication by 30 persons in one room organizing an

event (oral explanation) I know (that sound is fading) I know that you know (that sound is fading) Everyone can be held accountable for what the heard, but not for what was not

able to be hear (due to distance), people place themselves acacordingly

Our idea: make system that utilize social accountability e.g. in an awareness system, allow persons to mark ’busy’ and utilize social accountability to trust

people to make this decision only when appropriate (others can see/judge, hence I behave properly )

I know that you know that I was in busy status, still you called me, hence I trust that this is important etc.

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ICT =/= physical world as we know it

Sitation from Eriksson and Kellogg: ”[D]esigners in [architecture and urbanism] can assume the existence of a

consistent and unquestioned physics that underlies social interaction. There is no such constancy in the digital world”

Example from paper: half-duplex telecomunication,

Other examples: Access rights/ privacy

In a house privacy is governed via locks and closed doors + the physical layout of the house

Much more complex to understand access rights in Unix, Facebook, LMS (like It’s Learning etc.)

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Affordance

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.

Much used for UI/GUI design see e.g. Norman, in book The Design of Everyday Things)

Norman's affordances "suggest" how an object may be interacted with.

Norman's 1988 definition makes the concept of affordance relational, rather than subjective or intrinsic. This he deemed an "ecological approach,"

The focus on perceived affordances is relevant in practical design problems from a human-factors approach, which may explain its widespread adoption.

Example from St.Olav: Awareness can be obtained by leaving the doors to patient rooms

semi-open. This system affords a gradual level of awareness/privacy via both visual sight and audible sounds

Awareness via pushing of buttons: This affords a binary presence (less grading)

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Affordances of fixed display (as used in hospitals)

Easy to see (’at a glance’)

Hands-free operation in most cases

Offer awareness to many (not directed only to one person) Allows good shared understanding (redundant knowledge

and redundant information) In the corridor ceiling:

Outside the rooms

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FMC: Fixed Mobile Convergenceor UC: Unified Communication

FIXED =/= MOBILE ! Just study the affordances of fixed and mobile

communication systems (’phones’ / PCs ++). They are are not the same

Or study the way people use IM on PC vs IM on Mobile

Our aim: pick the best from both worlds Do not treat all devices as the same, as many consultants

claim is wise in UC

It might be wise to handle both fixed and mobile devices in the same system, but not as totally ”similar” entities

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FMC / Unified user experience

Picture Telenor, telektronikk:

http://www.telenor.com/en/resources/images/051-062_ConvergedTelecomMarket-ver1_tcm28-36179.pdf

My claim: Email on PC =/= email on mobile etc.

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Concept: ”Mobility work”

In GSM we have the formal protocoll of mobility management This was designed with the system, (in order to locate all mobile

phones, update location area etc.)

In real words it is convinient that things and persons are mobile, but this also give rise to overhead Additional (overhead) work to search/find for a thing/person

Ad hoc procedures like writingyellow notes ++ (as a kind of ”mobility management”)

(Mobility work is described e.g. in Bardram and Bossen)

”Availability work” Additional (overhead) work to keep one’s presence/status up to

date E.g. Absentee marking on wireless phones becomes more

important than it was on fixed phones (more interrupts in inappropriate situations)

J. Grudin has much relevant discussion on manual updates of collaborative systems in general: Rule: the one with new work must see some benefit for herself

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Workarounds

Any unintended way (not designed by the designer) that the enduser works around a perceived problem (to solve a problem) If a clock is missing in the system, place a clock next to it If the wireless phone is too interruptive (have no ’absentee

marking), take out the battery (St.Olav) May also be the case that functions exists in the system, but that

this fact is not known by the users Silent-button exists on the phone, but many users take out

battery instead (St.Olav)

Presence buttons at St.Olav (when nurses enter/leaves a patient room) Buttons and lamps not always used, often they leave doors semi-open instead, A simple workaround (the physical doors has richer/better/easier affordances)

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Context matters! BUT....

Organizational context matters, ref. all litterature in CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work)

BUT

How much of an applications neds to be tailormade to a particular domain (like health care), or even to each hospital?

And how much can we rely on a common solution which can be domesticated by the users

How to utelize the “long tail” (very special solutions) and who should do it? (Big telco operators or smaller 3rd parties alone or together with big telcos?)

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Technology and infrastructure

Why (not) standards?

The role of (common) infrastructure

The role of legacy

(The next slides are just a personal perspective)

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Why not standards?

Quicker time to market Standardization efforts take time...

Possibility to ”lock in” customers

Ask Microsoft ! NOTE: Microsoft html =/= proper html, MSN SIP =/= proper SIP

Ask Apple, Amazon/Kindle and more

Ask Skype! Note: Skype offer Skype-in and Skype-out to PSTN and GSM (but

not to other VoIP solutions)

NOTES: One may start off proprietary, and later offer the result as an open

specification (not necessarily open source) PDF is an open and de facto industry standard Skype is not open at all

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Why standards?

Interoperability All-to-all-telephony is ALWAYS assumed in telco Independence of handset vendor, subscription, base station

vendor, etc.

Competition Global market Ask GSM community!

Multiple handset vendors (Nokia, Sony-Ericson, Samsung, LG, ++) each having a global market

Multiple vendors of infrastructure components (Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola ++)

Multiple service providers (Telenor, NetCom (/TeliaSonera), Orange, Vodephone,...

(Not all telephony standards are easily undestandable to ’average-joe’ (Java-programmer), this may constrain service competiotion

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SIP: Session Initiation Protocol

A standard from IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)

Also used by traditional telecom standardization bodies 3GPP (with ETSI for UMTS) for use in IMS

IP Multimedia Subsystem in UMTS

Baseline SIP handles call set up SIP Refer handles ’call transfer’ (used by us) SIP allows for extensions (used by us)

SIP for presence SIMPLE

not used here, but relevant for UC Ubiquitous Computing

Relevant for IM/presence systems

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Infrastructure

”Everything that may be used by many applications” The network (if properly layered with open interfaces) AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) is generric and

typically used by many applications

NOTE Same location technology may be used by many applications (if

properly layered) Same application (like ”Buddy”) may use many types of location

technology (if properly layered)

Infrastructure may suffer from the chicken and egg problem. ”What is the killer app?” This is not really a proper question for infrastructure Ex.: smarthouse: Is energy saving the killer app? Ex.: IMS: Is video (or location or...) the killer app?

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The role of legacy

”Legacy is everything that works”

”Network externalities” has a value Owning the first fax machine has little value

Value of interworking with GSM and PSTN Even Skype has found that useful (though otherwise

proprietary)

Legacy may be a blessing but also a curse May limit the way we think

ex: email vs Facebook wall Interworking with legacy may also constrain the solutions How many of the peculiar solutions in PSTN shall be

carried over to VoIP? Depends on who you asks and their knowledge and business

interest

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Film: PDA in hospitals

A few scenes from the film will be shown

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ENME (network centric)

A centralized solution made in cooperation with Telenor originally made as the master thesis of Egil Østhus in

2005 Later published

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2 Scenarios for ENME

Business trip

A mobile worker Bob about to enter the airport express train

A caller Alice phones Bob with MMoIP

Bob answer with PDA/phone

Health care

Use of PDA, pat. terminal, (IM+loc.) + phones

Nurse Ann phones Dr. Bob with MMoIP

Dr. Bob. answers on (IP)-phone

caller + patient calleecalleecaller

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2 Scenarios for ENME (continued)

Business trip

Later in the call

Traveller moves to booth with bigger screen, multimedia is added by the ENME service after a proposal towards Bob on his PDA/phone

Health care

Later in the call

Dr. Bob moves to booth with bigger screen, multimedia is added by the ENME service after a proposal towards Dr. Bob on his PDA/phone

same callee (different picture!)

same callee

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Requirements of ENME (high level)

1. The ENME service shall be a value added service on top of an all-to-all telephony service. It shall work with a major standard MMoIP protocol.

2. ENME shall detect when a more suitable context occurs (i.e., fitting the proposed media types better). ENME shall then suggest an upgrade of the media types by moving the session to the new terminal(s).

3. The ENME service shall support mobility.

4. ENME shall work in a business case, i.e. it shall be possible to make a sensible charging of the value added service, as well as of the network resources used to transport the media types.

5. Substantial parts of ENME shall be demonstrated in June 2005 after 5 mo. work.

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Architecture overview

SIP network (e.g. IMS operated by Telenor)

SIP entity

Context/ENME

API IMS to VAS-provider (3rd party or Telenor) is needed

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Design /animation

Voice

!

Video

Voice

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PPCom: endpoint centric

Network centric or?

ENME handled context on central server(s) and via central SIP servers for signaling

This time we use a fully distributed service discovery.

In PPCom we are putting the endpoint center stage

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Network centric vs endpoint centric

SIPcenter.com [14]: “The traditional network model gives service providers

ultimate control, “ “IMS is clearly rooted in this approach” “[IMS] defines only the network core and has little to say

about edge devices”

Our approach is different: We are using B2BUA on the endpoint itself In this way the endpoint itself becomes a kind of FMC

intagrator

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Incoming vs outgoing calls

Note that several previous papers has described outgoing calls combining several devices Research shows that it is more important to cover the

case of an (unplanned) incoming call (see e.g. Belotti and Bly [2])

For outgoing call the user (callee) is most often able to find a proper terminal up front

Different for incoming calls (when not planned) The added value will probably lie in good handling of the

incoming case

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Incoming scenarios

Incoming call from customer with PPCom: A customer calls Tom from outside the company's domain. The customer Allan calls Tom on Tom's single URI

tom@acme.com from his video-equipped computer. Tom receives the call on his handheld, and chooses to answer the

call with a nearby video-phone.

Incoming call from boss with PPCom: Tom is in a meeting room with some other employees. His boss

Jane is placing a call to tom@acme.com. Since all calls appears on his handheld terminal before possibly transferred, he is in control of all calls wherever he is.

Depending on the social situation and the caller ID the human (Tom) choose either not to accept the call, or to accept the call and to use the wall mounted VC equipment in the room, or his personal lap top or just use his handheld phone.

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Scenario: Leaving the room suddenly

Enhancement; leaving the room Tom might also choose to start by using the VC

equipment, but decide to leave the room at some stage. He will then bring his handheld with him in order to have a

confidential talk. He might then replace the streams on the VC equipment

with voice on the handheld.

This shows that handling mobility / social rules may also be important for the value of the service

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Mobility and terminals in pervasive environments

We do not cover full personal mobility

We also assume that the callee is inside the (possibly distributed) enterprise using other devices (D) also

within the same enterprise domain (near by)

When outside of office environment plain SIP (MMoIP) is used as a basic multimedia call.

(D1). (D2)

Personal device (C)

1-1

(D3)

(D4)

Multi: C+DSeveral possible Di’sOne used at a time with C(or C used alone)

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C (B2BUA) on the endpoint (handheld)

Note: In the corresponding RFC from IETF the entity C is shown as a network server

However, C may as well the the endpoint (PDA/phone) as shown here RTP

User domain

User domain

Alice’sphone

Bob’sdevice

C

Correspondingentity

DiMulti:C+D

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Requirements (1/2)

Req.H Human shall be in control of the decisions

Req. 1.1 The value added service PPCom shall work with SIP as the underlying signalling protocol.

Req. 1.2 Only one of the parties (caller or callee) need to be aware of the existence of PPCom. The non-PPCom subscriber shall not need any special software or device to participate beyond standard based MMoIP equipment.

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Requirements (2/2)

Req. 2 PPCom shall detect suitable contexts (e.g., terminals fitting the proposed media types better that the current terminal at hand). This knowledge shall be used in a way allowing human

decisions.

Req. 3 The PPCom shall support mobility: Multi:C+D-paradigm is used User is inside the (virtual / distributed) enterprise I.e.: No need to support personal mobility in general

Note: No support of business traveller staying at a foreign hotel etc. in first phase (may be added later)

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Illustration (incoming call):

Local Domain (enterprise)

streams

SIP

SIP signaling

Foreign domain

Req.1.2: Basic SIP

Media

Much related work ignores req. 1.2 and add their ownSIP extensions on the external interface (even non-SIP extensions)

Req. 1.2 enables a stepwise introduction of the smart environment

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Incoming call flow

Caller (Alice)

1.INVITE

2.INVITE3. OK 4. OK

media

BT SD

DEVICE INFO

BT SD

DEVICE INFO

User action

Handheld (PDA)C

Local deviceD1(VC)

Local deviceD2 (PC)

5. ACK 6. ACK

Autoanswer

Sip servers

Note: user action (”human in the loop”)(The GUI on handheld is not shown (no real design made yet)

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Architecture: separtion of SIP and SD (service discovery)

Cntrl

JAIN SIP

Blue-cove

Handheld controller (C)

Local Device (D)

Inquiry

BT client

Event

BTstack

SD-C

Blue-cove

BT server

BTstack

SD-S

SIPUA

Session Module

Response

Note:

BT was used in the prototype

Evaluation of SD is for further work

Issues: Battery Scalability

Alternatives to BT/SD including use of manual routines?

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Simple-PPCom

Can we build a sensible version of PPCom without using Bluetooth and service discovery? Issues: User interaction when receiving the call must offer a

sensible set of terminals May be based on pre-configured user choices? How to avoid too much manual overhead ”availability work” Autoanswer may raise some privacy issues (and not only in

health care)

For which domains? General office environments? Dedicated solutions for XXX domain? Note: The last scenario in the film offer a special value in

this particular setting because dressing up in sterile is a cumbersome procedure

Not all use of MMoIP offer the same added value