Intimate Objects:Working at the Crossroads of

Information Science

Cornell Information Science Seminar

13 April 2005

Joseph ‘Jofish’ KayeCulturally Embedded Computing

Cornell Information Sciencejofish@cornell.edu

Intimate Objects

• Technological devices for couples to communicate

• Long distance relationships: lead users of communication technologies

• Popular topic for design in HCI, but…

[1] Kaye,J ‘J’ and Goulding, L. Intimate Objects. Proceedings of DIS 2004,ACM Press.

Intimacy in HCI

History of elegantly designed but ad-hoc interfaces for communicating intimacy in HCI

• Fields & Thresholds (Dunne & Raby DoP2 '94)• Feather, Scent & Shaker (Strong & Gaver CSCW'96)

• The Bed (Dodge CHI'97)• UbiComp'03 Workshop on Intimacy

www.intimateornot.org

• Digital Family Portrait (Mynatt et. al. CHI'01)• inTouch (Brave, Ishii, Dahley CSCW'98) • inStink, Honey I’m Home (Kaye '02, interactions

'04)• ……

Feather, Scent & Shaker:Supporting simple intimacy.

Rob Strong & Bill Gaver, CSCW 1996

Honey I’m Home. In Aromatic Output for HCI.interactions 11(1) Jan+Feb

(2004) 48-61

Minimal Intimate Objects

• Class project for Advanced HCI (INFO.640)

• Collaboration with Mariah K. Levitt, Jeffrey Nevins, Jessica Golden and Vanessa Schmidt

• Working with Jeff Hancock & Kirsten Boehner

• CHI 2005 Poster: Communicating Intimacy One Bit at a Time, Proceedings of CHI 2005, ACM Press.

• (CS! Bits Through Queues, Anantharam & Verdu (1998) IEEE Transactions on Information Theory)

Minimal Intimate Objects: PIO

• PIO (Physical Intimate Object):

• Computer built inside an Altoids mints container with a button and a large red LED (light).

• Connected to partner via Internet

• When button is pushed, partner’s light glows bright red, then fades over time

Minimal Intimate Objects: VIO

• VIO (Virtual Intimate Object):

• Software device represented as a small red circle in the taskbar of Window’s screen

• When circle is clicked, partner’s circle glows bright red, then fades over time

Focus: VIO

• In this talk, and in the paper, we are focusing on the use of the VIO. All results and statistics are for couples using the VIO, not the PIO.

• This is due to a combination of technical problems with the MinIOs (getting network connections) and participant dropout.

Methodology: Participants

• Participants– 10 couples in existing long-distance

relationships (n=20)•5 couples assigned to VIO (n=10)•5 couples assigned to MinIO (n=10)

Methodology: Procedure• Procedure

– Initial screening for technology– Pre-test questionnaire– Daily Logbook for 7 days– Post-test questionnaire– Server logs of every use of IO

Server Data

• When a VIO is in use, it checks in with the server every ten seconds, which is logged.

• The server logs every time a button is pressed.

• From this we can answer questions like “How many times a day did the local partner in couple 5 press the button? The remote partner?”

But…how do we evaluate intimacy?

• Intimacy poorly defined, even in the literature

• We asked subjects to define it themselves and use their own definition

• The 19 hearts problem

• Rich problems demand rich tools

Daily Logbook Entries

• Daily repeating Likkert scale questions– 1) How close do you feel to your partner today?– 2) How satisfied do you feel by your relationship

today?– 3) How connected do you feel to your partner today?– 4) What impact do you think your frequency of use of

VIO had on your partner’s day?– 5) What is your overall attitude towards VIO today?– 6) What is your overall interest level in VIO today?– 7) How comfortable did you feel with VIO today?

• No statistically significant results

Logbook Entries: Relationship

• Questions about relationship:– The color/song/TV show/season that

currently best represents my relationship is…

– If I were to do a dance about my relationship today, it would be a• Rumba Samba Tango

Waltz Swing

Logbook Entries: Relationship

– The color that currently best represents my relationship is…• Amber/yellow --> do I proceed w/ caution or

speed up to beat the red or slow down anticipating a step

• Purple - we have a more matured, aged relationship rather than a new, boundless one which would best be described by red. Purple is the more aged, ripened form of red.

• Yellow! Like a sun, like a summer. I often laugh with Sven especially in those days. Using Vio is really funny and interesting.

Logbook Entries: The IO

• Questions about the intimate object itself:– I would name my IO… my partner’s IO– If I could change one thing about my IO it

would be…– If my IO made a sound it would be…– Draw a picture of your ideal IO– I generally used my IO when I was…– If I could change one thing about my IO it

would be

Logbook Entries: The IO

• If I could change one thing about my VIO it would be…– the fact that I can only use it when I'm on my

computer cuz if I'm home and want to use it I have to turn it on and if I'm out I have to keep track that I want to click it

– The lag time between click and reaction– Well I can see Vio only on the bar down, so I have

to see it looking down. It would be nice if Vio will be something you can move around your desktop and put it where you prefer to be.

– Have the red/pink color take longer to fade.

Logbook Entries: Study itself

• Questions about the study itself:– I think this research is really about…– Which of these is your favorite number?

• 1 2 3 4 5 67

– I would name the people conducting this study

– Tell us a better way to do this study– Who have you told about this study?

Why?

Logbook Entries

• I think this research is really about…– Whether VIO promotes or enhances

intimacy for long-distance couples– people in relationships trying to connect

throughout the day without using or needing words.

– It is a new way for communication.– Creating computer dependency and

spreading and marketing it to the general public

Cross-referencing Results:Quantitative & Qualitative

• If my relationship were a season, it would be…

• 7/10 VIO subjects pick “summer”• 1/10, the most heavy user, picked

“spring”• 2/10, the couple with the lowest VIO

use, pick “fall” and “winter”

Results

1. Participants used it: on average a total of 14 to 168 times a day (average 35, SD 27, max > 700)

2. 75% reported VIO made them feel closer to their partner during the study.

3. 88% stated it became a regular part of their daily routine.

4. Many participants found it was an unobtrusive way to communicate while at work.

Rich evaluations for rich situations

• Inspired by Cultural Probes (Gaver, Dunne, Pacenti. interactions 6(1) 1999)

• Rich understanding of users’ experience with the device

• Rich opportunities for reflection• Rich source of input for what to do

next, both for research and for the software.

Current work

• VIO 1.1, 2.0: Class project for Bill Arms’s CS.501 Software Engineering. (team of 7)

• Open sourced client code, server code on SourceForge (project intimateobj)

• Full paper at Less is More conference, Microsoft UK, end April, LNCS issue.

• Panel at 4S on intimacy• Two upcoming studies: effects of

evaluation and role of situated software

Next…

• What is the “intimate object”? What is the experience of the “intimate object”?

• Current HCI research focuses on design methods;

• Thinking about evaluations: exploring the effect of evaluation on the design and study.

• Beginning to look like a dissertation topic…

‘Shouts out to my Homies’

• Phoebe Sengers, Liz Goulding & CEmCom

• Mariah K. Levitt, Jeffrey Nevins, Jessica Golden & Vanessa Schmidt

• Kirsten Boehner & Jeff Hancock• Bill Arms, Richard Calvi, Aakash Jain,

Vishal Desai, Shantanu Shah, Matt Feusner, Wei Guo, William Yip

Thank you.

Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kayejofish@cornell.edu

CHI 2005 Poster: Communicating Intimacy One Bit at a Time, Proceedings

of CHI 2005, ACM Press. Available at jofish.com/writing

This talk at jofish.com/talks