Proactive Displays:Bridging the Gaps between

Online Social Networksand Shared Physical Spaces

Joe McCarthy

Principal Instigator

Strands Labs, Seattle

Outline

• A few shameless plugs

• Overview: A brief history of Proactive Displays

• An example: the Context, Content & Community Collage

• Related work: commercial & academic

• Future plans

(Slides available online at http://www.slideshare.net/gumption)

Strands: social recommendation & discovery

http://www.strands.com/corp

http://blog.strands.com

Strands: social recommendation & discovery

Big announcement today: BBVA + StrandsTú cuentas (You count, in Spanish)

Strands: social recommendation & discovery

“What you play counts!”

Recommender System Startup Contest

Deadline: 15 September 2008

ACM RecSys 200823-25 October

Lausanne, Switzerland

Strands Labs Seattle

Mission:

“To design, develop and deploy technologies that weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds and help people relate to the other people, places and things around them in ways that offer value to all participants.”

[http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/innovating-at-m.html]

Location:

Proactive Displays: Definition

\(ˌ)prō-ˈak-tiv\ adjective

acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes

\di-ˈsplā\ noun

a setting or presentation of something in open view

+

OnlineProfiles

Physical Tokens

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LargeDisplays

BetterReal-worldInteractions

Bridging the gaps between peopleby bridging the gaps between the online and offline worlds

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Large visual or aural displays that can sense & respond to the people and activities taking place in their vicinity

Proactive Displays

1st Generation Proactive Displays

MusicFX

MusicFX: An Arbiter of Group Preferences for Computer-Supported Cooperative WorkoutsJoseph F. McCarthy and Theodore Anagnost1998 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ‘98)

A Multi-Agent System for Meting Out Influence in an Intelligent EnvironmentM. V. Nagendra Prasad and Joseph F. McCarthyEleventh Innovative Applications in Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI ‘99)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLgXLl4uGYk

a fitness center environment that knows who is working out, what they like to listen to,

and dynamically adjusts the music to best suit the group of exercisers at any given time.

2nd Generation Proactive Displays

Visual Awareness Location Tools (ActiveMap & EventManager)

ActiveMap: A Visualization Tool for Location Awareness to Support Informal InteractionsJoseph F. McCarthy and Eric S. MeidelFirst International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (HUC '99)

EventManager: Support for the Peripheral Awareness of EventsJoseph F. McCarthy and Theodore D. Anagnost.Second International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (HUC 2000)

a suite of tools for creating greater awareness of the location and activities of colleagues within a workgroup,

with an aim to provide more opportunities for informal communication

3rd Generation Proactive Displays

UniCast, OutCast, GroupCast: Ubiquitous Peripheral Displays

UniCast, OutCast & GroupCast: Three Steps Toward Ubiquitous Peripheral DisplaysJoseph F. McCarthy, Tony J. Costa and Edy S. LiongosariThird International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2001)

Promoting Awareness of Work Activities through Peripheral DisplaysElaine M. Huang, Joe Tullio, Tony J. Costa and Joseph F. McCarthy2002 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2002)

4th Generation Proactive Displays

AutoSpeakerID Ticket2Talk Neighborhood Window

Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic ConferenceJoseph F. McCarthy, David W. McDonald, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. RashidACM 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004)

Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social EnvironmentsDavid W. McDonald, Joseph F. McCarthy, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. RashidACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions (TOCHI), Vol. 14, No. 4, January 2008

4th Generation Proactive Displays (v 2)

5th Generation Proactive Displays

The Context, Content & Community Collage

@ Nokia Research Center Palo Alto

The Context, Content & Community Collage: Sharing Personal Digital Media in the Physical WorkplaceJoseph F. McCarthy, Ben Congleton, F. Maxwell HarperTo appear: ACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008)

The Latest Generation of Proactive Displays

• Shortcomings of previous efforts• Special-purpose sensors

(IR badges, RFID tags)

• Special-purpose profiles

• Special-purpose installations

• Goals of present / future efforts• Multi-purpose sensors

(BT mobiles … NFC)

• Multi-purpose profiles

• Multi-purpose installations

The Problem

• Employees feel un[der]appreciated

• #1 reason people leave jobs (US Labor Dept)

• 2/3 of workers receive no recognition (Gallup)

• Active disengagement costs US$300B / year

• Employees feel disconnected

• Lack of community in workplace

• Us vs. them

• Managers have less time,broader responsibilities

• Difficult to manage frequent, sustained “personal touch”

Friendships at Work

30% of employees have a best friend at work (BF@W)

20% of employees dedicate time to building relationships at work

Employees with a BF@W are 50% more satisfied with their company

Employees with a BF@W are 7 times more likely to be engaged in their work

Maintaining Friendships through Social Media

• ambient intimacy • “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity

and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to”

• Leisa Reichert

• http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/

• http://www.slideshare.net/leisa/ambient-intimacy

• continuous partial friendship • David Weinberger

• http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may04-07.html

Friendships through Social Media @ Work?

@

The Context, Content & Community Collage:A proactive display application

Opening physical windows into online contentin workplace contexts

to foster a greater sense of community

A New Generation of Proactive Displays

• Goal: increase the sense of community in the workplace

• Method: open windows in shared physical spaces into the social media co-workers are creating

• Situated Social Software (SiSoSo) [vs. Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo)]

• Hypotheses

• Adding a physical dimension of audience will promote greater social media usage

• Social media sharing in the workplace will enhance personal relationships

• Enhanced personal relationships will lead to more productive professional relationships

• Challenges

• Privacy / benefit tradeoff (usability vs. security)

• Sustainable engagement (after novelty factor has worn off)

• How to measure the impact? (measuring community, relationships)

A User-Generated Video on Proactive Displays

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5rU9cAiYsY

Signup / Login

Select / Configure Module

Select Bluetooth Device(s)

Locations (mock-up)

Hardware & Software

Interactions with / through the displays

Interactions with displays

The Highest Rated Content (5 up votes)

Edge detection

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp

Everything in moderation

Moderation: NSFW [Not Safe For Work]

Moderation: SFW

Number of Actions by Day of Week

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7000

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thurs Fri Sat

Number of Actions by Hour of Day

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Evaluation: interactions through displays

• Context

• 8 displays, deployed July 19, evaluated after 4 weeks

• 75 full-time / part-time residents

• 44 proactive display accounts (34 non-empty)

• Perpetual alpha (location sensing, new modules, new features)

• Hypotheses

• Adding a physical dimension of audience will promote greater social media usage

• Social media sharing in the workplace will enhance personal relationships

• Enhanced personal relationships will lead to more productive professional relationships

• Web-based Survey

• Mix of multiple choice and open text questions

• 32 responses

Positive / Negative Impact (Personal / Professional)

A few choice comments

• I was surprised by some of the photos taken by [a colleague]. I had no idea of his very diversified and, in some cases, adventurous interests, and his photos showed me a side of him I would have never realized. The photos also give you an appreciation of other people's interests and unique travels. I find the photos absolutely fascinating and a very strong method of bringing all of us closer.

• I[t] was nice to see people putting up "themes". One person had a Star Wars theme, actually happening just by tags, but appeared to me as if a themed series of photos.

• Somewhat negative: I was surprised to see a photo of my family (my husband and my two kids) with another female friend. They were all sprawled on the grass. It reminded me of a picnic we all had together. But it also made me self-conscious: what would other people think of seeing this scene. Who is the "mystery lady"? Positive: walking into the kitchen and spotting my daughter's happy face on the screen. It was a nice greeting! Positive: I am delighted to see other peoples pics of exotic places they visited. Negative: seeing a picture of a guy in his underwear. The face was not in the pics so I couldn't tell who it is. Somebody esle in the room "killed" the photo. Positive: seeing people cluster around displays. I like that!

Impact of Displays on Social Media

Flickr Usage by Different User Groups

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1.00

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veteran users recent users new users

User Group

Average Uploads Per Day

Before May 1May 1 - July 19After July 19

Influence of Rank & Role

Influence of Team Membership

Influence of competition

Wii Tournaments

Future Work: Algorithms

• Location / Proximity detection

• Near / far

• Proxemics

• Incorporating meta-data

• Folksonomy, Semiotics

• Priority queue management

• People, streams

• Recommender System

• Module management

• Space, time, displays

Future Work: Modules

• Other sources of content

• Other interaction modalities

• Other dimensions of experience

Future Work: Interfaces & Interactivity

• Interfaces

• Signup page

• Display interface

• Administrator interface

• Interactivity

• Authentication

• Phones

• Touchscreens

• Other?

Future Work: Replicability and Sustainability

• Deployments

• Nokia: NY, Dallas, Helsinki, LA …

• Academia: UMich, UMN, Stanford, …

• ?: Yahoo!, Flickr, …

• Mobiquitous Marketing (Mobile + Ubiquitous)

• Holistic approach to engagement marketing

• Co-promotional opportunities

• Contextual advertising in physical world

Future Work @ Strands Labs Seattle

New Online Sources

(http://beta.strands.com)

New Physical Spaces

(“third places”)

Related Work: Commercial

Awareness / Interactionsat Events

Digital Signage

Captivate TV ClearChannel, et al.

RippleTV

Related Work: OneKeyAway / MatchlinC

• OneKeyAway• Singles mixers in LA / SF Bay area; since May 2004

• Questionnaire:• 64 true-false questions about sex, religion, drug use, how you spend your

spare time, etc

• “I just want to get people together and talk about relationships … to discuss the questions, talk about their habits and personality traits. I think the device facilitates that.” – Edwin Duterte

• MatchlinC: personality compatibility device • a mini “relationship advisor”

• Infrared “zapping”

• Three color codes (stoplight): red, amber, green)

• Reminiscent of Lock & Key, Lovegety, Meme Tags

Related Work: partyStrands (1)

New Year’s EveTimes Square, NYC

Paul Van DykCrystal Ballroom, Portland

Buda del Mar BarMadrid

http://www.partystrands.comhttp://blog.mystrands.com/category/partystrands

Related Work: partyStrands (2)

Related Work: Research (1)

• Meme Tags (MIT)

• Interpersonal display: display for other people

• RF + LEDs + programming

• CityWall (Helsinki IIT)

• Multi-touch display in city center

• Flickr photos tagged with “helsinki”

• Interactions with display vs. through display

• Twitterspaces (Indiana U)

• Large display in campus lounge

• Dynamic visualization of group “tweets” (Twitter)

Related Work: Research (2)

• PlasmaPoster (FXPAL)• Interactive community bulletin board• Corporate, conference, café contexts

• Opinionizer (Sussex)• Shared display at social events• Interaction through typed input

• Dynamo (Sussex)• High school setting• Interaction via USB disk

• AgentSalon (ATR)• Interaction via PalmGuides (PDAs)• Conversations mediated by animated agents

Public and Situated DisplaysO’Hara, Perry, Churchill, Russell

Thanks!

• For more information:

• mccarthy@strands.com

• http://interrelativity.com/joe

• http://gumption.typepad.com

• http://www.slideshare.net/gumption

• C4 made possible by

• Ben Congleton (U. Mich), Max Harper (U. Minn)

• Nokia Context, Content & Community (C3) team

• All my former colleagues at Nokia

• Future work being made possible by Strands [Labs [Seattle]]

Yogi Patel Sameer AhujaShelly Farnham Richie Hazlewood Josh Lind

Backup

Two Hours of Joint Solitudehttp://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/cafestage/10-19-2005

Alone Togetherhttp://blogs.parc.com/playon/

Related Work: Alone Together

Related Work: Addictive Games

• Amy Jo Kim, Social Architect, Shufflebrain

• “Putting the Fun in Functional:Applying Game Mechanicsto Functional Software”

• Incentives for games, communities

• Collecting

• Points

• Feedback

• Exchanges

• Customization

http://www.shufflebrain.com/etech2007.html

Early proactive displays

Dangling String (PARC)

Bus Mobile (UC Berkeley)

Proactive Displays in the large

Sunset @ 200MHz (PARC)

Love Board (Hachiko Crossing)

Proactive Displays on the road

Alaris E-boards(www.alaris.net)

Proactive displays, circa 2054

Details

• Location / proximity detection• Bluetooth sampling (MAC addresses, BT names)

• Location server (separate component)

• Priority queue management• New / old, near / far, 70/30

• Display management• Firefox + Javascript

• Flickr module• Ruby API

• Remote administration• Process, power

• Modular, flexible framework

• Front-end (time / space sharing)

• Back-end

Flickr API