Awareness

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Awareness

• CS 5125
• Loren Terveen
• March 28, 2007

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Topics

• Reflect on awareness systems
• Whats the point?
• Privacy
• Consider different techniques, with different
  pros/cons
• What do you really need to be aware of anyway?
• as exemplified by Babble, IM, and a few others

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Awareness the ideal is physical co-location

• What is it were aware of when we share a space
  with others? (Informal Workplace
  Communication)
• Their existence
• What theyre doing (right now) what theyre
  working on (longer term)
• How busy they are
• If theyre with other people
• What their mood is
• Their routines

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Awareness as an enabler

• Awareness information enables informal,
  serendipitous interactions
• online equivalent of conversations by the water
  cooler
• Makes life more fun, sure, but also builds team
  identity, makes work more effective

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Waves of awareness

• Wave 1 early 90s
• Awesome idea! Lets make online environments
  that are as much like being there as possible
• Wave 2 mid 90s
• Hmm there are some hard social problems lets
  invent sophisticated technical solutions
• Wave 3 late 90s
• Geez, maybe what we need is a simpler technology!
• Wave 4 contemporary
• Now that the technology is ubiquitous, lets
  start adding new, cool, innovative features /
  integrating with other social tools

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Some notable systems
research
Cruiser (v) Fish et al
1990
Portholes (v) Dourish and Bly
Montage (v) Tang and Rua
1995
Hudson Smith (v)
Piazza Isaacs et al
1997
ICQ
Nynex Portholes (v) Lee et al
AIM
1998
Babble - Erickson et al
..
2000
Connexus / Awarenex Tang et al
Hubbub Isaacs et al
Availability
Active Campus Explorer Griswold et al
2004
Grapevine Richards and Christensen
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First wave systems

• Lets use the highest technology we have access
  to video to provide awareness of remote
  colleagues thats as much like being there as
  possible

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Cruiser Fish et al (late 80s)
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Portholes Dourish Bly (1991)
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Montage Tang Rua (1993)

• Where Cruiser and Portholes provided continuous
  video overviews of ones colleagues, Montage
  required explicit action to obtain awareness of
  another person
• One user decides to glance at another
• This serves as a potential conversation opener,
  which, if accepted, leads to a video conference
  being started

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Montage glances
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Observations of these early systems

• Usage studies (the Cruiser team did a great job)
  uncovered important issues, notably
• Yeah, awareness is cool, but
• Ugh! Theres a camera pointed at me!
• Also video took lots of bandwidth
• And good interfaces were hard to design

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Second wave

• Lets think harder to design video-based
  awareness systems that solve the problems the
  first wave encountered
• Very cool example
• Hudson Smith, Techniques for Addressing
  Fundamental Privacy and Disruption Tradeoffs in
  Awareness Support Systems

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Privacy preserving techniques
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Shadow-view

• Take a static reference image of an office
• Process live video input from the same camera to
  identify movement
• Manipulate the reference image make it darker
  to show areas with recent activity
• Update the image about every 20 seconds,
  gradually fading out areas where there isnt any
  recent movement

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Shadow-View
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Discussion
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Evaluate these techniques enough awareness?
Privacy ok?

• Office is private!
• Youve got to be able to turn it off block off
  dont disturb times
• Do you need to see someones face for awareness?
  Isnt presence just enough?
• Video awareness way overkill! Waste of
  resources!
• Wouldnt work in shared spaces very well
• and

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Remind me why video?

• Recall the information that awareness technology
  was supposed to provide about others
• Their existence
• What theyre doing (right now) what theyre
  working on (longer term)
• How busy they are
• If theyre with other people
• What their mood is
• Their routines
• Do you need video to provide such information?
• And did I mention Ugh! Theres still a camera
  pointing at me!

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Abstract awareness / communication indicators

• Erickson et al, Babble and Socially Translucent
  Systems
• Kind of like persistent chat / group IM
• with social proxy visualizations to provide
  awareness of others
• Their presence in a conversation
• Their activities w.r.t. the conversation

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The Babble Interface
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Discussion.
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How does Babble relate to IM? Compare and
contrast.

• Do we still have anything to learn from Babble?
• Or is it only of historical interest?
• Have the good ideas all been implemented? Where?
• Do we have too much awareness today?

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What types of groups is Babble best suited for?

• Smaller groups 1-2 dozen per conversation
• Scale? Colors of marbles?
• Is the problem the interface design or is it an
  intrinsic property of conversation? You dont
  talk to hundreds of people at once except if
  its a broadcast/lecture
• Other interface designs can help scale
• How do you address a particular person?
• Do you really need all the topics?
• Better for work or informal social chit-chat?
• Well-suited for engineering type business start
  conversations around ideas conversations evolve
• Tailored permission/access rights only certain
  people can see that Im active what would this
  do to other people? If a manager can be
  present without you knowing it reciprocity

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How would you evaluate an awareness tool? Type of
study? Things youd measure?
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How do you use IM? One or many identities?
Multiple conversations? Persistent windows?
Problems/opportunities?
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Reciprocity I see you, you see me consistency
all my buddies see the same thing about me
Discuss!
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What kind of place is Babble? How about your
online places?

• What does it even mean to be a place?
• Is it the technology or the participants?
• How is the character of a place established and
  maintained?

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Orkut Grouplens community
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Some newer awareness systems

• Tang et al ConNexus Awarenex
• IM awareness mobility
• Hubbub - Isaacs et al
• IM awareness mobility
• Active Campus Explorer Griswold et al
• Awareness of your buddies locations
• Grapevine Richards Christensen
• Tailored levels of awareness

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Hubbub

• Activity indicators
• Earcons

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Activity indicators a closer look
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A Hubbub conversation, showing backchannel
awareness
Carla is not focused in this window
Carla is typing a message
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Active Campus Explorer