Social%20implications%20and%20design%20Issues%20in%20CSCW%20and%20HCI

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Social implications and design Issues in CSCW and
HCI

• I203 Social and Organizational Issues of
  Information

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Administrative Fun

• Assignment 3
• Reading Response Papers
• Final Paper

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Assignment 3

• Shorter than Assn 1, tied more directly to final
  paper.
• The purpose of the assignment is to work from our
  own class reading examples to identify and frame
  problems and arguments.

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A Few Social Challenges for Design in
Human-Computer Interaction
Huggable HAL 9000 from Laura MacCary
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Part of this is a sub-area in HCI Do we treat
computers as social entities?

• Nass and colleagues research Politeness,
  Flattery, Gender stereotyping in computers and
  interfaces.
• Kiesler and Sproull Cooperation and Trust with
  computers and interfaces.

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Computers as Social (Nass)

• People appear to obey politeness norms with
  computers
• People appear to prefer responses from computers
  that match their own personality type
• Includes quality of interaction and competence
• People like to be flattered by computer responses
• People appear to apply gender stereotypes to
  computers
• People appear to orient their reactions to the
  computer, not the programmer(s).

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Computers as not social (Kiesler and Sproull)

• We love dogs and people, but people seem to
  cooperate more with people-like computer partners
  than dog-like partners.
• Our reactions may be a learned response
• We have to look at the situation and our
  expectations to understand our seemingly social
  responses.
• If we want such research to inform design, then
  we have to actually specify what aspect of the
  computer we are examining (all software? Specific
  interface characteristics?)

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Challenges for design in CSCW

• What is CSCW and why is it important?
• Study of the various ways that individuals work
  in groups and the technologies (hardware and
  software).

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Select Findings in CSCW (Ackerman)

• Exceptions tend to be the norm in work processes
• People prefer to know who else is present in a
  shared space, and how they are performing
• Visibility of communication and information
  exchange can enable learning, but also works
  against efficiency under some circumstances.
• Norms emerge for CSCW systems, and these norms
  tend to be constantly re-negotiated.
• Critical Mass problems
• Importance of Incentives (tied to many other
  issues above)

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The Social-Technical Gap
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Much ado about nothing?

• The gap is just a mistake caused by early
  miscommunications, or just habit of software
  designers/researchers.
• We just have not found the proper solution with
  existing technologies eventually we will so the
  gap is a moot point.
• Instead of complaining about it, we should just
  change our behavior (i.e. adapt) to work with the
  technology the way it is supposed to be used.

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CSCW as a Science of the Artificial

• CSCW is at once an engineering discipline
  attempting to construct suitable systems for
  groups, organizations, and other collectivities,
  and ad the same time, CSCW is a social science
  attempting to understand the basis for that
  construction in the social world
• Ackerman (2000 13)

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No Silver Bullet?