Lecture 18 Social Interface

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• Lecture 18 Social Interface
• Terry Winograd
• CS147 - Introduction to Human-Computer
  Interaction Design
• Computer Science Department
• Stanford University
• Autumn 2005-2006
• With some material from danah boyd, UC Berkeley
  SIMS

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Learning Goals

• Be aware of the challenges of socio-technical
  design
• Understand the nature and importance of the
  social interface that goes with the visible
  interface
• Be able to apply social analysis in interface
  design

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Social Interface (Spolsky)

• When you're writing software that mediates
  between people, after you get the usability
  right, you have to get the social interface
  right. And the social interface is more
  important.
• The best UI in the world won't save software with
  an awkward social interface.

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Aspects of the Social Interface

• Adoption
• Critical mass - network effects
• Social group development, maintenance
• (Community building)
• Usage modes
• Repurposing and workaround
• Social Concerns
• Identity formation, maintenance
• Power
• Privacy
• Behavioral norms
• Cultural differences (local and global)

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Applications with Strongly Social Interfaces

• CSCW/Groupware
• Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)
• Dialog (Active)
• Awareness (Passive)
• Mediated Sociability
• On-line communities, Virtual worlds
• Peer-to-peer networking
• Multi-player games

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Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW -
Groupware)

• Coordination Mechanisms
• Physically embodied vs. mediated
• Shared external representations (calendars,
  bulletin boards)
• Managed control (CVS, Subversion,)
• Embodied work practices (Business Process
  Management)
• Concerns
• Issues of control and power
• Explicitness of communication
• Symmetry, reciprocity
• Asymmetry of cost/benefit (Grudin Groupware and
  Social Dynamics)

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CSCW Example Group Calendaring

• Concerns Privacy vs. efficiency
• Norms Cultural expectations
• Organizations have different cultures about
  whether your public schedule accurately reflects
  your availability and whether other people can
  schedule times for you

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CSCW Example The Coordinator (1984)
Converse menu from The Coordinator
Menu for responding to a request
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The Coordinator

• Messaging system based on Speech Act /
  Conversation theory
• Language as action vs. language as description
• Declaring vs. inferring speech acts
• Constraints on action (implicit and explicit)
• Reception
• Throwing it over the cubicle wall
• Missionary software Fascist software
• But. Integration into business practice training
• Concerns
• Over-formalization loss of ambiguity
• Misuse of accountability/commitment

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Technology-Mediated Sociability

• Changes social affordances for conversational
  mechanisms
• Email
• Groups
• Instant messaging (AIM, YIM, MSN)
• Mobile Phones
• Text messaging/SMS
• Blog, LiveJournal, Xanga, etc.
• Friendster, MySpace, Tribe.net, etc.
• Advantage of text messaging (Spolsky)
• you break your thumbs typing huge strings of
  numbers just to say "damn you're hot," because
  that string of numbers gets you a date, and you
  would never have the guts to say "damn you're
  hot" using your larynx.

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Case study Videophone

• Audio/Video interaction
• Capture natural cues (e.g., gesture, orientation,
  gaze)
• Natural interaction (Just like being there, but
  not quite)
• In 1964, ATT showed off the first video phone at
  the World's Fair in New York.
• Socio-technical difficulties
• Camera angle/range of visibility
• Visibility awareness
• Privacy
• Eye gaze Virtual Auditorium
• Audio pickup
• Image and sound quality
• Desire for symmetry/reciprocity
• VSee

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Peer-to-peer Applications

• Newsgroups, forums,
• File Sharing Napster, BitTorrent.
• Selling and buying Craigs list, EBay
• Blogging
• Wikis Wikipedia,

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Example On-line discussion/interaction

• Discourse structure
• Threaded vs. linear vs. random access
• (Newsgroup vs. email lists vs. Wiki)
• Primary voice vs. collective
• (Blog vs. group)
• Behavioral norms
• Flaming

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On-line Communities - Example Second Life
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Social behavior (Spolsky)

• Behavioral norms
• Antisocial behavior
• LambdaMoo A Rape in Cyberspace Julian Dibbell,
  Village Voice, 1993
• With social interface engineering, you have to
  look at sociology and anthropology. In societies,
  there are freeloaders, scammers, and other
  miscreants. In social software, there will be
  people who try to abuse the software for their
  own profit at the expense of the rest of the
  society. Unchecked, this leads to something
  economists call the tragedy of the commons.

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Mediated Presence Portholes
Xerox EuroPARC 1992
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Mediated Presence

• Concerns
• Privacy
• Symmetry
• Awareness of visibility
• Media differences
• Audio/video
• Immediacy
• Imposed limitations

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Limited Awareness Display
Digital Family Portrait Field Trial Support for
Aging in Place Jim Rowan and Elizabeth D. Mynatt,
Georgia Tech CHI 2005
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Social Network Applications

• Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster,.
• Mobile Dodgeball,

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Adoption

• Friendster
• Viral Spread based on urban tribes, subcultures,
  queers and techies
• Gay men Burning Man - Asia
• Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines
• Facebook Build on University base
• Orkut
• Outgrowth of Stanford project
• The United States has at least 153 million
  Internet users, compared with Brazil's 20
  million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated
  its membership roster . About 23.5 percent of
  the users are from the United States, while
  another 41.2 percent are Brazilians.  Iranians
  are a distant third place at about 6 percent.

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ExampleSocial NetworksFriendster Profile
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Difficulty in Support for Social Interaction
Algorithm to suggest people you should meet,
based on number of common friends but
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FakestersStanford on Friendster
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What are Fakesters?

• Cultural Characters (God, salt, Homer Simpson)
• Community Characters (Brown University, Burning
  Man, Chicago)
• Characters meant to be real (teachers, TV
  personas)

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Repurposing

• Usage Patterns on Friendster (from danah boyd)
• Created for Dating
• Direct pestering, Familiar Strangers, Hookups
• Ego/Friend Surfing
• Friends Profiles reflect you
• People searching (the past, headhunters)
• Permanent representations (upon death)
• Play and Social Maintenance
• Fakesters and Fraudsters
• Trouble Making
• From drug distribution - Neo-Nazis

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Friendster (boyd)

• Friendster was developed as a dating site. The
  expected usage scenario was simple get people to
  map out their social network so that single
  people could be introduced to other single people
  in a trusted environment.
• What was successful about Friendster had nothing
  to do with its original purpose or design.
  Instead, users saw it as a flexible artifact that
  they could repurpose to reflect their social
  practices.
• The simplicity of Friendster allowed it to be
  repurposed over and over again. Its popularity
  did not validate its underlying model,
  articulated social networks or the values
  embedded in the technology. Its success validated
  that people love flexible artifacts that allow
  them to reflect on themselves and their social
  situation.

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Mobile Social Dodgeball
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Mobile Social Software

• How will mobile social software change existing
  social dynamics?
• How will location services and other new
  technologies change the game?
• What are the privacy risks and research
  challenges of these technologies?
• Next generation of mobile social software What
  is it and when will we have it?