Transcript Intimate Objects: Communication Devices for Couples

Intimate Objects:
Communication Devices
for Couples
Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye
Information Science Seminar
14 April 2004
Current HCI Work: Context
The rise of "user experience"
Design for individual experience in a world
and discipline founded in mass media
Movement of technology and HCI out of
the workplace and into people's lives
A shift from task-centered to experiencecentered uses of computing
Current HCI Work:
Some Big Questions
How can we design for actual real living
people in all their complexity?
What happens when we design for one or
two specific people, not "the user"?
If we design for one individual, how is that
applicable to everyone else?
What happens when computers stop
having screens and keyboards and sitting
on desks?
A specific problem to
address to start to
understand these other
problems (Academic)
How can technology help couples
maintain feelings of intimacy at a
distance?
A specific problem to
address to start to
understand these other
problems (Personal)
How can technology
help my girlfriend
and I maintain our
feelings of intimacy
despite living 2700
miles apart?
My girlfriend, using digital
communication
technology.
Questions that arise:
What methodologies are appropriate for
attacking such a situation? What else
might they be appropriate for?
How can this situation teach us to design
technologies to solve other problems?
What insights can this problem shed on
uses of technology in general?
A quick example:
Autodiary
Three Disciplines
• Human Computer Interaction
– Systems, methodologies, theories
• Communication Theories
– Some useful; some useful as counterexamples
• Intimacy/Relationship Literature
– An aching pit of uselessness (for this task, at
least)
Intimacy/Relationship
Literature
• Lots of books, lots of papers
• Very little there to inform this
research
• Very little technology present.
Quote from researcher in field: "I
doubt that it would ever be possible
to start a relationship without f2f
contact."
HCI: Systems
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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 (Kaye '02, interactions '04)
HCI: Methodologies
• Ethnography
• Cultural Probes
• User Studies
• Diaries
• Paper prototypes
• Tangible prototypes
HCI: Theories
• Ambiguity as a Resource for Design
(Gaver, Beaver & Benford 2002)
• Conceptual design for cultural effect
(Gaver & Dunne 1999)
• Critical Technical Practice (Phil Agre
1995)
• Situated Action (Suchman, Dourish)
• Ambient & peripheral display
• Experience & Enchantment (Wright, etc)
Communication Theories
• Media Richness Theory (Daft & Lengel '84)
– More bandwidth necessary for richer comm.
• Social Presence Theory (Short, Williams &
Christie '70s)
– Being There
• Interpersonal Communication (Beebe)
– Personalization/Synchronization
• Collaborative Communication / common
ground (Clark & Brennan)
– Constraints are desirable to reduce ambiguity:
Copresence, visiblity, audibility, contemporality,
simultaneity, sequentiality, re-viewability, revisability
Theory Limitations: An Example
Nagel & Abowd (2003) "Designing for Intimacy: Bridging the Interaction
Challenges of Conversation". Proc. Ubicomp'03 Workshop on Intimate
Ubiquitous Computing.
References Clark & Brennan:
"…constraints are desirable to reducing ambiguity…"
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Copresence - A and B share the same physical environment.
Visibility - A and B are visible to one another.
Audibility - A and B communicate by speaking.
Contemporality - B receives at roughly the same time as A
produces.
Simultaneity - A and B can send and receive simultaneously.
Sequentiality - A’s and B’s turns cannot get out of sequence.
Reviewability - B can re-view A’s messages.
Revisability - A can revise message for B.
Back to AutoDiary:
How are theories useful?
Theories as input: AutoDiary
HCI:
Technological/cultural probe
Tracks situated action
Communication:
Media Richness suggests that richer
media produces better communication
Relationship/Intimacy:
Couples find sharing experiences
increases feeling of intimacy
What we've done
• Recruited 4 couples in LDRs
• In depth interviews
• Post-interview, had couples sketch
prototypes of concept devices
• Spent time developing concepts
• Presented back to couples: what would
they be interested in having?
• Built some prototype devices/software
Sketches
Let me count the ways
Love Egg
Good night / Good morning
Voodoo Dolls
Hand Holding I
Hand Holding II
Sketches by Kirsten Boehner and Bridget Copley
Autodiary:
What did you do today, darling?
47 Days of my phone calls
10a 11a12 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p11p 12 1a 2
Key: My girlfriend My sister All other calls
One day/line; starts 25 September 2003.
Some things we learned from
interviews and concepts
• Something special about secret/private
communication but in public
• Leaving short messages with minimum barriers
• Different couples have different problems: time
zones (staying in sync), absence of touch
• Couples spend the first part of the phone call
summarizing activities.
• Different uses of cellphone, landline, headsets,
speakerphone, email, webcam, text messages,
picture messages, instant messaging,
handwritten letters or notes, but nearly everyone
uses most of them some of the time. Very rich.
Back to the big questions
How can we design for actual real living
people in all their complexity?
What happens when we design for one or
two specific people, not "the user"?
If we design for one individual, how is that
applicable to everyone else?
What happens when computers stop having
screens and keyboards and sitting on desks?
Some interesting things
• Removing boundary between researcher
and subject: co-author paper
• Who knows most about your relationship?
• Technology: what is it good for?
• What if we built communication devices
to which Metcalf's Law didn't apply?
• What happens to user-bility when we're
studying & building for n=2, not 1 or
many?
• If we design for one couple, will other
couples use it? What's the alternative? Is
this better?
Researcher & Subject
• Separating the methodology from
the knowology: subjects know a lot
about about the subject, but
researchers (hopefully) know how to
extract and organize that
knowledge and turn it into devices
and papers and encourage
reflection.
CTP: !Metcalf's Law
• Critical Technical Practice suggests
sparking technical innovation by
negating a key premise
• Intimate objects do not scale. If a
couple were to break up, would
they be able to use their old
intimate objects in the new
relationship?
Designing for Couples &
Designing Personalized
Technologies
•Designing for the couple and not "the user" or "the
user population". Perhaps "the user" is a legacy of
workplace HCI, in which "users" accomplish "tasks"
•Isn't it strange that someone will spend $25,000 on a
new kitchen they spend at most ten hours a week
working in, and yet they use the same Outlook as
everyone else, on a mass produced computer?
How long until interior designers are joined by
information workspace designers?
What we're going to do
• Build!
•Evaluate, Iterate, Publish, etc.
Issues
• Can it ever be successful? Is it possible to
create a device that colocated couples
might want to use because it enhances
intimacy beyond what is possible without
the device? (Beyond Being There, Hollan
& Stornetta CHI'92)
• Is such a device the optimal one for LDR
use, or is it a different object altogether?
• Is this InfoSci? Or is it something else?
• Is this going to be relevant to anything
else in InfoSci? HCI?
• I'm not even a real InfoSci Ph.D student
yet!
Technology is for
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efficiency
information
compatibility
usability
accuracy
documents
work
technology
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intimacy
communication
novelty
enchantment
ambiguity
postcards
fun
people
Your expert advice
• How are the results and things we learnt
here generalizable? Conveyable?
• What do you know that I don't that's
relevant to this work?
• What other projects might these
methodologies and tools be useful for?
• What else?
Thank you
Intimate Objects:
Communication Devices for Couples
Information Science Seminar
14 April 2004
Special thanks to Liz Goulding, Bridget Copley, Kirsten
Boehner, Ken Boehner, Shay David & Ofri Cnaani and
Phoebe Sengers.
Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye jofish at cornell.edu
This presentation available at www.jofish.com\talks