Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software Joseph F. McCarthy 1 , Shelly D. Farnham 2 , Yogi Patel 1 , Sameer Ahuja 3 , William R. Hazlewood 4 , Daniel Norman 1 , Josh Lind 5 1 Strands Labs Seattle 2 Waggle Labs, 3 Virginia Tech, 4 Indiana Univ, 5 ReadyDone
"Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software" presentation at the 4th International Conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T 2009), http://cct2009.ist.psu.edu/
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Transcript
Supporting Community in Third Places
with Situated Social Software
Joseph F. McCarthy1, Shelly D. Farnham2, Yogi Patel1, Sameer Ahuja3, William R. Hazlewood4,
View the slides and follow along / catch up later:
Agenda
• The promise and problems of third places• Situated social software• The Strands Community Collage (CoCollage)• Study: impact on Trabant Coffee community
– Neighboring factor of sense of community– Dependency factor of place attachment
• The Great, Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores,Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
• Ray Oldenburg, 1989• ‘homes away from home’,
where unrelated people relate• the full spectrum of local humanity• inclusive sociability• ease of association
Characteristics of Third Places
• On neutral ground• A leveler• Conversation is main activity• Accessibility and accommodation• Regulars• Low profile• Mood is playful• Home away from home
Promise of Third Places
• Personal– Novelty– Perspective– Spiritual tonic– Friends by the set
• Community– Political role– Habit of association– Agency of control and a force for good– Outposts on the public domain
Perils of [technology in] Third Places
Cyber-nomads are “hollowing out” cafés that offer WiFi, rendering them“physically inhabited but psychologically evacuated” leaving people“more isolated than they would be if the café were merely empty.”
-- James E. Katz, Professor of Communications, Rutgers University
“Contextual effects” – Hampton, et al.
Local variations on the theme
How can technology enhancecommunity within cafés?
Three observations … and a solution
Maintaining Friendships through Online 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”
Existing “technologies” for enhancing community in cafés
What if we could …
• Leverage the attributes of offline community “technologies”– Photos, art, sketches, quotes, flyers
• Apply situated software design principles– Design for the context of a café
• Bring the richness of online social networking into the physical spaces we share with others– Spark conversation & connection in the real world– Ambient intimacy in physical spaces
A large computer display showing a collage of photos and quotes uploaded to a special web site by patrons and staff in a café
or other community-oriented place.
The Strands Community Collage(CoCollage)
People
Stuff (photos & quotes)
Commenting, voting
Uploading
Messaging
The big screen
CoCollage features
Sharing your stuff
Facebook photos
Quotes
Flickr photos
Photos from your computer
Photos via email
Conversations & Connections
Comment, vote, flag
Public & private messages
Online Offline
Initial deployment: Trabant Coffee
A favorite photo
Study 1• Good pace of adoption in first month
– 82 out of an estimated 400 regulars joined CoCollage• Questionnaire results shows that people who
• a) are looking to connect with others• b) already have a psychological sense of community at the café• c) already feel place attachment to the café,
– are more likely to join CoCollage and start conversations
• Psychological sense of community for place and place attachment are meaningful constructs in predicting adoption of a place-based community technology
Measuring the Impact of Third Place Attachment on the Adoption of a Place-Based Community TechnologyShelly D. Farnham, Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh LindProc. of the 27th Int'l. Conf on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), 2153 - 2156.
Study 2: Impact over time
• How does CoCollage impact sense of community and place attachment over time?
• 2 months after initial deployment• Semi-structured interview with owners• Log analysis• Questionnaires
– Study 1: After 1 week; 24 participants– Study 2: After 2 months; 19 participants (10 from
study 1)– New questionnaire: 15 [mostly non-user] members
of community
Size and Activity of Community• Owners are dedicated to developing a strong community,
and have positive attitude towards technology• Café community:
– Approx. 400 “regulars” visit at least once a week– 48% male, 52% female, mean age = 29– 23% students, 51% white collar/professional
• Level of activity at cafe:– At any point in time, 17 people in the café– 23 new people each hour– Stayed an average of 25 minutes each
• Type of activities at cafe:– 64% sat down to drink their coffee– 38% came in with friends, chatted with each other– 12% chatted with barista, 2 chatted across the table– Questionnaire:
• Chatting with friends (65%), • reading (46%), • working on laptop (39%)
Usage after 1 month vs. 2 months
Percentage of users who engaged in each type of activity, with means
Types of images shared
Random sample of 150 images, after 2 months of use
Place Attachment & Neighboring• Dependency component of place attachment: the extent to
which people rely on the café to have their needs met • Neighboring component of sense of community: the extent to
which people visit each other’s homes and do each other favors
Place Attachment Neighboring
Examples of interactions?
• coco has made me stare at the screen longer at peoples pictures. i usually get my drink in a mug so i can stay in Trabant and since im already there, i usually sit and study as well, whereas before, i would get a to-go drink and run off to the library.
• It has greatly improved my people watching at Trabant. I think in some ways made me even bit more extroverted then I was before. I have enjoyed the feedback and comments both on the site and in person regarding my stuff
What do you like about CoCollage?• I like seeing everyone's pictures and how it makes Trabant
feel like a little community.• Get to see what other Trabant customers are up to. Really
get to see the diversity of U. District.• Some of the pictures are really lovely - and the kinds of
photos overall tell a lot about Trabant’s style and that of their customers.
• The friendly atmosphere it creates• its fun to add pictures to the collage while you're enjoying
a cup of joe. • I love visiting with my friends there and looking up and
seeing one of our pictures on the screen, then we get to talk about it. Its a great conversation piece.
What do you dislike about CoCollage?
• get a bigger screen• i dislike that it becomes a centerpiece rather
than part of the ambiance • Oddly, I feel more isolated at times by
watching photos of people I don't know – From a user who rated increase in interactions as
“6” and increase in sense of community as “7”
How can we improve CoCollage?
• I wish I could switch past ugly, weird or bad photos and spend more time on the nice ones.
• I would like rating scale to be able rank which pictures and stuff come up more often. Maybe an rfid card instead of swipe card to be able to tap and go to login. I would love to see it in more locations. Be able to rank my items for display.
What is CoCollage?
• a social networking system bringing web 2.0 interaction to real life by allowing users to upload photos to a public display
• Picture sharing. Picasa for your local coffee / espresso store
• [The café]’s Facebook page is playing on a big screen.• innovative• funky• intrusion• a tv
SurveyTo what extent did CoCollage increase … *
Interactions in café Sense of community in café
* on scale of 1 to 7, where 1 = “not at all” and 7 = “extremely so”
(81% > 1) (95% > 1)
Related Work
Related Work: Proactive Displays
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
promoting awareness and interactions at a conferenceAUTOSPEAKERID, TICKET2TALK, NEIGHBORHOOD WINDOW
Related Work: Proactive DisplaysThe Context, Content & Community (C3) Collage
promoting awareness and interactions in the workplace
The Context, Content & Community Collage: Sharing Personal Digital Media in the Physical WorkplaceJoseph F. McCarthy, Ben Congleton, F. Maxwell HarperACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008)
• Interactive community bulletin board• Canvas Gallery, SF• Churchill, et al., CHI 2006
• PlaceSite• Location-based web community• Three SF cafés• Savage, et al., 2006
• Jukola (Appliance Studio)• Mobile + wall displays• Selecting music in Bristol cafe• O’Hara, et al., DIS 2004
• CowCam (Intel)• Webcam + figurines + display• Urban Grind café, Portland• March, et al., CHI 2005
Related Work: Research (2)• Notification Collage (University of Calgary)
– Public display + desktop displays– University research lab– Greenberg & Rounding, CHI 2001
• PlasmaPoster (FXPAL)– Interactive community bulletin board– Corporate, conference, café contexts– Churchill, Nelson, et al., C&T 2003, …
• BlueBoard (IBM Almaden)– Shared display for collaboration– Corporate meeting space– Russell & Gossweiler, UbiComp 2001
• CityWall (Helsinki IIT)– Multi-touch screen in city center– Flickr photos tagged with “helsinki”– Interactions with, vs. through, display– Peltonen, et al., CHI 2008
– 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
Nokia Sensor“See and be Seen”
Two Hours of Joint Solitudehttp://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/cafestage/10-19-2005
Markets Are Conversations• “The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or
statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met, and connected. The first markets were places for exchange, where people came to buy what others had to sell -- and to talk.”
• “Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.”
• “Conversation may be a distraction in factories that produce replaceable products for replaceable consumers, but it’s intimately tied to the world of craft, where the work of hands expresses the voice of the maker.”
• “People are talking in the new market because they want to, because they’re interested, because it’s fun.”
Thanks!• For more information:
– mccarthy AT strands DOT com– http://cocollage.com– http://gumption.typepad.com– http://www.slideshare.net/gumption