Measuring the Impact of Third Place Attachment on the Adoption of a Place-Based Community Technology

• 1. Measuring the Impact of Third PlaceAttachment on the Adoption of aPlace-Based Community TechnologyShelly D. Farnham, Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh Lind CHI April 9, 2009

2. CoCollage The Strands Community Collage (CoCollage) promotes awareness, interactions and community in third places where people seek conversation and connection.Web site for sharing and conversation Large display showing Community Collage 3. Third Places Semi-public places away from home (first places) and work (second places) People gather to enjoy conversation with friends and strangers Facilitate community development frequent serendipitous interactions increased likelihood of developing web of interpersonal relationships 4. Existing Technologies for Community Development in Third Places Challenging to get to know who comes regularly over time, what they are like, and start conversations 5. CoCollage: Expanding Impact of Placeweb sitelarge display synchronousawareness and conversation asynchronousin cafe awareness, sharing andconversation in caf or at home 6. CoCollage FeaturesUploadingPeople and profilesCommenting, votingMessaging Shared items (photos & quotes) The big screen 7. Related Work The Notification Collage [Greenberg & Rounding, 2001] small work groups The Plasma Poster Network [Churchill, et al., 2003], professional content EyeCanvas (Plasma Poster for a caf environment) [Churchill, et al., 2006] BlueBoard [Russell, et al., 2002] AutoSpeakerID, Ticket2Talk and Neighborhood Window [McCarthy, et al., 2004 C3 Collage [McCarthy, et al., 2008] CityWall [Peltonen, et al., 2008] EyeCanvas 8. Early Deployment Study Procedure Deploy to local coffee shop: Trabant, working closely with owners Observations, interviews and questionnaire Goals develop a better understanding of the psycho-social factors that would impact adoption and use get immediate feedback for iteratively improving design explore how best to measure place- based community development for future studies 9. Factors Expected to Influence Adoption and Use The size and activity of the existing community the extent to which the individual has a desire to meet others through the caf the individuals existing levels of psychological sense of community and place attachment to the caf 10. Measurements Size and activity of community Site observations (163 people, 7 hours) Interviews with caf owners Questionnaire (69 people) Psycho-social factors: Psychological sense of community in place Standardized measure (Wilkinson, 2007) adapted for place A feeling of fellowship runs deep between me and others at Trabant I feel loyal to the people at Trabant My friendships and associations with others at Trabant mean a lot Desire to connect 11. Measurement Contd Place attachment Rosenbaum et al. in study of a suburban diner People who experienced social support through diner, developed place attachment bond between person and place PlaceSense of Attachment CommunityUsed items that loaded highly on three factors: Functional dependency: I get more satisfaction out of Trabant than other cafes Commitment: I really care about the fate of Trabant Identification with self: The success of Trabant is my success 12. Size and Activity of Community Owners are dedicated to developing a strong community, and have positive attitude towards technology Who: Estimated about 400 regulars visited once or twice 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 caf 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%) 13. Questionnaire: Existing Community Size of their existing caf network: 58% had at least one acquaintance in caf, of those averaging 4.2 each 25% had at least one personal friend, of those averaging 2.8 each Psycho social factors: Satisfied with caf (M = 5.6)* Lukewarm in sense of community (M = 3.5)* Place attachment on dependency (M = 5.4)* and commitment (M = 5.3)* factors, but less so on identity (M = 3.4)* Desire to connect with others 56% had some or more interest in meeting others at the caf suggests roughly half of regulars would want to join CoCollage *on scale of 1 to 7, where 1 = not at all and 7 = extremely so 14. Raw Correlations Sense of community and place attachment strongly correlated Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05. 15. Raw Correlations Of 69 who completed questionnaire, 24 also joined CoCollage Sense of community, place attachment, and desire to connect correlated with whether joined CoCollage Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05. 16. Predictors of Adoption Simultaneous logistic regression, looks for unique effects on binomial dependent variable: Sense of community c2(1, N = 54) = 19.18, p < .001 Youthc2(1, N = 54) = 9.69, p < .002 Place attachment c2(3, N = 54) = 7.42, p < .06 Desire to connectc2(1, N = 54) = 5.66, p < .06 Gender c2(1, N = 54) = 3.61, p < .06 (N = 54 because if any missing variable, person excluded) 17. CoCollage Usage 82 users in first month Primary usage: create a profile browse other profiles upload images View others images Significant correlation between desire to make friends and number of comments (r = .43, p < .05) number of unique days they have returned to the system (r = .43, p < .05) Percentage of users who engaged in each type of activity, with means 18. Conclusions Within first month, decent adoption 82 out of roughly 400 regulars joined CoCollage in the first month Questionnaire results shows that people who a) are looking to connect with others b) already have a psychological sense of community at the caf c) already feel place attachment to the caf,are more likely to join CoCollage and start conversationsPsychological sense of community for place and place attachment are meaningful constructs in predicting adoption of a place-based community technology 19. Questions? Shelly Farnham Research Consultant WaggleLabs.com [email protected] CoCollage CoCollage.com Joe McCarthy: [email protected] Learn more at Communities and Technologies in June, presenting full paper with study of impact over time