Designing Computer Mediated Communications

BERKELEY INSTITUTE OF DESIGNDesigning Computer Mediated

Communications

David NguyenUC Berkeley

CS160Berkeley, CAOctober 29th, 2007

My Lab

My Lab Mates

My Research

My Teachings

My Extra Time

My University

My Expectations•Everyone will

–focus on the presentation–want to answer questions–have questions to ask–want to participate in the exercises I have planned.–laugh at my jokes

• Introduction•CMC and Trust•User Generated Content and the

Tragedy of the Commons•Social Networking and Presentation of

Self•Where do we go from here?

CMC Systems

Computer Mediated Communications

Psychology Social cognition, interpersonal perception, attraction

Sociology Group dynamics, social structure, reputation, trust

Communication Mediation, signaling, media richness

HCI Interfaces for social interaction

Social Theory vs. User-Centered Design

NEEDS

DESIGN

IMPLEMENTEVALUATE

•Introduction•CMC and Trust•User Generated Content and Collective

Action•Social Networking and Presentation of

Self•Where do we go from here?

Common CMC Systems

If you had to negotiate a $1 million deal, how would you do it?

Trust“Trust reduces the need for

costly control structures, thus enabling exchanges that could otherwise not

take place, and makes social systems more adaptable.”

(Uslaner 2002, quoted in Riegelsberger et al. 2007)

What is Trust?

Risk

Potential for Betrayal

Optimism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/

How do you measure trust?Prisoner’s Dilemma

• You and your partner each have a chocolate.• Both you and your partner must

independently decide whether or not you want to keep your chocolate or share your chocolate.

2 – No Trust3 – Half Trust4 – Full Trust

•Risk – by sharing my candy, I risk losing it all

•Optimism – I am not sure my partner will share with me.

Prisoner’s Dilemma and Conditions of Trust

Potential for Betrayal by betraying me, my partner stands to gain by getting a lot of candy

Trust Formation(Bos et al., 2002)

• Trust development was delayed in audio/video

• Defections were more likely with video/audio than FTF communication.

• Little difference between video and audio

Common CMC Systems

If face-to-face is so good, why even have the others?

Trust Measurement vs. User-Centered Design

NEEDS

DESIGN

IMPLEMENTEVALUATE

•Introduction•CMC and Trust•User Generated Content and

Collective Action•Social Networking and Presentation of

Self•Where do we go from here?

WikiPedia

YouTube

BitTorrent

Where does all that “stuff” come from?

Public Good

Tragedy of the Commons

“If all individuals do A, every individual as a member of the community would derive a certain advantage. But now if all individuals less one continue to do A, the community loss is very slight, whereas the one individual refraining makes a personal gain far greater than the loss that he incurs as a member of the community.” --Pareto 1935, vol. 3, sect. 1496, pp. 946-7 What happens if EVERYONE thinks this way?

User Generated Content

“In most online communities, 90% of the users are lurkers who never

contribute, 9% of the users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for

almost all the action.” – Jacob Nielsen, 2006

Designing User Generated Content Systems•As is, expect about 1% of users to

contribute most of your content. Don’t count on more!

•Though it’s only 1% of your users who are contributing content, you’d better make sure that the contribution system is damn good!

•If that won’t work for you, you need to build in incentive systems (payment, recognition, entertainment)

Amazon.com

Entertainment: Peekaboom

Peekaboom

In the FIRST 30 days, 14,153 people played this gameThese people generated 1,122,998 pieces of data.Each person tagged an average of 160 images.Top 10 scorers averaged 53 hours of game play for one month.

Collective Action vs. User-Centered Design

NEEDS

DESIGN

IMPLEMENTEVALUATE

•Introduction•CMC and Trust•User Generated Content and Collective

Action•Social Networking and

Presentation of Self•Where do we go from here?

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Erving Goffman

Presentation of Self

I am hip

He’s so

lame

He’s so hip

I’m wearing jeans

Facebook• Sept 5, 2006 – Facebook introduces a

new feature called “News Feeds”• Sept 5, 2006 – “Students Against

Facebook News Feeds” forms with over 700,000 members (the largest at the time).

• Sept 5, 2006 – Mark Zuckerberg told everyone to calm down.

“Your friends can still see [your activity]; it hasn't changed.”

“This is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about.”

Facebook•Sept 5, 2006 – Facebook introduces a

new feature called “News Feeds”•Sept 5, 2006 – “Students Against

Facebook News Feeds” forms with over 700,000 members (the largest at the time).

•Sept 5, 2006 – Mark Zuckerberg told everyone to calm down.

•Sept 8, 2006 – Mark Zuckerberg sends out message apologizing and introduces privacy control

•Present – Everyone seems pretty happy

Facebook

Facebook

Presentation of Self vs.User Centered-Design

How could Mark Zuckerberg have

avoided all of this?

NEEDS

DESIGN

IMPLEMENTEVALUATE

•Introduction•CMC and Trust•User Generated Content and Collective

Action•Social Networking and Presentation of

Self•Where do we go from here?

Augmented Reality

Virtual Worlds

•There’s still a lot of technology out there. How are they going to affect the way we communicate?

•There’s a lot of ways people communicate out there. How can we design technology to support that?

Questions?