Supporting Community in Third Places

with Situated Social Software

Joseph F. McCarthy1, Shelly D. Farnham2, Yogi Patel1, Sameer Ahuja3, William R. Hazlewood4,

Daniel Norman1, Josh Lind5

1Strands Labs Seattle2Waggle Labs, 3Virginia Tech, 4Indiana Univ, 5ReadyDone

http://www.slideshare.net/gumption(tag: cct2009)

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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

• Related, recent & future work– Communities, technology, commerce

Third Places

• First Place:Home

• Second Place:Work

• Third Place:Community

Great, Good Places

• 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”

– Leisa Reichert– http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/– http://www.slideshare.net/leisa/ambient-intimacy

• continuous partial friendship – David Weinberger– http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may04-07.html

Situated Software• Clay Shirky, March 2004

– Software designed in and for a particular social situation or context

– NOT Web School: scalability, generality, and completeness– the application must be useful to the community;

the community must be useful to the application– http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html

• See also: – “Communities, Audiences & Scale”

– http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html– “What is Social Informatics and Why Does It Matter?”

– Rob Kling, D-Lib Magazine, January 1999– Socio-technical systems: people, technology, institutional & cultural

contexts

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)

Related Work (1)• eyeCanvas (FXPAL)

• 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

Related Work: Research (3)• Meme Tags (MIT)

– Wearable, interpersonal displays– Academic sponsor meetings– Borovoy, et al., CSCW 1998

• Opinionizer (Sussex)– Shared display at social events– Interaction through typed input– Brignull & Rogers, INTERACT 2003

• Dynamo (Sussex)– High school setting– Interaction via USB disk– Brignull & Rogers, INTERACT 2003

• AgentSalon (ATR)– Interaction via PalmGuides (PDAs)– Conversations mediated by animated agents– Sumi & Maase, Autonomous Agents 2001

Related Work: Research (4)• Manhattan Story Mashup (Nokia)

– Urban game: web + phones + screen– Times Square, New York– Tuulos, et al., Pervasive 2007

• ProD Framework for Proactive Displays (U. Mich)– Generic architecture for proactive displays– Congleton, et al., UIST 2008

• Twitterspace (Indiana University)– Large display in campus lounge– Dynamic visualization of group “tweets”– Hazlewood, et al., PDC 2008

Public and Situated DisplaysO’Hara, Perry, Churchill, Russell

Related Work: Research (5)

“true mobiles” and “placemakers”

Related Work: CommercialAwareness / Interactions at Events Digital Signage

Captivate TV ClearChannel, et al.

RippleTV Danoo

Related Work: Atoms vs. Bits

http://keepposted.com

Related Work: low tech wearables

• Life as a grand experiment• Nametag worn daily since 2000• Front porch philosophy• Reciprocal self-disclosure

– self disclosure is reciprocal respective to the level of intimacy that you have revealed

– I’ll show you my name if you show me yours

http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/whats_in_a_name.htmlhttp://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/reciprocal_self.html

OneKeyAway / MatchlinC• OneKeyAway

– 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

Alone Togetherhttp://blogs.parc.com/playon/

Related Work: Alone Together

Recent developments

Future Work

• Community characteristics / success metrics– Which types of communities have we been most

successful in cultivating?

• Technology– How can we improve CoCollage (better

cultivation)?

• Commerce– How do we create an economically sustainable

model to support CoCollage?

Community characteristics

• Greater awareness, interactions, relationships – between who?

• Potential factors• Café (or other third place)

– Size, location (neighborhood), longevity

• Community– Size, regularity– Engagement: owners, staff, customers– Technology use: laptops, mobile phones, SMS, web, SNS

• CoCollage– Placement, features (e.g., card reader)– Promotion by / within community

Community by the Numberswww.LifeWithAlacrity.com

Technology

• How important is presence?– Sense & respond paradigm– Small group effect (Shirky)

• Avoiding YASNS syndrome• More [engaged] users

– Walk-up participation: Cammie– Community overview– Contests

Community-oriented advertising

• Leveraging existing practices

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

Yogi PatelTech Lead

Shelly FarnhamResearch Consultant

Joe McCarthyPrincipal Instigator

Josh LindDesigner / Developer

Dan NormanDesign Lead

Sameer Ahuja(former intern)

Richie Hazlewood(former intern)

Tyler PhillipiBus Dev Manager