CoCollage UW iSchool 20090515

Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software Joe McCarthy Principal Instigator Strands Labs Seattle Shelly Farnham Research Consultant Waggle Labs

A relaxed, research conversation http://www.slideshare.net/ gumption Too fast / too much? 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

Related & future work (conversation topics)

Communities, technology, commerce

Conversation Topics

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?

But first, a word from our sponsor People-powered discovery http://www.strands.com

Strands Labs Seattle Mission: “ To design, develop and deploy technologies that weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds and help people relate to the other people, places and things around them in ways that offer value to all participants .” [http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/innovating-at-m.html] Bringing people-powered discovery to physical places and events. Location:

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

Local variations on the theme

How can technology enhance community within cafés? Four observations … and a solution

Social Networking: online vs. offline

Maintaining Friendships through 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

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

The Strands Community Collage (CoCollage) 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.

CoCollage features People Stuff (photos & quotes) Commenting, voting Uploading Messaging The big screen

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

Initial Studies Journal of Service Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 43-59 (2007)

Study 1: Individual psycho-social factors influencing 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 café

the individual’s existing levels of psychological sense of community and place attachment to the café

Measurements

Size and activity of community

Site observations (163 people, 7 hours)

Interviews with café owners

Questionnaire (69 people)

Psycho-social factors:

Desire to connect

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”

Measurement Cont’d

Place attachment

Rosenbaum, et al . [2007] study of a suburban diner

People who experienced social support through diner, developed place attachment: bond between person & place

Used 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”

Sense of Community Place Attachment

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%)

Questionnaire: Existing Community

Size of their existing café network:

58% had at least one acquaintance in café, of those averaging 4.2 each

25% had at least one personal friend, of those averaging 2.8 each

Psycho social factors:

Satisfied with café (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 café

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

Raw Correlations

Sense of community and place attachment strongly correlated

Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05.

Raw Correlations

Of 69 questionnaire respondents, 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.

Predictors of Adoption

Simultaneous logistic regression, looks for unique effects on binomial dependent variable:

Sense of community c 2 (1, N = 54) = 19.18, p < .001

Youth c 2 (1, N = 54) = 9.69, p < .002

Place attachment c 2 (3, N = 54) = 7.42, p < .06

Desire to connect c 2 (1, N = 54) = 5.66, p < .06

Gender c 2 (1, N = 54) = 3.61, p < .06

(N = 54 because if any missing variable, person excluded)

Early 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

Conclusions of Study 1

Good pace of adoption in first month

82 out of roughly 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 Technology Shelly D. Farnham, Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh Lind Proc. 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

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

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.

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 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

Interactions & sense of community Survey: To 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) Supporting Community in Third Places with Situated Social Software Joseph F. McCarthy, Shelly D. Farnham, Yogi Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood & Josh Lind To appear in International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2009)

Related Work

Related Work: Proactive Displays Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic Conference Joseph F. McCarthy, David W. McDonald, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. Rashid ACM 2004 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004) Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social Environments David W. McDonald, Joseph F. McCarthy, Suzanne Soroczak, David H. Nguyen and Al M. Rashid ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions (TOCHI), Vol. 14, No. 4, January 2008 promoting awareness and interactions at a conference AUTOSPEAKERID, TICKET2TALK, NEIGHBORHOOD WINDOW

Related Work: Proactive Displays The Context, Content & Community (C3) Collage promoting awareness and interactions in the workplace The Context, Content & Community Collage: Sharing Personal Digital Media in the Physical Workplace Joseph F. McCarthy, Ben Congleton, F. Maxwell Harper ACM 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

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

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 Displays O’Hara, Perry, Churchill, Russell

Related Work: Commercial Awareness / Interactions at Events Digital Signage Captivate TV ClearChannel, et al. RippleTV Danoo

Related Work: low tech

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.html http://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

Related Work: Alone Together Two Hours of Joint Solitude http://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/cafestage/10-19-2005 Alone Together http://blogs.parc.com/playon/

The Strands Labs Seattle Team Yogi Patel Tech Lead Shelly Farnham Research Consultant Joe McCarthy Principal Instigator Josh Lind Designer / Developer Dan Norman Design Lead Sameer Ahuja (former intern) Richie Hazlewood (former intern) Tyler Phillipi Bus Dev Manager

CoCollage partners, Q3 2008

Future Work / Conversation Topics