The document outlines a study on situated social software called Cocollage, aimed at enhancing community interaction in third places like cafés. It emphasizes the importance of social connections and place attachment for fostering community engagement, highlighting results from initial user adoption and subsequent impacts on sense of community. The findings suggest that technology can effectively bridge the gap between digital and physical social interactions, leading to richer community experiences.

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

2. A relaxed, research conversation http://www.slideshare.net/ gumption Too fast / too much? View the slides and follow along / catch up later:

3. 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

4. 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?

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

6. 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:

7. Third Places First Place: Home Second Place: Work Third Place: Community

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. Local variations on the theme

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

14. Social Networking: online vs. offline

15. 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

16. 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

17. Existing “technologies” for enhancing community in cafés

18. 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

19. 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.

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

21. Sharing your stuff Facebook photos Quotes Flickr photos Photos from your computer Photos via email

22. Conversations & Connections Comment, vote, flag Public & private messages Online Offline

23. Initial deployment: Trabant Coffee

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

25. 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

26. 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”

27. 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

28. 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%)

29. 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

30. Raw Correlations Sense of community and place attachment strongly correlated Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05.

31. 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.

32. 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)

33. 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

34. 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.

35. 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

36. Usage after 1 month vs. 2 months Percentage of users who engaged in each type of activity, with means

37. Types of images shared Random sample of 150 images, after 2 months of use

38. 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

39. 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.

40. 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

41. 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”

42. 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 .

43. 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

44. 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)

45. Related Work

46. 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

47. 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)

48. 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

49. 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

50. 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

51. 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 Displays O’Hara, Perry, Churchill, Russell

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

53. 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

54. 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

55. 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/

56. 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

57. CoCollage partners, Q3 2008

58. CoCollage partners, Q4 2008

59. CoCollage partners, Q1 2009

60. Future Work / 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?

61. Community characteristics Greater awareness, interactions, relationships – between who? Potential factors Café (or other third place) Size, Location (neighborhood), Longevity Community Engagement: owners, managers, baristas, customers Technology comfort / use: laptops, mobile phones, web, SNS CoCollage Placement, features (e.g., card reader) Promotion by / within community

62. Technology How important is presence? Sense & respond paradigm Small group effect (Shirky) Avoiding YASNS syndrome More [engaged] users Cammie Community overview Contests

63. Sustainable revenue model Community-based advertising Leveraging existing practices

64. Thanks! For more information: mccarthy AT strands DOT com http://cocollage.com http://gumption.typepad.com http://www.slideshare.net/gumption