The document reports on research into consideration in software-mediated social interaction. It outlines the research aim to understand how users perceive consideration to improve social software. The method involved semi-structured interviews and an online survey. Results found gender had little impact but age did, with younger users more proactive and older users less interested. Perceptions of inconsideration influenced how users specified consideration for others. Challenges included contextual factors and evolving perceptions over time. The conclusions were that empirical study provided insights into consideration to inform building more considerate social software.

1. Consideration in Software-
mediated Social Interaction
Raian Ali, Nan Jiang, Sherry Jeary,
Keith Phalp

2. Outline
 Problem
 Aim
 Method
 Results
 Challenges
 Conclusions

3. Problem
 Being considerate is important in any
business environment but sometimes
it is down to personal choice.
 People are trying to be considerate in
“traditional” communications but not
always in software mediated
communications
 This often leads to negative impacts

4. Examples
 Seeing more and more people being
copied in an email conversation
 Being cc’ed without specifying why and
what exactly to look at
 Being forwarded an email with FYI
without specifying why and what
exactly to look at
 Other short emails with only a few words or no
word

5. Research Aim
 Understand how users perceive
consideration in software-mediated
interaction to improve social
interaction facilitated by software
 Our ultimate goal is to develop
considerate software

6. Method
 Mixed methods research
 Sequential exploratory designs (Stoller
et al, 2009)
 Phase 1: qualitative research
 Exploration
 Phase 2: quantitative research
 Validation and elaboration

7. Qualitative Phase
 Semi-structured interviews
 Participants:
 8 professionals (6 males and 2
females) with multicultural background
living and working in the UK
 Different roles from office worker to
senior management
 Age: 35 (Median), 37.5 (Mean)

8. Interview Questions
 General
 Cognitive understanding, motivations for being
considerate/inconsiderate
 Popular software means used in workplace
 Specific (software-mediated)
 Consideration/inconsideration
 User’s attitude and reactions
 Decision shift of being considerately or
inconsiderately treated
 Expectations of software on consideration-
support

9. Quantitative Phase
 Large scale online survey
 Questionnaire based on
interview findings
 Distribution channels (UK
and US):
 BU academic staff mailing list
 Chinwag mailing list
 Several research mailing lists
 Respondents: 122 (67 males,
55 females)
Age Distribution (Survey)
0%
20%
40%
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74
Age Groups
Percentage

10. Results Overview
 Overall user perception mapped well
 Over 90% agreed, only 9 new codes proposed from
less than 10% respondents
 Gender effects are not significant in all areas
 Cross tabulation, Chi-Square p> 0.05
 Age effects are significant in some areas
 Cross tabulation, Chi-Square p> 0.05
 Perception of consideration/inconsideration has
impact on specifying consideration

11. Goal of Interaction
 Goal of the interaction itself [65%]:
 “If they are not interacting for the right reason, then I
am less likely to be considerate”.
 Constraints on achieving the goal [59%]:
 “In my reminders, I could be inconsiderate because of
the urgency and importance of attending the event,
nothing personalised”.
 Availability of other methods to achieve the same
goal [56%]:
 “Some people were in the habit of opening the shared
file and then wandering off. They lock it. They could
work-offline and then upload all text together”.

12. Consequence
 Consequence on the organisation [63%]
 “Consideration needs managing otherwise destroys projects”
 Colleagues’ reactions [59%]
 “I would deal with senior managers and close colleagues
differently”
 Mental cost [55%]
 “If I did inconsiderate interactions, it makes me feel bad”
 Social isolation [22%]
 “I want to be a nice person because I need to work with them
every day.”

13. Audience
 Relation with the audience [76%]
 Value of the audience [54%]
 Personality of the audience [74%]
 Interaction history with the audience [79%]
 Situation awareness [63%]
 Visibility of the interaction to other audience
[56%]

14. Types of Inconsideration
 Membership termination [59%]
 Locking [49%]
 Ignoring [70%]
 Flame wars [50%]
 Laziness/Carelessness [61%]
 Formality level [19%]
 Timeliness [60%]
 Pressure [49%]
 Invading personal space [50%]
 Irrelevance [36%]
 Violation of the norms [31%]
 Curt/ Abrupt wording [61%]

15. Treating Inconsideration
 Behave in an ad-hoc way [25%]
 Conservative [37%]
 Receptive [48%]
 Anxious [35%]
 Practical [32%]
 Authority seeker [17%]
 Evasive [14%]
 Apologetic [36%]

16. Age Effects on Reaction
 18 – 24 yrs old were more passive
 “I prefer others to handle this”
 25 – 34 yrs old were more proactive
 “I will report it”
 “I will say it to the other”
 35+ yrs old showed less interests,
tend to ignore
 “Let it be”, “let’s just focus on the
business”

17. Visibility
 Explicitly said [40%]
 Anonymously said [24%]
 Said by an authority [28%]
 Learned over time [59%]

18. Perception Impacts: Consequences
 “I didn’t realise it could be
inconsiderate for someone”
 People were more concerned about
their own mental cost (60% agreed)
 “It could be inconsiderate”
 People were more concerned about
their recipients’ reactions (71.88%
agreed)

19. Perception Impacts: Attitudes
 TIL – “Today I learned”
 59.68% would prefer that others learn
their view of consideration/inconsideration
over time through the way they interact
with them
 “The big brother is watching you”
 62.07% - 79.31% respondents would like
“third-party” to get involved as this will
not affect their relationships

20. Perception Impacts: Reactions
 “I am cautious to my own behaviour
so I will be cautious to others
behaviour”
 73.5% respondents would be cautious
what they do
 Less than half of them would feel bad if
they did something inconsiderate
 “Fair play”
 58.82% don’t mind if they would be
treated in the same way as they treated
others

21. Challenges
 Users as modellers: only user can model themselves
 Tacitness: easy to feel but difficult to elicit
 Personal vs. public: private but can be leaked
 Evolution of perception: change over time
 Context-dependency: goal driven
 Measurement: how it can be measured for each individual
 Learning and adaptability: software needs to learn and
adapt according to user actions/behaviours

22. Conclusions
 Empirical study to deduce a number of
observations on the nature of
consideration
 A starting point for understanding how to
move towards building considerate
software
 Models and tools will be developed to
capture user concerns in software
mediated communications