SOCIAL

INTERACTION
 Objectives

The main aims of this chapter are to:

◆ Explain what is meant by social interaction.
◆ Describe the social mechanisms that are used by people when
communicating and collaborating.
◆ Discuss how social media have changed the ways in which we keep in
touch, make contact, and manage our social and working lives.
 Objectives

◆ Explain what is meant by telepresence.

◆ Give an overview of shareable technologies and some of the studies
showing how they can facilitate collaboration and group participation.
 Overview

◆ Being social
◆ Face to face conversations
◆ Remote conversations
◆ Tele-presence
◆ Co-presence
◆ Shareable technologies

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 Conversational mechanisms

◆ Various mechanisms and ‘rules’ are followed when

holding a conversation, e.g. mutual greetings
A: Hi there
B: Hi!
C: Hi
A: All right?
C: Good, how’s it going?
A: Fine, how are you?
C: OK
B: So-so. How’s life treating you?

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 Being social

◆ Are F2F conversations being superseded by our social

media interactions?
◆ How many friends do you have on Facebook, LinkedIn,etc
vs real life?
◆ How much overlap?
◆ How are the ways we live and interact with one another
changing?
◆ Are the established rules and etiquette still applicable to
online and offline?

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 Conversational rules

◆ Sacks et al. (1978) work on conversation analysis

describe three basic rules:

Rule 1: the current speaker chooses the next speaker by

asking an opinion, question, or request

Rule 2: another person decides to start speaking

Rule 3: the current speaker continues talking

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 Conversational rules

◆ Turn-taking used to coordinate conversation

A: Shall we meet at 8?
B: Um, can we meet a bit later?

A: Shall we meet at 8?
B: Wow, look at him?

A: Yes what a funny hairdo!

B: Um, can we meet a bit later?

◆ Back channelling to signal to continue and following

Uh-uh, umm, ahh
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 More conversational rules

◆ Farewell rituals
Bye then, see you, yer bye, see you later….

◆ Implicit and explicit cues

e.g. looking at watch, fidgeting with coat and bags
explicitly saying “Oh dear, must go, look at the time, I’m late…”

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 Breakdowns in conversation

◆ When someone says something that is

misunderstood:

Speaker will repeat with emphasis:

A: “this one?”
B: “no, I meant that one!”

◆ Also use tokens:

Eh? Quoi? Huh? What?

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 What happens in social media conversations?

◆ Do same conversational rules apply?

◆ Are there more breakdowns?
◆ How do people repair them for:
Phone?
email?
Instant messaging?
texting?
Skyping?
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BEING SOCIAL

face-to-face conversations
- central to many of our social interactions
Social Media
(texting, emailing, tweeting, Facebooking, Skyping, using
Yammer, instant messaging, and so on)
 “
Are the ways we live and
interact with one another
changing?
Face-to-Face Conversations

Talking is something that is effortless and

comes naturally to most people.

◆ take turns asking questions

◆ giving replies
◆ making statements
Face-to-Face Conversations

IMPLICIT CUES - when a participant looks at his watch,

signaling indirectly to the other participants that he wants the
conversation to draw to a close

EXPLICIT CUES – using farewell rituals

(‘Well, I must be off now. Got work to do’ )
Adjacency Pairs (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973).

◆ Utterances are assumed to come in pairs in which the

first part sets up an expectation of what is to come next
and directs the way in which what does come next is
heard.

A: So shall we meet at 8:00?

B: Um, can we make it a bit later, say 8:30?
Adjacency Pairs (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973).

A: So shall we meet at 8:00?

B: Wow, look at him.
A: Yes, what a funny hairdo!
B: Um, can we make it a bit later, say 8:30?
A screenshot of my SnapChat
(deleted after 8 seconds when
sent to the recipient)
Remote Conversations
Telepresence

ClearBoard
(Ishii et al, 1993).
was designed to
enable facial expressions of
participants to be made visible to
others by using a transparent
board that showed their face to
the others
Telepresence

HyperMirror,
(Morikawa and Maesako, 1998)
synthesized and projected
mirror reflections of people in
different places onto a single
screen, so that they appeared
side by side in the same virtual
space
 VideoWindow system
(Bellcore, 1989)

◆ Shared space that allowed people 50 miles apart

to carry on a conversation as if in same room
drinking coffee together
◆ 3 x 8 ft ‘picture-window’ between two sites with
video and audio
◆ People did interact via the window but strange
things happened (Kraut, 1990)
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Telepresence

HyperMirror,
(Morikawa and Maesako, 1998)
synthesized and projected mirror reflections of
people in different places onto a single screen, so
that they appeared side by side in the same virtual
space
Telepresence
(a) a surrogate robot at a meeting
‘sitting’ between two physically
present people;
(b) the remote user's view of the
meeting while controlling the
surrogate;
(c) an early version of the surrogate
on the move; and
(d) a second-generation surrogate
designed to preserve the height
and sitting/standing posture of
the user (Jouppi, 2002).
 Sketch of VideoWindow

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 Skype success

◆ Global household name

◆ Seeing others on screen enables more intimacy
than audio phone
◆ Enables people to get to know each other better
◆ Less awkward for young children
◆ Like “to show, not tell” (Ames et al, 2010)

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 Facebook and Twitter

◆ Everyone uses them so what is there to learn?

◆ Used in emergencies, demos, etc., e.g., users
spread up-to-the minute info and retweet about
how a wildfire or gas plume is moving but can
also start or fuel rumours, by adding news that is
old or incorrect more confusing than helpful

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 Telepresence

◆ New technologies designed to allow a person to

feel as if they were present in the other location
projecting their body movements, actions, voice
and facial expressions to the other location or
person

e.g. superimpose images of the other person on a

workspace
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 The People’s Bot attending CHI

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 A telepresence room

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◆ Embedded in the shirt are sensors that detect the strength of the wearer's skin
warmth and heart rate and actuators that recreate the sensation of a hug through
being buzzed on various parts of the body.
 Coordination mechanisms

◆ When a group of people act or interact together

they need to coordinate themselves
e.g., playing football, navigating a ship

They use:
◆ verbal and non-verbal communication

◆ schedules, rules, and conventions

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 Co-presence

◆ Technologies that enable co-located

groups to collaborate more effectively
when working, learning and socializing

Examples: Smartboards, Surfaces, Wii and Kinect

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 F2F coordinating mechanisms

◆ Talk is central
◆ Non-verbal also used to emphasize and as
substitute
e.g. nods, shakes, winks, glances, gestures and
hand-raising

◆ Formal meetings
explicit structures such as agendas, memos, and minutes are
employed to coordinate the activity
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 Designing technologies to support awareness

◆ Provide awareness of others who are in different

locations
◆ Workspace awareness: “the up-to-the-moment
understanding of another person’s interaction with
the shared workspace” (Gutwin and Greenberg,
2002)
◆ Examples: ReacTable and Reflect Table
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 The Reactable experience

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 The Reflect Table

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 Sococo – shows who is where and who is meeting with whom

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 What next?

◆ Besides perpetual sharing and broadcasting of

information, knowledge, and personal content?
◆ Lifelogging
◆ recording everything in one’s life and sharing

◆ Micro-chatting
◆ beyond twitter and snapchat?
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 Summary

◆ Social mechanisms, like turn-taking, conventions, etc.,

enable us to collaborate and coordinate our activities

◆ Keeping aware of what others are doing and letting

others know what you are doing are important aspects
of collaborative working and socialising

◆ Many technologies systems have been built to support

telepresence and co-presence
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 “
Mindless versus mindful
interaction
 1.
How do you start and end a
conversation when
(i) talking on a phone and
(ii) chatting online?
 2.
How do people repair breakdowns in
conversations when using a phone or
email?
 3.
How do you represent yourself online?
What image and names do you use?
 4.
What would you expect the most
retweeted selfie to be? Why do we send
so many selfies?
 5.
What do you think happens when one person in a
close-knit team does not see or hear something, or
misunderstands what
has been said, while the others in the group assume
that person has seen, heard, or understood what has
been said?