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Designing
Online Collaborative Environments: Social Visualizations as Shared
Resources
As
humans, we are exceptionally sensitive to the actions and interactions of
those around us. Every day we make countless decisions that are shaped by
our social context. Whether it's wrapping up a talk when the audience
starts fidgeting, or deciding to forego the grocery shopping because the
parking lot is jammed, social information provides a basis for
inferences, planning, and coordinating activity. Yet, when our
interaction shifts to digital media, much of the grace with which we
conduct our face to face interactions is lost.
As
a designer, I am interested in remedying this situation. In this talk I
describe a strand of design research into how to create online systems
that support coherent interaction among groups of varying sizes. I begin with
a case study of a rather unusual example of coherence in a digital
system, from which I draw some design implications. Next I discuss how we
operationalized these implications, developing
the concept of the social proxy: a minimalist representation of people
and their activities in a particular context. I continue by describing
systems we have designed and deployed, and end with a range of concept
pieces that illustrate the breadth of the concept.
Thomas Erickson is
a Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York where he works on designing
systems which support network mediated group interaction. An interaction
designer and researcher, his approach to systems design is shaped by work
in sociology, rhetoric, architecture and urban design. He has contributed
to the design of many products, and authored about 40 publications on
topics ranging from personal electronic notebooks and information
retrieval systems to pattern languages and virtual community. See http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson.
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