Research
I've made a kind of XXth century website to describe my ph project. It's definitely roughly/sketchy/odd for the moment... on purpose, if you want to understand (because of the public machines' law), feel free to contact me...
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE En psychologie sociale, des expériences (lyonch, Milgram) demandaient aux gens de dessiner des cartes de leur ville afin de comprendre comment ils percevaient la structure de leur lieu de vie.
... on pourrait demander aux utilisateurs de virtual space (web ou mobile) de dessiner la manière dont ils voient leur espace virtuel et notamment de schématiser par une carte leur espace sociale. Par exemple, chez des jeunes (gros utilisateurs de sms), ils pourrient dessiner des cartes de leur espace social (on pourrait les laisser choisir le type de représentation ou leur imposer un type qui marche bien) avec des conventions particulières (personnes plus ou moins proches, dans quel contexte...)
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE A social technology is "one that makes it possible to find people with common interests, to talk with them and listen to them, and to sustain connections with them over time" Sproull and Faraj, 1993.
Social environment : "anywhere that people interact which each other (exchanging cues and social information, observing the apprarance and behavior of others)" Judith Donath
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE My ppt for ICNEE is here
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Je suis en train de me demander si le fait de filer des outils d'awareness ultra precis a un groupe (d'etudiants par exemple) n'est pas une mauvaise voie... Je me demande si l'awareness du groupe se jouerait pas plutot au niveau du background awareness : recreer un sentiment de groupe chez des gens disperses, en lien avec des sms, emails, mms...
Tout dépend de l'activité du groupe : et généralement ce n'est pas une joint activity mais plutot un système d'intelligence collective ou transactive memory (qui sait qui sait quoi et peut donc lui demander par exemple).
Donc un awareness moins lie a la tâche, plus au background, au groupe... et donc moin gadget qui dit qui fait quoi a l'instant precis...
Etudier comment les outils d'awareness peuvent soutenir (et quels en sont les effets socio-cognitifs) cela est une piste seduisante. Discussion avec DKS a ce propos :
je suis en train de me demander si le fait de filer des outils d'awareness ultra precis a un groupe (detudiants apr exemple) nest pas une mauvaise voie... je me demande si l'awareness du groupe se jouerait pas plutot au niveau du background awareness : recreer un sentiment de groupe chez des gens disperses, en lien avec des sms, emails, mms...
He pages, "moi je mise plutot sur l'hypothèse 2" He pages, "mais bon je ne suis pas un collaboration freak .... je parle maintenant de collective learning a propos de mes trucs"
ouais, tu definis comment colelctive learning ? quelque chose dasser diffus, plus informel, une sorte de sphere de connaissance (genre social navigation, savoir qui sait koi pour lui demander) ?
He pages, "oui ca, puis aussi que les gens font a priori des trucs seuls ou a 2-3 et qu'ils ne s'activement que par moments et par besoins au niveau de la collectivité"
oui je suis daccord, un reseau donc diffus; ca pourrait etre interessant de voir comment les outils d'awareness support cela, on pourrait imaginer des visualisations pour voir comment se forment/deforment les groupes...
He pages, "évidémment à certains moments on peut les faire faire des choses collaboratives, mais la motivation serait plutot extrinseque (genre le prof les force ou alors y a un truc qui l'exige" He pages, "ouais ca, puis quand-meme y aussi la sphère du commun"
ouais
He pages, "un peu comme les gens dans un tit village ou encore un boite, ils habitent/bossent seules mais quand-meme dans une petite société bien structurée avec échanges et culture propre etc etc"
des echanges informels TRES important
He pages, "ouais ouais pis sous-culture aussi comme produit"
et des awareness tools pour support le fait que les gens soient disperses...
He pages, "right, puis pas juste du fait de la disperson, mais simplement aussi pour avoir une plusvalue par rapport à rien du tout. y a les 2"
oui je ne pense pas assez a cette dimension (je sui encore sous le coup dun article lu ce matin sur le comportement dutilisation sms des japonais, jai blogge dessus)
He pages, "ah faut que je voye ca"
japan is still the future :)
Prior imagining interaction scenaios with ultra-hype mobile devices that rocks, I should adress those questions : How do students work together ? How to they collaborate ? Is SPACE (and space information) meaningul ? Is background awareness useful ? Do they maintain background awareness and how ? What type of awareness do they need to collaborate ? Do they need focused awareness information or something rather global (background) ?
Perhaps a short ethnographic study could help...
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Japanese academics (Mizuko Ito and Daisuke Okabe) defines the concept of 'technosocial situations' to refer to technologically-mediated social orders (= Erving Goffmans' theory of social situation : isomorphism between physical space and social situation).
Their work (an ethnographic research on mobile phone use and location in Japan) reveals that heavy mobile texting use fosters new kinds of technosocial situations. A stablizing set of patterns emerges through the use of SMS :
- mobile text chat : particularly to fill small 'communication void', in setting like public transportation where there are prohibitions voice calls.
- ambient virtual co-presence : messaging can be a way of maintaning ongoing background awareness of others -> a shared virtual space persistent as a technosocial system but not persistent from a technological perspective.
- augmented flesh meet : a technology-enhanced physically co-located gathering : "mobile phones have become devices for augmenting the experiences and properties of physically colocated encounters (berfore, during and after the encounter). Teens use mobile phones to bring in the presence of other friends who were not able to make it to the physical gathering, or to access information that is relevant to that particular time and place". Before the meeting : in order to arrange the meeting (time, place, lateness...) -> coordination. During : when a sms come into a friend's phone, it is common to ask whi it was from, what is the content, a conversation about that ensue. After : the conversation continues (participants thank the person who organized the gathering, add information ("I forgot to tell you...") -> a newly emergent norm. constuction of new technosocial settings and situations : stretching of prior boundaries of what it means to "be together"
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I had a very interesting meeting today at EPFL with Philippe Rochat, a computer science phD student who showed us his SMS game. The game in itself is not that intersting but it was a way for me to understand how it works.
In this game, the cell phone is used as a remote control, results are seen on a screen.
When the user send a sms (players interact with the games thanks to sms), it goes to the telecom provider (say orange), then to a sms gateway, like kannel. The gateway send a url-like line to the server. Afterwards, a php-script parse this line and transfer the result to the interface (java for instance) displayed on a screen.
One can imagine very smart app with this setting. For example, cell phone can be used as a way to ask a question to a lecturer (questions could be displayed on a large electronic whiteboard) or to answer to classroom quizzes.
After a smart discussion yesterday with dks about the fact the US neo-conservatives won their influence war against the establishment (conservatives), I read an interesting article in Wired last issue about how Donald Rumsfeld modified warfare. One of the striking feature here is the fact that innovation and progress come from neo-conservatives. Rummie's new theory of warfare (swarm tactics) proposes that instead of keep you soldier comrades in sight, marines uses complex awareness tools (like blips on global command and control system map). Technology hence allows soldiers to keep track of each other more efficiently and then they can move in any formation. Rumsfeld's swarm theory also holds that teams move fast and don't need to secure the rear : that's the real innovation in gulf war II. The consequences are simple : fewer troops and less equipment and since team are disperesed it's more difficult for the ennemy to attack.
Research on awareness (situational awareness in particular) is a crux issue in this context. I've found a lot of stuff about awareness on US military think tanks research center. It could easily be related to my thesis : awareness and command&conquer/decision making.
This week my research is headed towards two things : - the EPFL learning center : I am still working with Pierre and David (epfl library's manager) on the scenarios of interaction with mobile technologies, awareness tools and so on. - writing a document on Location-Based Services (a kind of CRAFT white paper) for everyday life, work, learning and gaming thanks to mobile stuff.
I also plan to write a document on Social Spaces (overlap of virtual and real space) and mobile technologies.
I'll put those documents on this blog or on a webpage.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE LBS means Location-Based Services, it's definitely the actual trend : pull and push services to get info about something in th area.
Another buzzword related to few LBS is "social technology" in which location information could be of interest in order to find somebody in the environment. To meet this end, Trepia proposes a location-based list of others nearby WiFi users. I've also seen similar systems to location other nearby bluetooth-enables cellphone users.
I've found on smartmobs how it works : "If two people are within range of the same Wi-Fi access point, they must be close to each other. Building on this idea, Trepia tracks the movement of people through access points, and then notifies you of other users who are in your area. "
The software could be downloaded here.
Yanna Vogiazou at the Knowledge Media University in the UK is foucing on presence-based multiplayer games from a social psychology perspective. Ths webpages presents the reserch project.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE buddyspace is an Instant Messager based on jabber (java, xml).
It seems that is to be designed to investigate variou stuff that could be related to my research : Semantics of match-making, Presence semantics and dynamics, Presence in Massively Multiplayer Games...
Marc Eisenstadt leads this KMI lab. He claims that the most important thing for online communities/portal to be alive is to teach users how to make en input !!! His blog is worth to read. The authors claims that :
The aim of this aspect of our work is to focus on the notion of presence of other players in massively multiplayer games and investigate the potential of a game based purely on presence information. We are particularly interested in the issues that arise when designing a game for a multi-user experience. In particular we note that a very large number of participants can sometimes be disadvantageous for the game experience and complicate the design process. In most games we notice a limit either in the number of people that can take part, or in the number of people that can interact synchronously or see each other during game play.
For example, in massively multiplayer games like Ultima Online and Asherons Call the player's view is limited by an artificial horizon in the radar visualization: this conveniently narrows the immediate scope of events requiring urgent attention, but restricts the 'total immersion' effect that might otherwise be possible to achieve. This work attempts to explore the idea of a game where the very presence of a large number of people could not only be advantageous for the game itself, but actually form the fundamental premise of its play. The work is in an early state, and an indication of its progress is described in Yanna Vogiazou's Directory of Work on Massively MultiPlayer Presence which drawing on links from the worlds of games, mobiles, instant messaging, and telepresence.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE This week, my work consists in defining scenarios for the EPFL Learning Center to be build for 2008. The idea is to shift from a traditional library to a integrated learning center where smart technologies augment learning, collaboration and students' interaction.
Cell phones do have interesting effects on our representation of time. Three examples : - Time is softened, blurred : When is somebody considered late? thanks to my cell phone I could warn my buddies that I'm late... - Cell phone are used to micro-coordinate schedules with others (Im at the mall now, where are you?) - Enables other activities, talk on-the-go : Dont have to set aside time & place for communication.
Additionnaly, there is also an effect on space :
- Public and private boundaries change : e.g., one person at home, one in restaurant - Physical space vs. Virtual space : Norms in one space != norms in other space + Social conflict e.g. Driving - Trade-off: leash or freedom? - Direct correlation: phone use , tolerance (Britain: 45% of age 24+ say ban phone in public, Compare to only 25% under age 24)
Bertrand Merminod a l'epfl travaille sur des projets alliant urbanisme et mobile devices/location-based stuff. Il a notamment concu un device alliant gps et mouvement de la personne. Les publications d'un de ses collaborateurs valent le coup d'oeil.
I think I have managed to find a way to gather my research and my passion for psychogeography. Focusing on how information technologies could help us to reappropriate urban's life is definetely my interest... Debord, in 1955, defined psychogeography as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals ".
My stance is that IT could trigger new behavior in urban life (howard rheingold's smart mobs, social texting, location-based awareness services) that may encourage people to live new urban experiences.
I am trying to gather ideas about that, I begin to write something up...
Jonah Brucker-Smith, artist/researcher at Media Lab Europe (the MIT Medialab kind-of franchise, worth to check what is happening there :) proposes a collection of background awareness applications based on desktop ubiquity : Desktop Subversibles : - MouseTraces : a background graphical display of mouse movements between two people across distance. - ClipIt! : a networked sticky-note application that provides ambient glimpses of the copy and paste activity of other users - MouseMiles : a networked collective mouse milage indicator manifested in physical space. - Clicks : a distributed mouse click collector rendered as sound in public space.
Defining a method to evaluate collaboration is a hard and challenging issue. Billinghurst, Belchera, Guptaa & Kiyokawaa in their studies about Augmented Reality collaborative interfaces proposes three key points : - performance measures : typical performance measures include how fast a task can be completed, and the quality of the outcome of the collaboration. - process measures : objective communication measures that capture the process of collaboration extracted from transcriptions of audio and video recordings and notes made during the collaborative task : frequency of conversational turns, incidence/duration of overlapping speech, number of interruptions, turn completions, dialogue structure, back-channels... Gesture and non-verbal behaviors can also be analyzed for characteristic features. - subjective measures : based entirely on the users perception of their experience.
Defining an appropriate metrics to discriminate collaboration patterns is difficult and according to my Pierre Dillenbourg, each research group has his own metric or method of evaluation...
Below I put a discussion on the moo with Colin about that stuff. TO DO -> write a white paper about that and visit Amy Joller (Italy) and Martin Muhlenbrock (Xerox, Grenoble) >'colin tu as bosse sur les methodes d'evaluation de la collaborartion ? du genre discrimination of collaboration aptterns >'colin est-ce qu'il y a des methodes unifies, fondamentales ou c le fouilli, chaque equipe a sa metrics ? He pages, "non pas directement ... ma collegue Amy Soller a fait une these sur l'utilisation de Hidden Markov Models pour classer des sequences d'interaction en effective versus non effective" >'colin mais est-ce qu'il y aun bouquin la dessus ? genre une presentation de smethodes d'evaluation ? He pages, "pas a ma connaissance comme ca directement ... on a fait un workshop sur computational models of CSCL ... je peux te montrer les proceedings ... tetre y a des references dans les short papers" >'colin yes cool, c en version numerique ? He pages, "ca depend de ce que tu analyses, si c le dialogue y a des standards genre DISCOUNT" He pages, "http://sra.itc.it/people/soller/CSCL2002/workshop-program.html'coli" >'colin ouais merci ! He pages, "et si tu veux evaluer les patterns de qui parle a qui y a les sociogrammes" He pages, "et des metriques de p.ex. centralite d'un acteur dans le researu, des metriques de complexite etc ... Pierre a un book la dessus dans son bureau" He pages, "aka plein de formules" >'colin ok, une fois faudrais quon discute de ca et que je prenne des notes, genre que je fasse un peit white paper de synthese He pages, "oui ca serait cool de systematiser un peu" >'colin je me dis que ca peut servir, notamment pour le plan avec nokia >'colin et moi pour me fixer les idees, il faut kejecrive He pages, "sinon y a les efforts de systematisation de scripts CSCL ... DAniel K a qqchose la dessus ... mais ca c'est pas pour l'analyse c'est plus une description systematique des pratiques en XML" >'colin oui c different He pages, "Angelique Dimitracopoulou a l'approche la plus formelle je pense" >'colin et tavais pas ecris un truc la dessus avec un garsa de duisburg ? He pages, "ca c'etait plus sur les approches de regulation en CSCL ... He pages, "http://www.mmi.unimaas.nl/euro-cscl/Papers/197.pdf" >'colin ok alors c peut etre ce gars qui a ecrit un truc sur les collabraoion apatterns He pages, "un autre workshop ... mais j'y etais pas alors je peux pas dire ce qui est chaud :) http://collide.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/ecai-2000/" >'colin ok je prends note He pages, "probably ... Martin Mühlenbrock il est a xerox a Grenoble now" >'colin ca peut etre interessant daler faire un tour la bas pour voir ce qui s epasse tu pense ? He pages, "oui on devrait aller visiter ... et aussi Amy, elle est en Italie" He pages, "on va en causer a Pieeer et tetre organiser une tournee des Alpes CSCL ..."
Few notes of a discussion with my phd director (messy and in french sorry) Il faut pour ma thèse quelqeu chose de visionnaire mais pas casse-gueule, il faut une application précise
Objets situés physiquement dans l'espace
Réfléchir à des contextes professionels dans lesquels la frontière entre formation et training est moins marquée qu'ailleurs
Device : pda + gsm, wifi ... phone c pas terrible. cela depend aussi de la distance entre les gens, cela peut avoir une incidence sur la technologie utilisée
Navigation sociale : concept à employer mais dans un environnement physique et non virtuel. Lire des choses la dessus. On anvigue dans l'espace et on fait un rating de ce que l'on voit. Asynchrone donc.
Imaginer des contextes professionels dans lesquels il y a collaboration entre personnes/équipes dispersées et pour lesquels l'espace/contexte est meaningfull (fait sens) : santé hopital (collab entre +ieurs personnes soignant un gars ?), ski teacher, agriculteur, militaires, TCS, cicr, GN, course d'orientation, équipe de secours en montagne, agent de sécurité
TrUC bien : field study comme géologie, archéologie, plongeurs...
CHECKER DOC ARMEE AWARENESS DECISION
La représentation de la position spatiale de l'autre devrait avoir une incidence sur la réalisation de la tâche (facilite la tâche mais n'en est pas la composante principale, on retrouve le pb que l'on avait avec spaceminers pour lequel l'indication d'awareness ne doit pas etre obligatoire pour realiser la tache). Il nous faut une tache dans laquelle la position (et le contexte spatiale) dans lequel est situé lautre) soit utile. COntexte : quand on raisonne sur la position de l'autre, on peut inférer sur ce qu'il sait, les info qu'il a collecté... La clé du pb est de trouver une relation entre espace et tâche... marquer d'une couleur ce qu'un collegue a vu, pour aps refaire par exemple ? Il faut que raisonner sur l'espace ce soit raisonner sur le problème
Etudier les impacts sociaux et cog des location-based awareness tools, voir aussi comment cela peut modifier la tache et la collaboration ???? Etude sur location based awareness SYNCHRONE et ASYNCHRONE ????
Les urbanistes de l'epfl ???
TO DO : - trouver terrain, tache : les géologue ca semble pas mal - lire sur relation space/cognition, braistormer sur en quoi savoir la position de l'autre peut aider à la représentation de l'autre ? en quoi... - lire sur social nav - lire doc sur houria FT