Ambient Informaticsin Urban Cafés

Joe McCarthyPrincipal Instigator

Strands Labs Seattle

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Digital Cities, Inc. ?• Centralization, extraction,

exploitation• Disconnection, division,

distance• Individualism vs.

collectivism• Spectators (spectacles) vs.

participants• Top-down vs. bottom-up• Subjects citizens

consumers• Place property

mortgage derivative investments

We have met the corporation, and they is us.

lifeincorporated.net

Urban Cafés as 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

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

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

Challenge: [how] can technology enhance community within cafés?

Three observations … and a solution

Maintaining Friendships through Online 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

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.h

tml• See also: “Communities, Audiences & Scale”

– http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

Existing “technologies” for enhancing community in cafés

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

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.

The Strands Community Collage(CoCollage)

People

Stuff (photos & quotes)

Commenting, voting

Uploading

Messaging

The big screen

CoCollage features

Sharing your stuff

Facebook photos

Quotes

Flickr photos

Photos from your computer

Photos via email

Conversations & Connections

Comment, vote, flag

Public & private messages

Online Offline

Initial deployment: Trabant Coffee

A favorite photo

Study 1• Good pace of adoption in first month

– 82 out of an estimated 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 TechnologyShelly D. Farnham, Joseph F. McCarthy, Yagnesh Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood, Josh LindProc. of the 27th Int'l. Conf on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), 2153 - 2156.

Study 2Survey: 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 SoftwareJoseph F. McCarthy, Shelly D. Farnham, Yogi Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Daniel Norman, William R. Hazlewood & Josh LindTo appear in International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2009)

CoCollage partners, Q1 2009

Potential Discussion Topics

• Interaction / engagement– With vs. through technology– [at|dis]traction

• Mobile vs. Situated– Personal Space– Shared Place

• Contributors vs. Lurkers– Who is a “user”?– Post, comment, vote, view

Thanks!• For more information:

– mccarthy AT strands DOT com– http://cocollage.com– http://gumption.typepad.com– http://www.slideshare.net/gumption

Yogi PatelTech Lead

Shelly FarnhamResearch Consultant

Joe McCarthyPrincipal Instigator

Josh LindDesigner / Developer

Dan NormanDesign Lead

Sameer Ahuja(former intern)

Richie Hazlewood(former intern)

Tyler PhillipiBus Dev Manager