understanding and designing for the voluntary adoption of community displays

8/14/2019 Understanding and Designing for the Voluntary Adoption of Community Displays

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Understanding and Designing

for the Voluntary Adoption of

Community Displays

Harry Brignull


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DeclarationI hereby declare that this thesis has not been submitted, either inthe same or different form, to this or any other university for adegree.

Harry Brignull


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Contents

i Acknowledgements

ii Preface

iii Abstract

5 Chapter 1

Introduction

14 Chapter 2Background

55 Chapter 3Studying the social nature of a large display in acommunal space

76 Chapter 4The adoption of the Opinionizer Community Display ina one-shot setting

99 Chapter 5

Informing the design of Dynamo: a Community Displayfor on-going usage settings

132 Chapter 6Preliminary observational study of an on-going setting

145 Chapter 7The adoption of the Dynamo Community Display inan on-going setting

190 Chapter 8Discussion

219 Chapter 9Conclusions and future work

232 References

260 Appendix 1


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Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Mike Scaife, who sadly died in

December 2001. Mike helped me become an HCI researcher, so his

influence will stay with me for the rest of my life. Thanks Mike.

Mike Scaife and Yvonne Rogers tutored me while I was an undergraduate, a

Masters student, and supervised me during my PhD. Thank you both for all

your support and inspiration. Without your guidance I would not be here

today.

Geraldine Fitzpatrick took on the tricky task of supervising me throughout

my thesis write-up. Thank you for the amazing amount of effort you have

put in, particularly those brain-bending sessions in front of the whiteboard.

I must also thank the other people I collaborated with during the EPSRC

funded Dynamo project. Shahram Izadi, my research colleague, spent a

significant chunk of his life working closely with me on the project, and has

become a great friend. My thanks also go to Tom Rodden, whose distinctive

approach to motivation and management will not be forgotten.

Many other people have helped me along their way with their kindness,

advice and time: Jon Rimmer, Eric Harris, Sam Woolf, Paul Marshall, Jon

Matthews, Rowanne Fleck, and everyone at the Interact lab; Rene and the

AV team; the staff and students at Blatchington Mill; and of course thesupport staff here at Sussex University Christian Catherham, Richard

Grainger, Linda Thompson, Rita Stone, Celia McInnes, and everyone else.

Finally, I would like to thank the most important people in my life my


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Preface

Part of the work in these pages has also appeared in the various forms

below, and was part of the EPSRC funded Dynamo project (GR/N01125).

The papers below and the user-studies reported within them were the

product of collaborative group work between myself and the other Dynamo

project members: Shahram Izadi, Yvonne Rogers, Geraldine Fitzpatrick and

Tom Rodden. My contributions to this collaborative work included the

design and building of prototypes; the planning, design and running of user

studies; and a substantial part of the analysis. However, it should be noted

that the analysis and discussion carried out within this thesis is entirely my

own work, and considerably extends that reported within the papers below.

Brignull, H., Izadi, S., Fitzpatrick, G., Rogers, Y., & Rodden, T. (2004). The introduction

of a shared interactive surface into a communal space In Proceedings of the 2004 ACM

conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 49-58). Chicago, Illinois, USA

ACM Press.

Brignull, H., & Rogers, Y. (2003). Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays

in Public Spaces. In Proceedings of Interact 2003 (pp. 17-24). Zurich, Switzerland.

Izadi, S., Brignull, H., Rodden, T., Rogers, Y., & Underwood, M. (2003). Dynamo: a

public interactive surface supporting the cooperative sharing and exchange of media In

Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and

technology (pp. 159-168). Vancouver, Canada ACM Press.

Rogers, Y., & Brignull, H. (2002). Subtle ice-breaking: encouraging socializing and

interaction around a large public display. Paper presented at the Workshop on Public,

Community and Situated Displays at Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW02),

New Orleans USA


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Abstract

Community Displays are a new genre of large digital wall display system

for the support of informal social interaction in communal spaces. Prior

research shows that encouraging the initial voluntary adoption of

Community Displays in situ can be difficult, and is currently not well

understood. This problem is investigated in this thesis.

A critical analysis of research studies is carried out, revealing two distinct

categories of Community Display settings: one shot and on-going

usage. Three case studies are carried out, which investigate the similarities

and differences between these settings in terms of Community Display

usage and voluntary adoption. A combination of observational studies,laboratory studies and prototyping are employed. The first case study

observes the use of a physically large display in a shared office by a team of

locally mobile workers, and provides a grounding understanding of the

situated use of large displays. The second case study involves the

prototyping of a Community Display called Opinionizer, deployed in twoobservational studies in one-shot settings, both social gathering events. The

third case study involves informing the design of Dynamo, a Community

Display for on-going settings, and its subsequent study in an on-going

setting: the common room of a local college.

Findings relate to the spatial distribution and flow of interaction around a

Community Display; and the corresponding progression of users

understanding and adoption. The public availability of interaction with a

Community Display is shown to be highly important since it allows


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Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction _________________________________________________ 5

1.2 Overview of Thesis ___________________________________________ 6Chapter 2: Background ________________________________________________ 6Chapter 3: Studying the social nature of a large display in a communal space. _____ 7Chapter 4: The adoption of the Opinionizer Community Display in a one-shot

usage setting ________________________________________________________ 8Chapter 6: Preliminary observational study of an on-going usage setting _________ 10Chapter 7: The adoption of the Dynamo Community Display in an on-goingusage setting. _______________________________________________________ 11Chapter 8: Discussion ________________________________________________ 12Chapter 9: Conclusions and Future Work _________________________________ 13


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1.1 Introduction

This thesis investigates the problem space of designing Community

Displays, a new genre of digital wall display system for the support of

informal social interaction in communal spaces. An analysis of prior

research reported in Chapter 2 shows that achieving initial voluntary

adoption by a community is a crucial first hurdle that many systems fail

on, even for those that are technically impressive and feature-rich. The

contribution of this thesis is that it provides the beginnings of a lingua

franca or framework for researchers and system designers, enabling them to

better understand the interplay between the settings, the social behaviour,

the voluntary adoption and the design issues that are at work in the design,

use and appropriation of Community Displays. The key concepts put

forward include:

The definition of one shot and on-going settings, which

describe some important distinctions in the nature of social

behaviour in different communal spaces, and the implications this

has for the design of community displays.

The honey pot effect which describes the manner in which a

Community Display can facilitate spontaneous social congregations

in its vicinity, owing to the public availability of interaction around

it. This also has implications for the process of vicarious learning by

which community members oversee usage and learn about the

system.


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This thesis is structured as follows: Chapter 2 provides the background to

this research, detailing a literature review, an analysis of the problem-space,

and the research questions. Following this, three case studies are reported,

beginning with an initial grounding case study in Chapter 3, a main case

study in chapter 4, and the largest case study is reported in Chapters 5, 6 and

7. Chapter 8 consists of the thesis discussion, and Chapter 9, the future work

and conclusions. The rest of this chapter will provide a more detailed

chapter-by-chapter overview of the thesis.

1.2 Overview of Thesis

Chapter 2: Background

This chapter details the nature of communal spaces and Community

Displays, relating them to literature and research in the area. It begins by

introducing the problem of the voluntary adoption of technology:

encouraging end-users to choose to use a tool of their own accord. It then

specifies the scope of this thesis: studying voluntary adoption of

Community Displays from the perspective of the situated interaction

engaged in by small groups.

This chapter begins by describing the nature of informal social interaction in

communal spaces such as common rooms, conference foyers, and cafs. It is

then explained how the nascent field of Community Display research aims

to provide technological support for this area. Community Displays are

defined as large publicly visible screens which offer facilities for situated


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This leads into the specific problem addressed by this thesis: the situated

voluntary adoption of Community Displays. Examples are given from the

literature which demonstrate the existence of this problem, together with a

heterogeneity in the nature of the deployment sites in which it has been

observed. A critical analysis of the properties of these sites gives rise to a

characterization of these sites into two kinds of setting: one-shot usage

settings and on-going usage settings. Following this analysis, the thesis

research questions are then put forward, followed by the approach and

methodology.

Chapter 3: Studying the social nature of a large display in acommunal space.

This chapter details an initial investigation into the properties of large

displays and their situated and social nature when used in a communal

space. This research was carried out in the following manner: first, a two-

week long observational field study was carried out, looking at the use of

large displays in a real-world communal space. Specifically, this was the

shared office of a team of audio-visual technicians at a conference, with

particular focus on their use of a large pin and paper wall display to

represent and manage their on-going work. Second, based on an analysis of

the findings, a large display prototype called Wall-Loader was developed.

This was evaluated via a field evaluation on site.

Analysis of the findings from this case study extends the understanding of


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These findings are applied and refined in the following two case studies,

where they provide a focus for the analysis of situated voluntary adoption of

Community Displays.

Chapter 4: The adoption of the Opinionizer Community Displayin a one-shot usage setting

This chapter details the investigation of the nature of voluntary adoption of

a Community Display called Opinionizer, in a one-shot usage type of

communal space, specifically, social gathering events (parties). This work

was carried out in the following manner: first, the Opinionizer prototype

was designed, drawing upon findings from the previous case study andrelated work. Following this, two field studies were carried out, in which

Opinionizer was deployed at two social gathering events, a book-launch

party at a conference, and a postgraduate welcoming party at a university. In

the analysis of the findings, the concepts of the honey-pot effect and

flow are expanded upon for the one-shot usage setting.

In the studies, the information shown on the Community Display offered a

resource for conversation initiation within its vicinity, which, by virtue of its

situatedness and public availability, enabled serendipitous opportunities for

social interaction. The concept of flow is used to describe the movement of

social interaction in relation to the Community Display. It was found to be

facilitated by avoiding physical bottlenecks, and psychological hurdles,

in the sense that the Community Display must help observers discover its

functionality and entice them to buy in and interact with it. A model of


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Factors found to deter adoption were found to be a fear of social

awkwardness (feeling on stage) and the length of the queue, among

others.

Chapter 5: Informing the design of Dynamo: a Community

Display for on-going usage settings

Dynamo, a novel Community Display system was developed as part of the

EPSRC Dynamo project. This chapter details how its design was

informed by the interpretation of the previous case study findings and

related work into some initial user-experience principles, contributing to

the development of Dynamo Version 1 (V1). One of the key suggestions

was to make the Community Displays resources openly accessible to all

community members, since this seemed to facilitate uptake in the previous

two case studies by making the interaction model simple and therefore easy

to learn.

However, findings from a lab study and field evaluation on Dynamo v1

question this design suggestion, and uncover a dilemma: while simplicity is

clearly desirable to encourage adoption, the open access model can result

in conflicts between users over the ownership of resources, such as display

estate, windows and devices. Analysis showed that a means of managing

temporary ownership of display estate needed to be provided for those users

who required it. To address this, a real estate ownership management tool

called carving was developed for Dynamo version 2 (V2), which, among

th i d f t i t d i thi h t


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Chapter 6: Preliminary observational study of an on-goingusage setting

This chapter describes a 5 day long preliminary observational study of an

on-going usage setting- the common room of a 6th form college. The aim of

this study was to investigate its suitability as a potential deployment site,

and to provide a grounding description of the communitys existing

activities, practices and flow, in order to offer a point of comparison with

the effects of Dynamo after it was deployed.

To summarize the findings of this preliminary observational study, the

common room was found to have many of the hallmarks of an on-going

communal space. It was used by an established community and members

were generally familiar with one another; the room was used on a daily

basis by much of the community; and it was used predominantly for

socializing. In general, the common room was observed to be a comfortable

place in which people passed time and interacted with others for the purpose

of enjoyment.

A survey revealed the community members to carry an assortment of

personal devices, and engage in a range of information sharing practices.

Noticeboards and flyers were also widely used for asynchronous

information dissemination. Together, these findings suggested a potential

suitability of Dynamo for this setting.


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Chapter 7: The adoption of the Dynamo Community Display in

an on-going usage setting.

This chapter details a ten day long observational study of Dynamo V2 in the

college common room. The findings showed that over the course of the

study, the community progressed from initially treating it like a normal PC,

to eventually developing a recognized set of practices, which are detailed in

this chapter.

As found in the previous case study, learning about the system tended to

occur vicariously, and interaction in relation to the Community Display

occurred at different levels of engagement, from peripheral overseeing

through to direct interaction. However, in this setting, since user exposure tothe system spanned a long duration, this did not manifest itself in the one-

shot studies as two prominent thresholds that user needed to cross. Instead,

it enabled many community members to learn about the system gradually

while going about their other daily activities, through the employment of

low engagement activities.

Also, users were observed to engage with the system and each other in a

wide array of different contingencies of use. For example, they would use it

individually or in groups, with or without various kinds of help (e.g. side-

by-side support, back seat tutoring or over the shoulder learning), with

or without various kinds of devices, and so on. These different

contingencies are defined as entry points, and it is suggested that they

should be wide-ranging, to enable gradual buy-in and a wide user base; and

that designers should monitor for closed entry points during evaluation, and


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Chapter 8: Discussion

This chapter takes stock from the findings of all the user studies carried out

in this thesis, and incorporates them into a cohesive account of the way the

Community Displays in one-shot and on-going settings studied were

adopted and used, addressing each of the research questions and providing

suggestions for the design of future Community Display systems.

In summary, the characterisation of one-shot and on-going usage settings is

shown to be meaningful and useful. The user studies corroborate the

analysis of the literature put forward in Chapter 2, showing that the two

settings have marked differences in their nature, which has a substantial

effect on the situated user behaviour and voluntary adoption that occurs inthem. As such, each setting demands a different kind of Community Display

system.

The concepts and interaction models put forward for the two settings are

summarised and compared, drawing attention to the similarities and

differences between the two. Finally, to demonstrate the value of the

concepts and interaction models as analytical tools, they are applied in a

post hoc analysis of user-studies from the Community Display literature.


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Chapter 9: Conclusions and Future Work

This chapter reflects on the thesis research as a whole, details a number

important avenues for future research in this area, and then concludes the

thesis, summarizing its contributions.

One of the important avenues suggested for future research in this area is

the progression beyond the one-shot and on-going setting characterization.Through a literature review and an analysis of a number of hypothetical

settings, some suggestions are made for other ways in which these settings

vary beyond those investigated in this thesis. These include differences

between loose knit and close knit communities; and the effect of

mixed settings in which different communities with different needs usethe same communal space together.

Also, a proposal is made for future research in the field of Community

Displays to place an emphasis on the importance of reporting voluntary

adoption problems as well as successes, in order to help the field move

forward and better understand the nature of voluntary adoption in a range of

difference settings and on a range of different Community Display systems.

The thesis concludes that the concepts and interaction models put forward

provide the beginnings of a lingua franca for researchers and system

designers, enabling them to better understand the setting, the social

behaviour and the voluntary adoption that occurs in relation to Community

Displays.


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Chapter 2

Background to this thesis

2.1 Introduction 15

2.2 Adoption: the key to the success of any technology 17

2.2 Informal Social Interaction in Communal Spaces 19

2.3 The social nature of large displays 232.3.1 Information Dissemination 252.3.2 Awareness 262.3.3 Shared Point of Reference functions 292.3.4 Serendipity functions 30

2.4 Community Displays 322.4.1 Noticeboard service 322.4.2 Immediate Display and Exchange service 34

2.4.3 Passive Awareness services 362.5 Voluntary Adoption of Community Displays 39

2.5.1 Voluntary Adoption in the one-shot usage category 462.5.2 Voluntary Adoption in the on-going usage category 49

2.6 Research Questions 51


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2.1 Introduction

Figure 2.0 provides a visual overview of its scope of this thesis. Originating

from an interest in Community Display systems, the problem of voluntary

adoption is found to be an important problem in need of investigation.

Therefore this research lies at the intersection of research on adoption, and

research on Community Displays. Its motivation lies in the improvement

Community Displays, with the aim to develop concepts and uncover

pertinent issues for Community Display system designers, to help them

develop systems that actually get used by their target communities.

Figure 2.0: Diagram showing scope, motivation and focus.

This chapter will detail the research that underpins and motivates the thesis.


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Some underpinning research is then detailed, describing the inherent social

nature of physically large displays.

This then leads into the specific problem-space of this thesis: the voluntary

adoption of Community Display systems. The widespread nature of

voluntary adoption problems is described, referencing a number user

studies from the Community Display literature. The diverse and varied

nature of these studies is discussed. A critical analysis gives rise to six

dimensions on which studies vary, and from these, two types of setting are

characterized: one-shot and on-going usage. The differences of

voluntary adoption problems between these two settings are described. This

analysis gives rise to a set of research questions that this thesis aims to

address. Finally, the methodological approach chosen to study these

research questions is described.


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.2 Adoption: the key to the success of any technology

Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often

doption of technology by end users is key to its success: even the most

There are two kinds of adoption: mandated adoption, in which usage is

2

New technology intended to support cooperation often risks initial

rejection (Francik et al., 1991; p. 53)

very difficult. (Rogers, 1962; p. 1)

A

brilliant and beneficial innovation is worth nothing if it does not get used.

Many technologies suffer from delays in achieving adoption. For example,

when Bell Co. attempted to introduce the telephone into America, it was

delayed for years while consumers simply couldnt fathom its potential

usefulness (Aronson, 1968; Seely-Brown & Duguid, 2000). More recently,

voicemail was reported to have taken approximately 10 years to achieve

widespread adoption (Francik et al., 1991), while the fax machine took

approximately 50 years (OBrien, 1989). This shows that it is not just

quality or usefulness that determines successful adoption: the above

technologies were ignored for long periods of time, and only recently

became widely used. Therefore, there are other factors at work beyond a

technologys usefulness. The many-faceted sociotechnical problem of

achieving adoption is the topic of much discussion within CSCW

(Computer Supported Collaborative Work) and its related fields (e.g.

Grudin & Palen, 1995, Rogers, 1962).

prescribed as compulsory within an organization (e.g. due to contractual

obligations from an employer, [Grudin & Palen, 1995]), and voluntary


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the most well known is the problem of achieving critical mass (Ehrlich,

1987; as cited in Grudin, 1988). Also known as the network effect

(Liebowitz & Margolis, 1998), it can be described as a persons decision to

use a tool being determined by whether other people they know also use it.

Email, for example, would be of no value to a user if they knew no-one else

who used it. Thus voluntary adoption depends not on the decisions of

isolated individuals, but on the emergent effect of interactions between

people in a community.

Adoption can be explored from a number of different perspectives. For

ered is the perspective taken

example, it can be considered from a marketplace perspective, in which case

marketing, pricing, infrastructure and industrial standards play a large role

in determining success (e.g. Liebowitz & Margolis, 1998). This is a primary

concern of commercial enterprises. Adoption can also be considered in

terms of its diffusion through the formal structure of an organization, which

is a primary concern of organizational perspectives (e.g. Grudin, 1988.

Orlikowski, 1992; Bannon & Kutti, 1996). Also, it can be considered in

terms of a technologys life-cycle and the temporal progress of user groups

and their different needs (e.g. early adopters through to laggards,

Norman, 1998; Rogers, 1968; Moore, 1991). This is primarily the concern

of product designers and usability specialists.

Another way in which adoption can be considwithin this thesis the perspective of the situated social interaction

between individuals that leads to community-wide adoption. The

perspective of situated action, put forward by Suchman (1987), can be


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This perspective enables researchers to address questions about how users

react to a system when they use it for the first time, how they then learn

about the system and its features, how adoption takes place socially between

immediate colleagues or friends, and what social roles it develops through

use. To quote Bradner et al. (1999), [U]nderstanding adoption requires

careful examination of the interactions between technological features and

the social context of use (p. 139).

2.2 Informal Social Interaction in Communal Spaces

The focus of CSCW is to develop an understanding of collaborative work

activities with a view to informing the design of computer technology to

support them. The focus of this thesis is closely related yet different, since it

looks specifically at informal social interaction, not work activities per se. It

looks at this within a particular kind of social setting: communal spaces.

This section will elaborate on these details.

In this thesis, the term Communal space is used to describe a physical

location that is shared between members of a local community. Communal

spaces serve the function of offering a location for general-purpose informal

and opportunistic social interaction between co-located people. They may

be public places accessible by anyone, such as entertainment venues or

cafs, or they may be privately owned and offer limited access, such as

workplace cafeterias or school common rooms. They typically contain a

number of shared resources or services that draw people to and through


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are not communal spaces since usage in these settings is typically

planned, scheduled, and there is little overlap or mixing between different

people engaged in different activities in the same space.

The nature of interaction in communal spaces is typically informal, which is

believed by some to serve a community-building function (e.g. Whittaker et

al., 1994). They are often comfortable places in which people pass time

(Oldenburg, 1989), and interact with others for the purpose of enjoyment.

Common language offers a number of different words to describe them,

such as the French rendezvous, the American hang-out, the Greek

agora and the Roman-derived forum. In research, there are also a

number of different terms which refer to communal spaces, each being

slightly different in their definition and purpose. One of the most well

known is Oldenburgs (1989) concept of the third place, which places a

large emphasis on the role they take in supporting local community and

encouraging sociability. Oldenburg (1989) characterizes places into three

categories first, second and third. The first place is the workplace, the

second is the home, and the third is the informal public meeting place.

For want of a suitable existing term, we introduce our own:

the Third Place will hereafter be used to signify what we have

called the core settings of public life. The Third Place is a

generic designation for a great variety of public places that

host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated

gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and

work. [T]hey help create a sense of place and community,

they provide numerous opportunities for serendipity, they are

socially binding, they encourage sociability instead of

isolation, and they enrich public life (p. 16)


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educational establishments and members clubs as well as workplaces, and

so offers an unnecessarily narrow view. It is for this reason that this thesis

adopts the more general term communal space, which, although less

widely used, is recognised by other researchers in the field (e.g. Churchill et

al., 2004; Russell & Sue, 2001; Huang & Mynatt, 2003; Rogers & Rodden,

2003). Other related terms include social condenser, a term from

architecture that describes places which serve socialising functions (e.g.

Hughes, 1991); transitional space: which describes spaces that people

move through but do not spend extended durations within (e.g. Sawhney, et

al., 2000); and interstitial space, which describes spaces between

architectural structures (Tschumi, 1994), as well as various others.

Traditionally, communal spaces have received little specific technological

support for the informal social interactions that take place there. With the

increased awareness of the value of co-present, informal and community

interaction, and the movement of research interest away from the desktop

(Bellotti & Bly, 1996; Dix, et al., 1998), and towards everyday settings

(Mynatt, 2004), communal spaces are among the new settings which are

receiving a growth in attention. Other such settings include home

environments (e.g. Abowd et al. 2002), shopping environments (e.g.

Rudstrm & Hk, 2003), outdoor urban spaces (e.g. Brown & Chalmers,

2003) and community care environments (e.g. Cheverst et al., 2003).

Large displays - from traditional cork pin-boards and whiteboards, to their

high technology counterparts such as plasma or projected screens - are

known to have a number of beneficial social properties. These known


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members are involved in selecting the material that is displayed, either

actively, by explicitly putting material on the display, or passively, via

sensors and system interpretation of user profiles (see Figure 2.2 on page 43

for some examples). Community displays are widely believed to have the

potential to play a role in supporting community and enhancing social

capital, which can be likened to a stock of altruism and friendly favours

which community members develop and exchange with each other through

ongoing social interaction (Grasso et al., 2003; McCarthy, 2003; Zhao &

Stasco, 2002). However, the scope of this thesis is within the support of

informal social interactions rather than the emergent effect on community as

a whole, which is discussed in detail elsewhere (e.g. Resnick, 2002).

Community Display systems are referred to by a variety of names. For

example: public displays (Black et al., 2004), situated displays,

peripheral displays (McCarthy et al., 2004), ambient displays (Mankoff

& Dey, 2004; Grasso et al., 2004), large format information appliances

(Russell & Sue, 2003), and community noticeboards (Churchill et al.,

2004). Some of these terms are too general for the needs of this thesis

such as public or situated display, which refers to any large, fixed,

publicly visible displays; or too narrow such as community noticeboard

which refers to a particular set of features. The term Community

Display is chosen for this thesis because it describes the type of technology

fairly explicitly without emphasising any particular property or type.

The field of Community Displays sits within a wider context of large

interactive wall display systems, including Interactive Whiteboards


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planned meetings and work activities, and thus their analysis lies outside the

scope of this thesis.

The field of Community Displays is nascent, and much of its research has

taken place during the course of this five year PhD research (2000-2005).

The motivation to develop and study Community Displays may have partly

emerged from the previously-mentioned research in other settings (e.g.

interactive whiteboards in meeting rooms) and the increasing availability of

the technology. However, aside from this technological motivation, over the

past decade a body of evidence has emerged which shows that all large

displays have an inherently social nature owing to their physically large

sizes. This provides a sociological motivation to develop and study

Community Displays. The following section will critically evaluate this

research.

2.3 The social nature of large displays

Large displays can consist of any kind technology, from old and non digital,

such as pin boards, and whiteboards, to cutting edge digital technology,

such as projectors or plasma screens linked to touchscreens or wireless mice

and keyboards. Within this thesis, the term large display is used to refer to

vertically oriented displays rather than horizontal (e.g. tabletop) ones.

Furthermore, the term large is not intended to refer to a specific

measurement, but as a relative approximation of sizes above those normally

used by individuals, e.g. larger than the average computer display or paper


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displays as being publicly available (e.g. Heath and Luff, 1991; Robertson,

2002), allowing the information displayed to be used by multiple people in

cooperative activities. This is a property which has been observed in many

kinds of physical artefacts (e.g. Robertson, 2002; Hughes et al.,1992; Moran

& Anderson, 1990; Suchman, 1987), but is considered to be particularly

prominent in large displays owing to their size. Together with their

situatedness, it is their physical size that gives large displays their special

nature. An analysis of the literature on large displays was carried out,

revealing them to have four main social properties, shown in figure 2.1,

below.

Figure 2.1: Some known social properties of large displays

h f ll i i ill d il h i l i h f


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2.3.1 Information Dissemination

Anecdotally, we have all had experience with the use of large displays for

information dissemination. Noticeboards, railway time-tables, road signs,

billboard advertisements and graffiti are all examples, which take advantage

of the size and positioning of the display to visually broadcast information

to people in the vicinity. Bellotti and Rogers (1997) report an account of a

manager in a newspaper publishing company constructing a large

information display by painstakingly copying details each day from their

group project management software system onto a whiteboard in a shared

office, because it provided an effective public reminder of what was urgent

and needed doing that day (p. 282). In a study of a team of programmers,

Whittaker and Schwarz (1995) observed a similar scenario. Here, the

programmers chose to use traditional pin-and-paper noticeboards in a

communal space to plan and coordinate their programming projects, instead

of the project management software assigned to them by their company.

This was found to be not due to a lack of technical expertise in using the

software, but in fact due to a preference for the noticeboards. In both cases,

this effortful use of non-digital tools shows how much they valued the

benefits of large displays over and above the desktop computer network and

project management software.

When interviewed, respondents in both studies generally stated that they felt

digitally transmitted information (e.g. email or shared calendars) was

transient and easier to lose, forget about, or overlook, whereas the physical

board created a sense of realness. To quote Bellotti and Rogers: When


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2.3.2 Awareness

Awareness is something that pervades all aspects of human interaction put

simply, for a person to interact with something, they need to be aware of it.

For this reason, awareness is intrinsically related to every property listed inthis section. The topic of awareness has been much researched and

discussed within CSCW and its related fields, but even so, it is still difficult

to define and has received many attempted definitions and classifications.

To quote Pedersen and Sokoler (1997) awareness is one of the most

tricky and dangerous terms in psychology (p. 52). Robertson (2002) drawsattention to the bewildering array of awareness terminology:

Awareness must be one of the most extensively qualified

concepts in CSCW. [] Gutwin identified workspace,

organisational, situation, informal, social and structural as

qualifiers for awareness (p. 1). Pedersen and Sokoler (1997)

distinguished between intentional and unintentional awareness(p. 53) and we have also seen synchronous awareness

(Edwards and Mynatt, 1997), user awareness (Ramduny et al.,

1997), activity awareness (Nomura, Hayashi, Hazama and

Gudmundson, 1998; 1999), task-oriented awareness (Prinz,

1999), cross-application awareness (Fuchs, 1999) and

presence awareness (Godefroid, Herbsleb, Jagadeesan and Li,

1999). (p. 310)

Robertson goes on to explain that part of the reason for this bewildering

array of awareness terminologies is because they derive from different


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we do so (p. 51). In CSCW, the concept of awareness is usually applied to

awareness of other people, work activities, and the artefacts that are used. In

co-operative activities, awareness allows people to understand what others

are doing and thus to plan and coordinate their own actions (Bellotti &

Dourish, 1993).

Robinson (1993) describes the nature of a hotel key-rack: a large, centrally

located and publicly-visible display located in a hotel foyer, consisting of an

array of pigeon-holes. He states that, among other important functions, it

provides an important awareness function for staff and guests: Guests can

leave and collect their keys, can see which other guests are in or out, and

leave messages in the pigeonholes. [] Hotel staff use it to place bills []

etc. to be given out to guests. The presence of keys, or contents of

pigeonholes, conveys information, and may be the subject of questions or

discussion (p. 190)This example shows how a large display can be well

suited to fostering awareness owing to its inherent public availability.

Field studies of large displays in workplaces often show them to be

employed to represent an overview of the current state of affairs of the work

activities and resources. The examples previously cited from Whittaker and

Schwarz (1995), and Bellotti and Rogers (1997) apply here as well as

disseminating general notices, they provide awareness of the current state of

affairs. To quote Bellotti and Rogers (1997), they employed the whiteboard

to display current information, because due to the multiplication of

projects and people working on them, it had become very difficult to keep

track of everything that was going on (p. 282). In a study of hospital


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more than that which we immediately attend to: we have the ability to

perceive things peripherally (e.g. out of the corner of your eye) as well as

focally. Research in vision psychology details the physiological and

neurological basis for this (Pedersen et al., 1997). This peripheral awareness

provides us with the ability to be aware of multiple things at the same time,

and therefore to participate in multiple activities.

In an analysis of case studies of a team of architects, and of workers in a

financial dealing room, Luff and Jirotka (1998) found that people engaged

in co-located interaction drew upon an array of interactional resources.

These include shared artefacts, body movement, orientation, gesture and

pointing, and are used both in focal and peripheral interactions. Specifically,

people may say or do something for the benefit of others who may be in the

midst of other activities and only watching out of the corner of their eye:

Participants frequently adopt orientations which allow them

to monitor, oversee and overhear the conduct of others. When

they are engaged in seemingly individual activities,

participants may be sensitive to the conduct of others, even

designing those activities with respect to the activities of

colleagues (Luff & Jirotka, 1998; p. 254)

This peripheral awareness serves an important function in group tasks when

people have to work closely and coordinate their activities to achieve their

goal. For example, in a study of a team working in a London Undergroundline control room, Heath and Luff (1992) found that colleagues would co-

ordinate their activities by doing things in a manner so that the other could

either see or hear them do it. They refer to visual monitoring as


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driver on the radio, which the DIA (his colleague, the Divisional

Information Assistant) notices:

The DIA's looking [at the fixed line diagram] is motivated

and driven by virtue of the Controller's attempt to call a

driver, and the DIA scans the fixed line diagram in order to

provide an account for the upcoming intervention. Moreover,

the DIA, is not only able to overhear the Controller, and

assume that they have mutual access to the same informationdisplays, but is also able to discern, through peripherally

monitoring the actions of his colleague, where the Controller

might be looking and what he might have seen. The various

information displays, and their use by particular individuals, is

publicly visible and can be used as a resource in determining

courses of action and for the mutual coordination of conduct.

(p. 9)

Since the large displays have a large interaction space, this enables people

to be peripherally aware of them across a wide area they provide a

medium that people can employ to broadcast information to others. Also,

colocatedness fosters peripheral awareness simply in the sense that people

are able to see what their colleagues are physically doing.

The role of peripheral awareness and peripheral participation in the adoption

of Community Displays is something that is expanded on greatly within in

Chapters 4, 7 and 8 and this thesis.

2.3.3 Shared Point of Reference functions


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1999). Research has found that a shared point of reference can help

establish common ground and mutual knowledge, provide a means to

monitor comprehension, and enable effective communication by allowing

deixis, i.e. pointing or other physical references to the visual representation,

rather than needing a full verbal description (Kraut et al., 2002). Jordan and

Henderson (1995) make a similar point in their analysis of large displays:

[Large Displays] often provide a crucial focal point for

marshalling a group's attention. They also serve the important

function of supporting the public availability of the

information they display (p. 41)

They then go on to state that having a shared point of reference creates

conversation opportunities:

In industrial process control rooms, large public information

displays often not only disseminate information but also

provide the resources for making that information available

for discussion. [A]nomalies that become visible on large

public displays tend to generate conversations and thereby

draw multiple expertise into the process of explanation and

resolution. (p. 41)

Other studies have found related limitations with small displays. For

example, Rodden et al. (2002) found that face-to-face interactions in travel

agents are limited because the desktop monitor used by the agent is oriented

away from the customer, preventing them from having a shared point of

reference and reducing the effectiveness of their interaction.


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opportunities for social interaction because people are more likely to bump

into each other serendipitously (by happy accident). In a field study of a

university library, Twidale et al. (1995) observe this happening:

In the case of Lancaster University Library, the layout

promotes informal social interaction by placing communal

services (help desks, photocopying, etc.) around a large public

space. [] [that creates] opportunities for spontaneous co-

located synchronous collaboration. [] For example, astudent printing search results found an uncollected printout

and inquired whose it was when the owner was identified he

proceeded to use the results to discuss the CD-ROM system.

(p. 9)

Isaacs et al. (1996) observe that colleagues often meet at high traffic areas,

where there are shared resources such as coffee machines or water coolers.

Also, Perry et al. (1999) found, in a field study of the management office of

a construction site, that large pin-and-paper displays showing project

information served to encourage and support serendipitous interactions.

Studies of serendipitous interactions in workplaces have revealed them to be

short and frequent in nature, and do much to support work-related

collaborative activities (Kraut et. Al., 1990; Kraut & Streeter, 1995;

Whittaker, et. al, 1994). They are also believed to benefit information flow

in an organization (Kraut et al., 1990), and help people learn and adopt the

social conventions and procedures of a community (Suchman & Wynn,

1984). It has even been suggested that they may contribute to the well-being

of the group (Isaacs, et al., 1997), although this is likely to be hard to

critically evaluate.


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section will show, these social properties have been exploited by designers

of Community Display systems in varying extents and to various different

ends.

However, little is yet known about exactly how these properties interact

when Community Displays are used in communal spaces, and what the

implications are for voluntary adoption. As such, this presents itself as the

first set of research questions for this thesis:

1. Understanding the phenomena of situated social behaviour aroundCommunity Displaysa. What common phenomena of situated behaviour are observed across

all the case studies?b. How are the social properties of a Community Display involved in

these phenomena?c. How does this relate to the process of community adoption?

2.4 Community Displays

This section will provide an overview of the different kinds of services

offered by Community Display systems. Community Displays are not easily

categorised since many offer hybrid combinations of features. As reported

in the following sections, an analysis of the Community Display literature

was carried out, defining them as offering one or more type of service.These are categorised into three broad types: noticeboard services,

immediate display and exchange services, and passive awareness

services.


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interfaces, such as FXPals Plasma Poster (Churchill et al., 2003, Figure

2.2b); XRCEs Community Wall, Intels GroupCast and Outcast, and

Carnegie Mellons Messyboard (Fass et al., 2002; Figure 2.2f). Other

methods of posting include email, e.g. Plasma Poster, Community Wall, and

Apple NewsLens (Houde et al., 1998); SMS and MMS, such as SPAM,

ECT (Greenhalgh et al., 2004), the Orange SMS board (Figure 2.2d), and

Meshbox (Anderson, 2003); paper scanners , such as Community Walls

usage of Xerox Dataglyph technology), and extensions of drag-and-drop

on the Windows desktop (Greenberg & Rounding, 2001).

Many of the systems automate the decisions about presentation by taking a

time-sharing approach, displaying items one-at-time in a rotating

billboard style, and removing items from the pool when they pass a

certain age (e.g. two weeks, Churchill et al., 2003). These include FXPals

Plasma Poster (Churchill et al, 2003), and the Apple NewsLens (Houde et

al, 1998). The Speakeasy display divides the screen up into a simple

chequerboard and uses this approach to display multiple items. Community

Wall displays multiple items in a random arrangement on the screen to

give a more organic look and feel (Grasso et al., 2003 p.267). Messyboard

(Fass et al., 2002), on the other hand, puts presentation entirely in the hands

of the end users, who position, size, and remove old items themselves, with

no assistance from the system.

Community Display systems currently under development that will offer

noticeboard services include WebWall (Ferscha, et al., 2002), Community

Pillar (Koch et al., 2004), and Fraunhofer IPSIs Hello.Wall (Prante et al.,


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2.4.2 Immediate Display and Exchange service

The immediate display and exchange service is a Community Display

service that caters for small co-present groups to spontaneously use the

Community Display to show each other, exchange, and possibly work on

media (e.g. annotate it or take notes). It primarily builds on the shared

point of reference property of large displays (see Section 2.4.3). This

service places emphasis on rapidity, ease of use, and minimising

configuration problems in accessing or exchanging media. Examples

include Blueboard (Russell, 2003) , the Speakeasy Public Display (Black et

al., 2003), the Intel Personal Server situated display concept (Want et al.,

2002), Dynamo (See Chapter 7) and, to an extent, Messyboard (Fass et al.,

2002).

An example of a Community Display which provides an immediate display

and exchange service is Blueboard (Russell et al., 2002; as shown in Figure

2.2c, p. 43). A group of users can gather round Blueboard and log in simply

by passing their ID badges in front of an RFID tag reader. This causes

personal icons of their faces to be displayed down the right-hand side of the

screen. Selecting each of these icons causes their personal resources to be

made available their calendar, web home page, and any other files they

had previously made available on their web-space. Blueboard offers an

annotation tool that allows users to sketch on top of any displayed media

using the touch screen. Displayed media can be shared between the users by

dragging and dropping the items onto their personal icons, which causes

them to be emailed to the recipient. After an interaction is finished, all of the


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submitted media, called the media soup. Any user, however, can connect

to the display via laptop or PDA, allowing them to take control of it. This

enables them to control the current media on display (e.g. to browse a

website), or take over the entire display with a copy of the screen of their

personal device (cf. VNC, Richardson et al., 1998), allowing them to

show their screen to a larger number of people.

Some immediate display and exchange services explicitly attempt to

support group interaction with the Community Display. For example, some

use touchscreens which are thought to be more suited to group interaction

because users can easily take turns with their fingers while standing around

the display, compared to other input devices such as mice which need to be

passed around (cf. Inkpen et al. 1999; Shu, 1992). Russell (2003) claims that

users quickly adjusted to turn taking using the touchscreen on Blueboard

without a serious impact on their activities.

Synchronous multi-user systems such as Single Display Groupware (SDG)

systems (e.g. Bederson et al. 1999) are believed to offer benefits to groups

of users interacting together. For example, Benford et al. (2000) carried out

a study on pairs of 5-7 year old school children, giving them a SDG drawing

tool offering two mice, and comparing it against a normal single-user

drawing tool with one mouse. Pairs using the SDG tool were noted to

exhibit less frustration, less loss of motivation, and less domineering

behaviour from the user holding the mouse; and engaged in a greater degree

of collaboration compared to users of the single-user drawing tool.

Although these findings were from studies of young children, they imply


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2.4.3 Passive Awareness services

Passive awareness services are intended to support community members

awareness of each others interests and activities while requiring very little

effort or interaction from the users. These services attempt to explicitly

build on the awareness property of large displays (see Section 2.3.2). Unlike

noticeboard services or immediate display and exchange services, users do

not explicitly initiate an interaction or put up media themselves. Instead the

passive awareness service will gather relevant content itself and display it

with minimal explicit effort from the users. For example, the service might

parse content from local web pages (Stasko & Zhao, 2002). Also, passive

awareness services often detect the presence and identity of people in the

vicinity of the Community Displays using sensor technology (e.g. computer

vision or RFID tags), and then, using profiles of users interests, show

media that may be relevant to them or that matches a shared interest of two

or more parties, with the aim of facilitating conversation.

For example, Stasko & Zhaos (2002) Whats Happening Community

Display collects images from the local web pages of community members

and some other pre-specified sites (e.g. local weather and travel), and

constructs collages from each page. These collages are then shown on

rotation on the display, with the aim of providing users with information

suited to a short glance as community members walk past. Participants in

a user study of Whats Happening stated that the displayed information

sometimes facilitated social interactions, encouraging people to discuss the

images they saw, and some reported that it was a convenient and


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required to carry) and a beacon on the public displays. Friend of a friend

information about common interests and colleagues is then displayed in anabstract manner, either on the Iconic display, using abstract icons, or the

Lexical display, using brief textual descriptions. However, initial user

studies revealed problems with the design of their visual representations,

giving users problems in making sense of the information.

Intels Autospeaker ID Proactive Display (McCarthy et al., 2004) offers a

basic passive awareness service when a person moves into the vicinity of

the display, their name, affiliation and photo is shown in a large size on the

Community Display. This is carried out using RFID tags which were

distributed to the community, and a tag reader attached to the display.

Autospeaker ID was specifically developed for use in a conference hall, to

be positioned next to the microphone at the front of the room used for

audience questions at the end of each presentation. This gives the audience a

greater awareness of who is asking a question, thus facilitating knowledge

of other community members identities and helping provide context for

future conversations. Intels Ticket-to-Talk Proactive Display (McCarthy

et al., 2004) is another passive awareness tool, also for use at conferences,

but instead is intended to facilitate conversations in the refreshments queue

during breaks. In advance, while registering and picking up their RFID tag,

each participant registers the URL of an image of something they would like

to talk to people about at the conference (e.g. the cover of their recently

published book or their favourite holiday destination). While standing in the

queue, this is displayed along with their name, photo and affiliation, giving

b t d t i f ti t t ik ith th ti i


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that they both share a common interest in wine (information that had been

previously gathered by the system at an earlier point in time). McCarthyclaims that by learning a little more about each other, this makes them more

likely to have conversations in the future (p. 287), which he suggests can

promote a sense of community (p. 306) and increase social capital (p.

284). Other examples of Community Display system that offer similar

passive awareness services include MITs Aware Community Portal(Sawhney et al., 2001), IBMs Fishtank Community Display (Farrell, 2001).

Other passive awareness services collect and aggregate demographic

information about people in the vicinity, providing overview visualisations.

Borovoy et al.s Community Mirror (1998) draws information from meme

tags, which are wearable badges with small displays which show textual

memes (e.g. Computing should be about insight, not numbers) which

community members can transmit to each other using buttons on their

badges. This information is aggregated and visualised as graphs on the

Community Mirror display, for example, bar graphs of the most popular

memes, the users who interacted the most with others, and the flow of

memes through a network. In a similar manner, the Intellibadge Community

Display (Cox et al., 2003) aggregates information about delegates attending

a conference, and associates this with live location information, allowing

viewers to find out the most dominant interest profiles in different areas of

the conference, helping them to decide which area of the conference to

attend.

In conclusion, this section has identified Community Displays as typically


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2.5 Voluntary Adoption of Community Displays

This section will critically evaluate current research relating to the voluntary

adoption problems of Community Displays. In particular, it will draw

attention to the diversity of these different studies, and propose some

dimensions on which they differ.

Community Display research systems have often been successful in

supporting informal social interaction in communal spaces. For example,

McCarthy et al. (2004) reported that in a field study of their Proactive

Community Displays deployed at a conference, they experienced some

success in creating greater awareness and interaction opportunities within

the conference community (p. 9). They also reported that according to

survey responses new members of the community reported that the system

helped them learn new things about other conference attendees and interact

with people they didnt already know.

Churchill et al. (2004) report that in a workplace field study of Plasma

poster, it became an accepted publication and communication tool

(p.8), by which users often informally found out about information they

would not otherwise have come across. Another successful example is the

Intellibadge Community Display, which Cox et al. (2003) found in a field

study at a conference that they sometimes created a kind of cocktail party

atmosphere where people gathered and which encouraged casual

conversation (p. 278).

However Community Displays have also widely suffered problems in


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they tended not to perceive information on which they do not have reason

to focus, and that they should be made aware of the benefits of suchdisplays to encourage use (p. 3). Agamanolis (2002) reported after studies

of the MIT Human Connectedness Community Display prototypes, Half

the battle in designing an interactive situated or public display is designing

how the display will invite that interaction.

Given the young age of the field, there is a great diversity in the research

carried out on Community Displays there is even little agreement on the

name of the field. Furthermore, little has yet been done to categorize and

understand the differences between the diverse items of research. For

example, Intels Proactive Displays (McCarthy, 2004) were designed for

and studied within a conference setting, Churchill et al.s (2004) Plasma

Poster was designed for and studied within workplace communal areas; and

Borovoy et al.s Community Mirror (1998) was designed for and studied

within a social party event. Figure 2.2 overleaf shows photographs of six

different Community Display field studies.


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Figure 2.2: Community Displays in a range of different communal spaces (a)McCarthy, 2004; (b) & (c) Churchill et al., 2003; (d) Orange, 2002; (e) Russell,Drews & Sue, 2002; (f) Fass, et al., 2002


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knit community, in which each member knows few of the other community

members, or it may be tight-knit community, where they know manyothers. These terms are used by social network researchers to give a

generalized description of the community interconnectedness (e.g.

Wellman, 1996; Wellman, et al., 2002; Burt, 2000). Other similar

descriptors are used by social network researchers, such as sparse or

dense knit (e.g. Guiffe, 1999). Other notable dimensions include theactivities normally carried out in the space, and the duration and frequency

people normally spend there. Finally, the systems themselves will differ in

terms of the services they offer, as described in section 2.4. These six

dimensions are depicted in Figure 2.3, below.

Figure 2.3: Properties of Community Displays in Communal Spaces

Based on these dimensions, a selection of fourteen Community Display

field studies were analyzed and compared. These studies were selected on


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Proactive DisplaysIntellibadge Public

DisplayAgentSalon Iconic & lexical Community Mirror Community Wall Palimpsest

Reference McCarthy, 2003 Cox et al., 2003Sumi & Mase,

2001Carter et al., 2002

Borovoy et al.,1998

Agostini et al.,2002

Agamanolis, 2003

Type of CommunalSpace

Conference CentreSocial event in

workplace venueSocial Event inreception area

Naval MuseumLocal digital filmand art festival

Permanence ofCommunal Space 3-4 days Few hours Few hours Permanent 1 day

Duration &frequency spent in

proximity

Conference Breaks: typically up to one 1 hour break and twoshorter breaks.

A single visit to asocial gathering for

one hour

A single visit to asocial gathering for

an afternoon

Typically peoplevisit one time only,duration probably

approx 3 hrs

Typically one timevisit. duration

probably approx 3hrs

Activity normallycarried out

Attending conference, socialising, getting refreshments Socialize SocializeLearn about navalhistory, interaction

with exhibits.

Trying out exhibits,of which this was

one.

CommunityInterconnectedness

Generally loose knit: International community brought togetherfor few days, a combination of established and nascent parts

Loose-knit: familiarstrangers i.e. work

colleagues whodont know each

other well

Mixed: workcolleagues (tight-

knit) and labvisitors (loose-knit)

Very loose-knit:museum visitorsunlikely to know

each other outsideimmediate friends

Loose-knit festival attendees

united by aninterest in film and

art.

System ServicesPassive

AwarenessPassive

Awareness

Noticeboard(among other

services)

PassiveAwareness

PassiveAwareness

Noticeboard Noticeboard

Adoption Issues None reported None reported None reportedPeople tended to

ignore the displaysNone reported

Usage wasgenerally low

None reported

Table 2.1: Analysis of field studies in one-shot usage settings

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An analysis of tables 2.1 and 2.2 show a marked clustering on two of the

dimensions: permanence of communal space, and communityinterconnectedness. These give rise to the one-shot and on-going

characterizations.

To elaborate, table 2.1 shows the clustering within the one shot setting

characterisation. All of the examples in this table are temporary events, such

as conferences (McCarthy, 2003; Cox et al., 2003, Sumi & Mase, 2001),

rather than permanent communal spaces, and are typically used by loose-

knit communities. As the examples show, users are exposed to the

Community Display for only a short period up to a few hours in total,

before the event finishes. A common activity seen in the majority of the

examples is socializing, which may complement other activities, such as

viewing presentations or exhibits.

Conversely, Table 2.2 shows the clustering within the on-going usage

setting characterisation. A typical example in this table is a workplace

common room or coffee area. All of the seven field studies listed share the

properties of being a permanent of the communal space used by a tight-knit,

long term community. The spaces are used regularly on a day-to-day basis

by various community members, either momentarily passing through and

using the shared resources, or spending regular periods there, (e.g. up to an

hour), taking refreshment, relaxing and socializing (Houde et al., 1998;

Grasso, 2003; Churchill et al., 2003, Russell and Sue, 2003; McCarthy et

al., 2001; Greenberg & Rounding, 2001; Agostini et al., 2002). Essentially,

the communal space is a part of normal daily community life, and the


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Figure 2.4: The on-going and one-shot settings shown on two defining

dimensions.

Therefore, when considering the nature of a communal space, the question

should be Is this more of a one-shot setting ormore of an on-going

setting?, rather than Which category does this fit into?. Indeed, looking

to the future, as research in this nascent field progresses, other important

qualities and dimensions of communal spaces and the way they are used are

likely to emerge.

The following sections summarize the adoption problems reported in some

of the studies listed in tables 2.1 and 2.2 above. It shows that the adoption

problems have a marked difference in character across the two types of


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participants did not realize what the Community Displays had to offer, nor

that the displayed information could actually be a useful adjunct to theirconversations. This example draws attention to the fact that participants

need to know what a Community Display does before they can decide to

benefit from its functionality, and if this is unclear, adoption is going to be

hindered. The participants only had the duration of the social gathering to

learn this and make the decision to use it, otherwise they would have missedtheir chance and may never have been exposed to the exact same

Community Display again.

McCarthys (2003) Proactive Displays (Autospeaker ID and Ticket to

Talk, detailed in Section 2.4.3) were a successful pair of Community

Displays for one-shot settings . Designed for and deployed at a conference,

201 out of 500 attendees registered to use the system. 94 responded to a

survey, of which 64% stated that they considered the Proactive displays to

have had a positive impact on the conference.

In general, Community Displays for one shot settings tend to have simple,

limited functionality that are designed to be suited to brief, one time

interactions. For example, the functionality of the Proactive Displays is

rather limited as users get into range of a Proactive Display, it displays

some information relating to them. A user cannot take control of a Proactive

Display, as with an immediate-display-and-exchange service, nor can they

post up any kind of material they like, as with a noticeboard service.

Crucially, while this limits their utility, this simplicity may have made it

easy for passers-by to comprehend. Also, to use an analogy with


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Community Display systems. (McCarthy, Personal Communication, March

10 2005), which included making the community more aware of theirexistence and making registration easier and more rapid.

Unlike the Proactive Displays, Community Wall offers a range of

functionality, including the browsing of community-related web pages, and

facilities for freehand annotation (Agostini et al., 2002). Community Wall

was generally deployed and studied in on-going settings. However, in one

field study, it was deployed in. a one-shot usage setting, specifically, a

museum. Agostini et al. found that interaction with it was consistently low.

It can be postulated that perhaps the system was too complicated for this

setting and it may not have been clear enough to the passers-by how they

would benefit from a short one-time interaction with it.

In summary, voluntary adoption problems within one-shot usage scenarios

relate to whether users can discover the functionality of Community

Display, decide to buy in to it, and then try it out, all within the small

window of disposable time they have available to them. Community

Display systems for one shot settings tend to be simpler in functionality than

their counterparts designed for on-going settings. However, little is yet

known the specific nature of voluntary adoption in one shot settings, which

raises the following research questions:

2a. How do people progress from complete naivety of a CommunityDisplay to participation in related social activities and directinteraction with it?

2b. How does usage spread through the community?2c. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?


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2.5.2 Voluntary Adoption in the on-going usage category

Voluntary adoption problems in the on-going usage scenario are different in

nature. Rather than needing to achieve just a single interaction from passers

by, the goal is to achieve repeat usage within an established community, and

ultimately take on a familiar role in community life.

Churchill et al. (2002) found, in an early study on Plasma Poster, that

initially, users needed constant encouragement and demonstration (p.6).

Achieving first time usage from community members is therefore still a

crucial challenge in adoption in this category. Similarly, Grasso et al. (2003)

found that Community Wall met with initial scepticism and many people

were not sure that it would be of any use (p. 227). However, in this

category of setting, the time frame is much longer, removing the urgency

and shifting the focus to the longer term.

In on-going usage communal spaces, there is an established community

with existing practices and activities, into which the Community Display

then needs to fit. For example, in a study of Notification Collage, Greenberg

and Rounding (2001) found that usage of the large display was low, while

usage of the desktop counterpart, which community members could access

from their workstations, flourished. This finding raises a number of

questions did people normally spend time hanging out in the communal

space before it was installed? Or was the existing norm of informal social

interaction for them to sit at their desks and email each other, even if they

were sitting in the same room? This contextual information about their prior

practices would suggest the nature of the adoption problems, or conversely,


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advertisement to sell their car, three people independently complained and

asked to have it taken down, because it did not fit the accepted themes ofcommunity research interests or light-hearted humour.

It also should be noted here that adoption problems may have been under

reported in both categories researchers may have worried that reporting

this kind of information would make their system and field study look like

a failure. It is plausible that they instead may have concentrated on

reporting the positive aspects of uptake instead. Alternatively, they may

simply not have considered it relevant to the analysis in their report.

This critical analysis of the findings of Community Display field studies

gives rise to a number of research questions. These are similar to those

posed in the previous section, except here they refer to the specific nature of

on-going usage settings.

3a. How does usage progress and adapt over time?3b. How does adoption spread through the community?3c. How does the community appropriate the Community Display

and how does it become integrated into community life?3d. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?


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2.6 Research Questions

The research questions posed for this thesis are summarized below:

1. Understanding the phenomena of situated social behaviour aroundCommunity Displaysa. What common phenomena of situated behaviour are observed across

all the case studies?b. How are the social properties of the Community Display involved in

these phenomena?c. How does this relate to the process of community adoption?

2. Understanding adoption in one-shot settingsa. How do people progress from complete naivety of a Community Display

to participation in related social activities and direct interaction with it?b. How does usage spread through the community?c. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?

3. Understanding adoption in on-going settings.

a. How does usage progress and adapt over time?b. How does adoption spread through the community?c. How does the community appropriate the Community Display and how

does it become integrated into community life?d. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?


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2.7 Approach

This thesis aims to address its research questions by using a range of

methods including ethnographically-informed observational studies, lab

studies and the development and testing of prototypes in the field. These

methods are utilized in a non-linear spiral design approach consisting of

analyze-create-evaluate cycles (Boehm, B. 1988). This approach has been

found to be most suitable in designing for wicked problems of this nature

(Rittel & Webber, 1973; Fitzpatrick, 2003). This section will detail the

approach taken.

2.7.1 A Strategy for studying a young field

As detailed previously, the Community Displays field is very young. At the

outset of this thesis research in 2000, there was very little published work on

Community Displays, and in particular a scarcity of research investigating

their nature in ecologically valid (real world) settings. Therefore study of

this area can be classified as a wicked problem one which is only

understood progressively as solutions are developed (Fitzpatrick et al.,

1996):

A wicked problem is usually situated in the social realm,

where the aim is not to find the truth, but to improve some

characteristics of the world where people live (Rittel andWebber, 1973; p. 167). A wicked problem can never be

definitively formulated. In fact , the problem is only

understood progressively as solutions are developed. As such,

there are no right or wrong solutions, only better or worse


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This research was therefore carried out in an iterative manner, drawing on

the spiral design approach (Boehm, 1988), which defines the process ascycles of analysis, creation and evaluation, progressively leading to

improved understanding and design. The critical analysis of contemporary

research carried out in the previous sections of this chapter raised some

questions about large displays in communal spaces in general, uncovered

two common types of Community Display settings, on-going and one-

shot, and pointed towards some key differences between the two in terms

of the issues they face in voluntary adoption. These were therefore selected

to be investigated in a series of case studies. This approach is called the

collective case study approach (Stake, 2000), and it advocates the use of

multiple, heterogeneous cases, because they can lead to better

understanding, perhaps better theorizing, about a still larger collection of

cases (Stake, 2000; p. 437). Proponents of this approach also suggest it can

be used to suggest complexities for future investigations, and help establish

the limits of generalizability between the cases (Stake, 1994).

2.7.3 Informing design from observational studies

Part of the motivation to study the voluntary adoption of Community

Displays in this thesis is to develop concepts and uncover pertinent issues

for designers of future Community Display systems, with the goal of

informing and improving design. However, crossing the gap between

observational study and system design is known to be fraught with problems

(e.g. Hughes et al., 1992; Plowman, et al., 1995). Specifically, there is a risk


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appropriate. Any requirements identified would better be

considered as provisional, being part of an iterative design

process, needing testing, prototyping and experimentation

with various options and trade-offs identified by the analysis.

(p. 264, emphasis added)

Following this point, implications for design in this thesis are specified as

design suggestions rather than recommendations, and are intended to beevaluated in future research, rather than to be considered the final word in

design for Community Displays. This approach ties back into

conceptualising the design of Community Displays as a wicked problem,

in which there is no single solution, and in which the problem is only

understood progressively as solutions are developed (Fitzpatrick et al.,

1996, p. 122)


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Chapter 3

Studying the social nature of a large

display in a communal space.

3.1 Introduction __________________________________________ 56

3.2 The Field Study _______________________________________ 573.2.1 Method ________________________________________________ 573.2.2 Observations ____________________________________________ 573.2.3 Analysis of study findings __________________________________ 66

3.3 Prototyping and evaluating a digital large display __________ 683.3.1 Wall-loader prototype system description ______________________ 693.3.2 Wall-loader field evaluation _________________________________ 72

3.4 Discussion __________________________________________ 74


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3.1 Introduction

The case study reported in this chapter involves an initial investigation into

the social properties of a large display when used in a communal space.

understanding and designing for the voluntary adoption of community displays

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