Social World & Online Discussion

The online activities for the past two weeks were very interesting to me. In particular the social world activity, we identified our social worlds and also compared them with others. I like the people who use the Venn diagrams (cycles) because it clearly represents the importance of the social worlds by using the different size of cycles and also it demonstrates the relationships among those worlds by using the vary proportion of overlapping. In our group discussion, we also discover only one person implies the concept of time by using a timeline to indicate the social worlds. Most people (including me) only consider the present, even though we all agree that our past experience definitely has strong impacts on the way we see who we are and how we act now.

Basically I like online text-based synchronous meeting for a small group with 3-4 members, but there is a shortcoming for text-based tools. Even though it’s a synchronous tool, there is still a slide “time delay” during the text-based conversation. The time delay here I mean the typing delay. Fro example, when I am replying to A but because of the typing time the text shows up following by B’s comment, so B thinks I am asking him/her. This delay somehow causes some degrees of misunderstanding during the meeting. For example, we have to come up with three insights and everyone of use takes care of one insight. But when we write up the insights to show to other teammates, it’s obvious that there are some degrees of differences of our perceptions of the insights. I once read a paper about decision making of a online team that the accuracy of the decision is decreased because of the lengthy discussion logs and misunderstanding. Now, I kind of experience how that happens from this group activity.

Social-World Process

The s I have been reading some models of group process lately. I discover lots of similarities between Strauss’s social world process of segmentation, intersection, and legitimation and those models; for example, both of them talk about the conflicts, negotiation, and powers and the influences. Of course, there are some levels of differences too. Besides the use of different terminologies, Strauss tends to look at the mankind as a whole; I will say it’s a more macro level of looking at the society. Those models that I have been reading are tying to look at the specific periods of time or purposes and find out potential factors influencing the process. Even though a small group is just a little tiny form of society, but according to Strauss, there are no boundaries. Moreover, people all have multiple memberships which might be different levels from peripheral to intense. Since it’s difficult to cover everything, I believe studying a small group process and just look at how one membership is built will be a good start before looking at the social world.

Future is coming.......

I never think of what the role of interface design will be when computation has been spared though out and embedded in everything in the environment. Like the author mentions, the invisibility is a challenge and an optimal goal for computation. It will happen within just a matter of time, sooner or later. To solve this problem, besides the traditional HCI approach, the design perspective needs to move forward to focus on engaging the user experience and considering social settings. After understanding what people do, and then we will have the chance to make the invisible interface. I personally think the Design Communicates is very important for interaction design too, especially in a group work setting like CSCW. It’s another challenge that how we can use the system design and develop to help people communicate more effectively among group members, not just being fast but also helping create meaningful interactions for them. Essentially, there are "a lot" more concerns when designing system for a group of people. Anyway, I am still on my way trying to figure it out.