Chapter 5

SOCIAL INTERACTION
 Overview
• What is meant by social interaction
• The social mechanisms used in conversations
• What is meant by social presence
• Overview of technologies for supporting social
interaction
• How has social media changed how we keep in
touch
• New social phenomenon arising from being able
to connect online
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 Social interaction
• We live together, work together, play
together, talk to each other, and socialize
• Social technologies developed to enable
us to persist in being social when apart
 They differ in how they support us
 Some encourage social interactions (for
example, family games with Alexa)
 Others have a negative impact on everyday
conversations (Turkle, 2015)…
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Are we spending too much time in our
own digital bubbles?

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 Questions raised by social tech
• Are F2F conversations being superseded by social
media interactions?
• How many friends do you have on Facebook,
LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and so on versus real life?
• How much do they overlap?
• How are the ways that we live and interact with
one another changing?
• Are the established rules and etiquette still
applicable to online and offline?
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 Conversational mechanisms
Various mechanisms and ‘rules’ are followed
when holding a conversation face to face,
such as mutual greetings
A: Hi there
B: Hi!
C: Hi
A: All right?
C: Good, how’s it going?
A: Fine, how are you?
C: OK
B: So-so. How’s life treating you?
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 Conversational rules
Sacks et al. (1978) conversation analysis of
conversations propose three basic rules:

Rule 1: The current speaker chooses the next speaker

by asking an opinion, question, or request

Rule 2: Another person decides to start speaking

Rule 3: The current speaker continues talking

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 More conversational rules
Turn-taking used to coordinate conversation
A: Shall we meet at 8:00?
B: Um, can we meet a bit later?
A: Shall we meet at 8:00?
B: Wow, look at him?
A: Yes what a funny hairdo!
B: Um, can we meet a bit later?

Back channeling to signal to continue and

following
 Uh-uh, umm, ahh

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 Further conversational rules
Farewell rituals
• Bye then, see you, yeah bye, see you later….

Implicit and explicit cues

• For instance, looking at watch or fidgeting with coat
and bags
• Explicitly saying, “Oh dear, look at the time, I must go,
I’m running late…”

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 Breakdowns in conversation
When someone says something that
is misunderstood:
 Speaker will repeat with emphasis:
A: “This one?”
B: “No, I meant that one!”
 Also use tokens:
Eh? Quoi? Huh? What?

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What happens in online conversations?

• Do the same conversational rules apply?

• Are there different kinds of breakdowns?
• How do people repair them for:
 Email?
 Instant messaging?
 Texting?
 Skype or other videoconferencing software?

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 Remote conversations
• Much research on how to support
conversations when people are ‘at a
distance’ from each other
• Many applications have been developed
 For example, email, videoconferencing, instant
messaging, and chatrooms

• Do they mimic or move beyond existing

ways of conversing?

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Early videophone from
the 1960s

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 VideoWindow system
(Bellcore, 1989)
• Shared space that allowed people 50
miles apart to carry on a conversation
as if in same room drinking coffee
together
• 3 x 8 foot ‘picture-window’ between two
sites with video and audio
• People did interact via the window, but
strange things happened (Kraut, 1990)
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Diagram of VideoWindow in use

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 Findings of how VideoWindow
System was used

• Talked constantly about the system

• Spoke more to other people in the same room
rather than in other room
• When trying to get closer to someone in the
other place it had opposite effectparticipants
went out of range of the camera and
microphone
• No way of monitoring this
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 Videoconferencing and telepresence
rooms
• Many to choose from to connect multiple people
(for instance, Zoom)
• Customized telepresence rooms for groups

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 Telepresence robots
Enable people to attend
events who could not do so,
such as by controlling their
robot remotely
 In places such as schools,
conferences, and
museums
 Early example: Beam+
 Often dressed up to
appear like the person to
others at the event
 Positive experience of
being there Susan Lechelt at ACM CHI

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 Telepresence and social presence
• Telepresence refers to one party being
present with another party, who is present
in a physical space, such as a meeting
room
• Social presence refers to the feeling of
being there with a real person when in
virtual reality

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Facebook’s vision of socializing in a 3D
world using VR

• Two avatars talking at a virtual table

• Users experience each other through donning VR headsets

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 How much realism and immersion are
necessary..?
• …in telepresence to make it compelling?
• Telepresence rooms try to make remote
people appear to be life-like
 Use multiple high definition cameras with eye-
tracking features and directional microphones

• Does FaceTime have as much presence

as more high definition settings?

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 What is co-presence?
• Co-located groups who
want to collaborate
• Many technologies
have been designed to:
 Enable groups to work,
learn and socialize more
effectively together
 For example, tabletops,
whiteboards, and public
displays

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 Coordination mechanisms
• When a group of people act or interact together,
they need to coordinate themselves
 For example, when playing football or navigating a
ship

• To do so, they use:

 Verbal and non-verbal communication
 Schedules, rules, and conventions
 Shared external representations

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 F2F coordinating mechanisms
• Talk is central

• Non-verbal also used to emphasize and as a

substitute
 For instance, nods, shakes, winks, glances, gestures,
and hand-raising

• Formal meetings
 Explicit structures such as agendas, memos, and
minutes are employed to coordinate the activity

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 Awareness mechanisms
• Involves knowing who is around, what is happening,
and who is talking with whom (Dourish and Bly, 1992)
• Peripheral awareness
 Keeping an eye on things happening in the periphery of vision
 Overhearing and overseeing—allows tracking of what others
are doing without explicit cues
• Situational awareness
 Being aware of what is happening around you in order to
understand how information and your actions will affect
ongoing and future events
o For example, air traffic control or an operating theatre

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 Sharable interfaces

• Designed to capitalize on existing forms

of coordination and awareness
mechanisms
• Several studies investigating whether
they help people to work together better,
have found:
 More equitable participation
 More natural to work around
 More comfortable sitting around a table than
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 The Reflect Table
• LEDs lit up to reflect how
much each member of the
group spoke
• Used microphones in front
of each individual to do this
• Study showed those who
spoke the most changed
their behavior the most
• Those who spoke the least
did not change their
behavior
• Why do you think this is?
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 Sococo floor plan of a virtual office:
who is where and who meeting with whom

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Playing together in same space
• Visitors using an AR
sandbox at the V and A
• Visitors sculpt
landscapes out of sand
• System reacts with
changing superimposed
digital colored landscape
• Enables creative forms
of collaboration

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 Social engagement
• Refers to participation in activities of a social
group
• Social exchange where people give or receive
something from others
• Voluntary, unpaid and often altruistic (in the
sense of sharing and doing good for others)
• Websites often used as hub to connect people
• Retweeting is a powerful way of connecting
millions of people…
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 Retweeting goes viral
• The epic Twitter battle
between Ellen
DeGeneres and Carter
Wilkerson
• Millions retweeted in the
space of hours
• Connected millions of
people for a fun cause
• Many people found it
amusing to join in and
watch the numbers grow
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 Dilemma: Is it OK to talk with a dead
person using a chatbot?
• Eugenia Kuyda lost a close friend in a car
accident who was only in his 20s
• She took all his texts sent over the course of his
life and made a chatbot using them
• Chatbot responds to text messages so that
Eugenia can talk to her friend as if he was alive
• Is this a creepy or comforting way to deal with
grief?
 Is it respectful of the dead person?

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 Summary
• Social interaction is central to our everyday lives
• Social mechanisms, like turn-taking, enable us to
collaborate and coordinate our activities
• Keeping aware of what others are doing and letting
others know what you are doing are important
aspects of collaborative working and socializing
• Many technology systems have been built to
support telepresence, social presence, and co-
presence
• Social media has brought about significant
changes in how people keep in touch and manage
their social lives
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