Understanding and Designing

for the Voluntary Adoption of

Community Displays

Harry Brignull

Thesis submitted to The University of Sussex for the degree of

Doctorate of Philosophy

March 2005
Declaration
I hereby declare that this thesis has not been submitted, either in
the same or different form, to this or any other university for a
degree.

Harry Brignull
Contents

i Acknowledgements
ii Preface
iii Abstract
5 Chapter 1
Introduction
14 Chapter 2
Background
55 Chapter 3
Studying the social nature of a large display in a
communal space
76 Chapter 4
The adoption of the Opinionizer Community Display in
a one-shot setting
99 Chapter 5
Informing the design of Dynamo: a Community Display
for on-going usage settings
132 Chapter 6
Preliminary observational study of an on-going setting
145 Chapter 7
The adoption of the Dynamo Community Display in
an on-going setting
190 Chapter 8
Discussion
219 Chapter 9
Conclusions and future work
232 References
260 Appendix 1
Interview questions used in Opinionizer study 2
263 Appendix 2
Materials used in the Dynamo study
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 the
support 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

parents, my sisters, my partner Mia, and her family. You’ve supported me
emotionally, spiritually, financially and in every other possible way.

i
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 (CSCW’02),
New Orleans, USA.

Rogers, Y., & Brignull, H. (2002). Designing dynamic interactive visualisations to support
collaboration and cognition. Paper presented at the Information Visualisation '02, London.

Rogers, Y., & Brignull, H. (2003). Computational offloading: Supporting distributed team
working through visually augmenting verbal communication. Paper presented at the
Cognitive Science Conference, Boston.

ii
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 two
observational 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
observers to learn vicariously, by watching others. It is also shown to
facilitate spontaneous social congregations in the vicinity of a Community
Display, which is described as “the honey-pot effect”. Key differences
between on-going and one-shot settings are described, and a number of
recommendations are suggested for future Community Display designers to
encourage the initial voluntary adoption of their systems.

iii
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction _________________________________________________ 5

1.2 Overview of Thesis ___________________________________________ 6
Chapter 2: Background ________________________________________________ 6
Chapter 3: Studying the social nature of a large display in a communal space. _____ 7
Chapter 4: The adoption of the Opinionizer Community Display in a one-shot
usage setting ________________________________________________________ 8
Chapter 6: Preliminary observational study of an on-going usage setting _________ 10
Chapter 7: The adoption of the Dynamo Community Display in an on-going
usage setting. _______________________________________________________ 11
Chapter 8: Discussion ________________________________________________ 12
Chapter 9: Conclusions and Future Work _________________________________ 13

4
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.

• Thresholds of “attention” and “interaction” for first-time

interactors in one-shot settings, and the implications these have for
the design of Community Displays.

• “Gradual buy-in”, “Levels of engagement”, and “entry points”

into interaction, which describe the way in which community
members in on-going settings gradually adopt and “appropriate” the
Community Display system.

5
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 cafés. 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
interaction between people in a communal space. It is explained how prior
research has shown large displays to have certain inherent social properties
owing to their public availability: they offer information dissemination,
awareness, a shared point of reference, and serendipity. Designers of
Community Display systems aim to build and expand on these properties in
an attempt to support informal social interaction. Some examples of current
systems are classified and described.

6
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 a

communal 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
the social nature of large displays when used by a group in a communal
space. It introduces the concept of user “flow”, describing the pattern of
how locally mobile, peripatetic members move though space; and also
introduces the “honey-pot effect”, which describes the manner in which the
public availability of interaction with the large display enabled passers-by to
oversee and choose to join in, allowing group congregations to form
spontaneously, without the need for any planning or coordination work.

7
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 Display

in 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 and
related 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
interaction is also put forward. Specifically, this model describes two
thresholds that people have to cross in the progression from simply being
present in the space to interacting with the Community Display. The first
threshold is described as the “threshold of attention”, which involves a user
becoming aware of the display and deciding whether or not to learn more
about it. The second threshold is described as the “threshold to interaction”,
in which an observer decides whether or not to interact with the display.

8
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 Display’s 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
other revised features, is reported in this chapter.

The overall contribution of this chapter is the finding that in on-going usage
settings where a Community Display is used intensively or repeatedly over
an extended period of time, the display estate becomes a limited communal
resource, which introduces management issues and conflicts between users,
and without support is likely to hinder adoption and on-going use.

9
Chapter 6: Preliminary observational study of an on-going
usage 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 community’s 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.

10
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 to
the 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
endeavor to open them through iterative re-design.

11
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 in
them. 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.

12
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 use
the 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.

13
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 23
2.3.1 Information Dissemination 25
2.3.2 Awareness 26
2.3.3 Shared Point of Reference functions 29
2.3.4 Serendipity functions 30
2.4 Community Displays 32
2.4.1 Noticeboard service 32
2.4.2 Immediate Display and Exchange service 34
2.4.3 Passive Awareness services 36
2.5 Voluntary Adoption of Community Displays 39
2.5.1 Voluntary Adoption in the ‘one-shot usage’ category 46
2.5.2 Voluntary Adoption in the ‘on-going’ usage category 49
2.6 Research Questions 51
2.7 Approach 52
2.7.1 A Strategy for studying a young field 52
2.7.3 Informing design from observational studies 53

14
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.
It begins by introducing the problem of technology adoption and how it is a
fundamental challenge for technologies that require voluntary uptake by end
users. The focus of this thesis, situated voluntary adoption, is described.
Next, the general problem space of this thesis is detailed: the support of
informal social interaction in communal spaces. The nascent field of
Community Display research is then introduced, and it is explained how
these systems are intended to provide support within this problem-space.

15
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.

16
2.2 Adoption: the key to the success of any technology
“New technology intended to support cooperation often risks initial
rejection” (Francik et al., 1991; p. 53)

“Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often
very difficult.” (Rogers, 1962; p. 1)

Adoption of technology by end users is key to its success: even the most
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 couldn’t 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 (O’Brien, 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
technology’s 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).

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

prescribed as compulsory within an organization (e.g. due to contractual
obligations from an employer, [Grudin & Palen, 1995]), and “voluntary
adoption”, in which users decide to use a tool by virtue of their own
judgment. It is also referred to as “discretionary adoption” (e.g. Grudin &
Palen, 1995; Palen & Grudin, 2002). Voluntary adoption problems are
historically well documented in CSCW. For example, Markus and Connolly
(1990) found voluntary adoption of groupware tools sometimes failed, and
that managerial mandate was often necessary for them to be adopted into a
workplace culture. Unlike tools for individual use, voluntary adoption of
tools for cooperation and communication give rise to social issues, of which

17
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 person’s 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

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 technology’s 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 considered is the perspective taken

within 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
defined as follows:

“This ‘situated action’ perspective […] looks on the

sequential organization of action as a moment-by-moment
improvised affair, emerging in response to the circumstances
of its production - physical circumstances, social
circumstances, organizational circumstances, and so forth.”
(Dourish, 2003; p.466)

18
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
cafés, 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
them. For example, they may offer food or drink facilities, tables and chairs,
information resources, television, and so forth, which in many cases people
may use how and when they please. A communal space may also be a
thoroughfare to a number of other places (e.g. a foyer), so many of the
people using the space may simply be passing through. This creates a rich
potential for opportunistic and serendipitous interactions (Whyte, 1988;
Kraut et al., 1993; Whittaker et al., 1994; Whittaker & Schwarz, 1999). It
should be noted that spaces like workplace meeting rooms, although shared,

19
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 Oldenburg’s (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)

In many ways, “third place” is an ideal term to use to describe such

locations, since it is well defined and widely used. However, Oldenburg
adds to this definition some exclusive nuances. For example, Oldenburg
states that they should not be in the workplace, that they should be “free to
enter” and should offer “a balance of familiarity and anonymity”
(Oldenburg, 1989). This excludes a number of potential places, such as

20
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.
Rudström & Höök, 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
benefits, detailed in the following section, have helped give rise to
Community Displays: a new genre of system for the support of informal
social interaction in communal spaces. A Community Display can be
defined as a large publicly-visible screen, such as a projected or plasma
screen, which offers facilities for co-located interaction between people in a
communal space. These systems vary in their nature and facilities, yet they
are all united by the common goal of offering a display surface for visual
information dissemination and conversational interaction. Community

21
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
(Pedersen et al., 1993; Mynatt et al., 1997; Elrod et al., 1992), Single
Display Groupware (“SDG”, e.g. Foster & Stefik, 1986; Benford et al.,
2000; Myers et al., 1998), and Roomware (e.g. Streitz et al., 1999; Johanson
et al., 2002), among others. Much of the technology used in these is similar
to that used in Community Displays, with the main difference being in the
type of location and type of interaction they are intended to support. Unlike
Community Displays, the above examples are used in dedicated rooms for

22
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
sheet. Digital large displays, owing to current technical constraints, are
typically sized around 28-60 inches (measured diagonally).

O'Neill et al. (2004) refer to large displays as offering a “public interaction

space”, because they enable a large floor space within which people can
notice, read, talk about and interact with the displayed information. This
contrasts with small artefacts such as pocket diaries or mobile phones,
which offer a “private interaction space”. Other researchers refer to large

23
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

The following section will detail each social property with reference to
studies and theory in contemporary research. It should be noted that they are
deeply intertwined and as such are hard to tease apart into individual
examples.

24
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
asked why she laboriously wrote up by hand information that could be
readily accessed by everyone on the network, she replied that […] people
had become desensitized to the many email reminders that such software
applications provide” (p. 283). Similarly, Whittaker and Schwarz (1995)
were told by respondents that the desktop digital representations seemed
“dead on arrival” whereas “the board somehow seemed more real” (p.6).
Thus the physicality and the social setting seemed to give the large displays
more impact and credibility than their desktop digital counterparts.

25
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 in
this 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) draws
attention 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
philosophies and understandings of human perception and interaction which
are embedded in the design of technologies. This in-depth discussion of
awareness is placed outside the scope of this thesis. Like Pedersen and
Sokoler (1997), this thesis takes a phenomenological approach, explaining
awareness by describing its characteristics rather than attempting to describe
how it works. They define awareness as “our ability to maintain and
constantly update a sense of our social and physical context … [which we
achieve in an] apparently effortless manner and without being aware that

26
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
environments, Rajani & Perry (2000) find that a whiteboard used to
represent patients and beds was “frequently looked at and amended …
[and] acted as a resource for structuring work activity and informing
members of the team of the status of the ward” (p. 2).

In addition to large displays providing an awareness of the current state of

affairs, another kind of awareness they provide is peripheral awareness. (Bly
et al., 1993; Pedersen et al., 1997). Human attention and awareness spans

27
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 Underground
line 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
“overseeing” and, auditory monitoring as “overhearing”. The following
example refers to “the fixed line diagram”, a large display depicting the
current location of trains on the track, and the “station monitors”, television
screens showing CCTV coverage of each station. These are employed to
provide awareness of the current state of affairs, a shared point of reference
during discussion, and a peripheral awareness of other team members’
activities. In the example, the line controller had just attempted to call a

28
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 information
displays, 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

The long history of blackboard, whiteboard and the recent popularity of the
interactive whiteboard (e.g. Pedersen et al., 1993; Mynatt et al., 1999)
suggests a genuine value of large displays for co-present cooperative group
activities. The large public interaction space (O'Neill et al., 2004) provided
by a large display allows multiple people to have a shared visual point of
reference, augmenting their conversation. Various studies of users
collaborating on a task found that having a shared visual artefact improves
the quality of their communication (Fussell et al., 2000; Veinott et al.,

29
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.

2.3.4 Serendipity functions

Providing a shared resource such as a large display in a communal space

can attract people to use it and in doing so, bring them together. It is for this
reason such spaces are sometimes called “social condensers” (e.g. Hughes,
1991) or “honey-pots” (Brignull and Rogers, 2003). Co-location creates

30
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, a
student 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.

In summary, by drawing on prior research this section has detailed some

social properties of large displays: information dissemination, awareness, a
shared point of reference and serendipity. A large display offers these
properties within its public interaction space, i.e. the large floor space within
which people can see it. These social properties therefore show themselves
to be highly important to Community Display design – they are the inherent
properties that should be worked with and built upon. As the following

31
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 around

Community Displays
a. 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.

2.4.1 Noticeboard service

Drawing inspiration from the real pin-and-paper noticeboards found in

many communal spaces, this service primarily attempts to build upon the
social property of “information dissemination” (see Section 2.4.1). This
service offers a similar kind of functionality to traditional noticeboards, but
instead for multimedia and web pages. Many of these services require
posting of content to take place remotely. Many of them offer web

32
interfaces, such as FXPal’s Plasma Poster (Churchill et al., 2003, Figure
2.2b); XRCE’s Community Wall, Intel’s GroupCast and Outcast, and
Carnegie Mellon’s 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 Wall’s
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 FXPal’s
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 IPSI’s “Hello.Wall” (Prante et al.,
2004).

The Opinionizer system (Brignull & Rogers, 2003) and the Dynamo System
(Brignull et al, 2004), reported in this thesis, both offer noticeboard
services. These will be discussed in detail in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively.

33
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
gathered media is automatically emailed to the person who started the
session.

The “immediate display and exchange” service may be provided in tandem

with a noticeboard service, in a manner that allows users to walk up and
“borrow” the display temporarily for the duration of an interaction. For
example, Parc’s Speakeasy Public Display has a screen-saver mode in
which items are shown on rotation from a collection of community-

34
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
that SDG would also benefit adults in this way.

However, synchronous multi-user systems require a substantial amount of

additional programming effort, and as such are rare.

35
2.4.3 Passive Awareness services

Passive awareness services are intended to support community members’

awareness of each other’s 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 & Zhao’s (2002) “What’s 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 “What’s 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
opportunistic way of finding out community information.

Carter et al.’s (2002) “Iconic” and “Lexical” displays aim to “make shared
interests visible in order to support conversation and help build
relationships” (p.1). The system is intended to track users interactions with
each other to detect relationships, and monitor the information they interact
with (e.g. web pages) to detect their personal interests. Users’ presence is
detected via infrared communication between their PDA’s (which they are

36
required to carry) and a beacon on the public displays. “Friend of a friend”
information about common interests and colleagues is then displayed in an
abstract 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.

Intel’s “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. Intel’s “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
bystanders a topic of conversation to strike up with them, acting as an “ice-
breaker”.

Intel’s Groupcast (McCarthy, 2003) is intended to “spark informal

conversations” and help people who work in the same physical space to get
to know each other and have greater awareness of any common ground they
share, for example goals, interests or experiences. So for example, if Joe and
Teresa walk into the vicinity of a Groupcast, it displays a “wine of the day”
website. This may entice them to have a conversation about it, and discover

37
that they both share a common interest in wine (information that had been
previously gathered by the system at an earlier point in time). McCarthy
claims 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 MIT’s “Aware Community Portal”
(Sawhney et al., 2001), IBM’s 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

hybrid systems, overlapping with each other in some respects, while often
very different in others. These features have been defined as three different
types of service: “noticeboard”, “immediate display and exchange” and
“passive awareness”.

38
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 didn’t 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

achieving voluntary adoption in field studies. For example, Greenberg and
Rounding (2001) found that with the Notification Collage Community
Display, co-present usage rarely occurred, while remote usage via desktop
computers flourished. Churchill et al. (2002) found that Plasma Poster users
needed “constant encouragement and demonstration” (p. 6) to interact with
their Community Display. Carter et al. (2002) found that potential users did
not pay attention to their Iconic and Lexical Community Displays because

39
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 such
displays” 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, Intel’s 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.

40
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

An initial inspection of each study shown above reveals them to have

obvious differences, which upon further analysis, can be unpacked into a
number of dimensions on which they vary. Firstly, they vary in terms of the
type of communal space they are deployed in. Secondly, the communal
space may vary in its permanence – some are temporary and are used only
for a few hours while others are much more permanent. Thirdly, the
community interconnectedness may vary – for example, it may be a “loose-

41
knit” community, in which each member knows few of the other community
members, or it may be “tight-knit” community, where they know many
others. 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 the
activities 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
the basis that they were well reported. The analysis revealed a clustering of
commonalities into two distinct types of Community Display settings, as
shown in Tables 2.1 and 2.2 overleaf. These two types are referred to as
“on-going usage” settings, and the “one shot usage” settings. As the
following sections will detail, this conceptualization forms an important
underpinning contribution of this thesis.

42
 Intellibadge Public
Proactive Displays AgentSalon Iconic & lexical Community Mirror Community Wall Palimpsest
Display
Sumi & Mase, Borovoy et al., Agostini et al.,
Reference McCarthy, 2003 Cox et al., 2003 Carter et al., 2002 Agamanolis, 2003
2001 1998 2002

Type of Communal Social event in Social Event in Local digital film

Conference Centre Naval Museum
Space workplace venue reception area and art festival

Permanence of
3-4 days Few hours Few hours Permanent 1 day
Communal Space

Typically people Typically one time

Duration & A single visit to a A single visit to a
Conference Breaks: typically up to one 1 hour break and two visit one time only, visit. duration
frequency spent in social gathering for social gathering for
shorter breaks. duration probably probably approx 3
proximity one hour an afternoon
approx 3 hrs hrs
Learn about naval Trying out exhibits,
Activity normally
Attending conference, socialising, getting refreshments Socialize Socialize history, interaction of which this was
carried out
with exhibits. one.
Loose-knit: familiar Very loose-knit: Loose-knit –
Mixed: work
strangers i.e. work museum visitors festival attendees
Community Generally loose knit: International community brought together colleagues (tight-
colleagues who unlikely to know united by an
Interconnectedness for few days, a combination of established and nascent parts knit) and lab
don’t know each each other outside interest in film and
visitors (loose-knit)
other well immediate friends art.
Noticeboard
Passive Passive Passive Passive
System Services (among other Noticeboard Noticeboard
Awareness Awareness Awareness Awareness
services)
People tended to Usage was
Adoption Issues None reported None reported None reported None reported None reported
ignore the displays generally low
Table 2.1: Analysis of field studies in “one-shot” usage settings

43
 Community Wall
Apple NewsLens Community Wall Plasma Poster Blueboard X-cast trio Notification Collage
(different location)
Churchill et al., Russell & Sue, McCarthy et al., Greenberg &
Reference Houde et al., 1998 Grasso, 2003 Agostini et al., 2002
2003 2003 2001. Rounding, 2001
Workplace shared Workplace: coffee
Type of Communal Workplace coffee Workplace Workplace foyer Research lab
kitchen & other room & other Town Square
Space room communal area area & corridors communal space
locations locations
Permanence of
Permanent
Communal Space
Not specified,
Passed by A few minutes while probably consists
Duration &
A few short visits a day during breaks, occasional “passing through” to use shared momentarily many passing through mainly of short
frequency spent in
resources in the space or simply as a thoroughfare. times during space to and from visits (e.g. 5-10
proximity
working day workstation area. minutes) while
passing through

Passing through,
Activity normally Coffee Break, socializing, discussion Thoroughfare to lab shopping,
Thoroughfare
carried out Thoroughfare space socialising in cafes,
etc.
medium or close
Community
Close knit: established, academic research groups knit: an established
Interconnectedness
village community
Immediate Display Noticeboard,
System Services Noticeboard Noticeboard Passive Awareness Noticeboard Noticeboard
and Exchange Passive Awareness

Usage dropped off Initially, users Co-present usage

after initial interest. needed constant rarely occurred
Adoption issues None reported None reported None reported None reported
Encouragement encouragement and while remote usage
needed demonstration flourished.

Table 2.2: Analysis of field studies in “on-going” usage settings

44
An analysis of tables 2.1 and 2.2 show a marked clustering on two of the
dimensions: “permanence of communal space”, and “community
interconnectedness”. 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
Community Display, if successful, becomes integrated into this.

It should be stressed here that the two setting characterizations are not
intended to be a mutually exclusive dichotomy, in which any real world
example must lie in one or the other. Instead, these characterizations should
be regarded as “landmarks” in a multi-dimensional landscape of types of
communal space. This is depicted in Figure 2.4, below.

45
 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 or more 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
setting.

2.5.1 Voluntary Adoption in the “one-shot” usage category

Carter et al.’s (2002) study on two Community Display systems (“Iconic”

and “Lexical”) in a “social gathering” one-shot usage setting revealed that
participants tended to ignore the information displayed, and instead carried
on with their conversations. Carter et al. suggest that many of the

46
participants did not realize what the Community Displays had to offer, nor
that the displayed information could actually be a useful adjunct to their
conversations. 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 missed
their chance and may never have been exposed to the exact same
Community Display again.

McCarthy’s (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
“disposable income”, conference delegates are likely to have only a small
amount of “disposable time” available to them during the conference breaks
to learn about the system and decide to register.

Conference delegates may have found it easy to comprehend what the

Proactive displays had to offer, and thus were able to quickly evaluate
whether they wanted to be involved. However, McCarthy later mentions
that much more could have been done to facilitate adoption of the

47
Community Display systems. (McCarthy, Personal Communication, March
10 2005), which included making the community more aware of their
existence 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 Community

Display to participation in related social activities and direct
interaction with it?
2b. How does usage spread through the community?
2c. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?

48
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,
could be used to inform an understanding of whether the setting is suitable,
and what kind of Community Display system might be best.

In these on-going usage scenarios, Community Displays can go on to

become integrated into community life. In a 14-month study of Plasma
Poster, Churchill et al. (2004) found that social norms started to emerge,
which included the community specifying what they considered to be
acceptable uses of the display. For example, when one user posted up an

49
advertisement to sell their car, three people independently complained and
asked to have it taken down, because it did not fit the accepted themes of
community 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?

50
2.6 Research Questions
The research questions posed for this thesis are summarized below:

1. Understanding the phenomena of situated social behaviour around

Community Displays
a. 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 settings

a. 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?

51
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 and
Webber, 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
ones. This is in contrast to tame problems – such as many
engineering problems – that, however complex, can be
specified, and for which optimal solutions are possible. […]
The activities of understanding and designing are intertwined,
and integral to both the definition and solution of the
problem.” (p. 122)

52
This research was therefore carried out in an iterative manner, drawing on
the spiral design approach (Boehm, 1988), which defines the process as
cycles 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
in over-interpreting findings and unnecessarily prescribing a certain form of
design solution. Luff and Jirotka (1998) detail this:

“…identifying requirements from such studies is problematic.

The demands on an analyst in trying to warrant a particular
analyses of interaction are quite different to those of a
designer or requirement engineer aiming to develop some
novel technology (Jirotka and Wallen, forthcoming). Indeed,
it is uncertain whether strong warrants can be given for
developed requirements, or whether such a commitment is

53
 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 be
evaluated 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)

54
Chapter 3

Studying the social nature of a large

display in a communal space.

3.1 Introduction__________________________________________ 56
3.2 The Field Study _______________________________________ 57
3.2.1 Method ________________________________________________ 57
3.2.2 Observations ____________________________________________ 57
3.2.3 Analysis of study findings __________________________________ 66
3.3 Prototyping and evaluating a digital large display __________ 68
3.3.1 Wall-loader prototype system description ______________________ 69
3.3.2 Wall-loader field evaluation _________________________________ 72
3.4 Discussion __________________________________________ 74

55
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. Its
contribution is to provide an underpinning understanding of the situated
social interaction that takes place in its public interaction space, before the
specific issue of the voluntary adoption of Community Displays is
investigated in the following chapters. It would have been desirable to have
begun this thesis research with a field study on an actual Community
Display system in an authentic real world setting. However, at the time of
this research – early 2001 –the field was nascent, and these systems were
not readily available. For example, the first conference workshop directly
related to Community Displays was not held until November 2002 (O’Hara
et al., 2002). Therefore, it was decided that grounding observational study
would be carried out on another kind of physically large display in a similar
communal space setting, as this would still serve to help develop
understanding in the general domain. As detailed in the previous chapter,
prior research has investigated and revealed some important properties of
physically large displays – they support information dissemination,
awareness, serendipity, and provide a shared point of reference for co-
present group interactions. However, there is still much more to be
understood about how large displays are used in communal spaces by
locally mobile communities.

Prior observation of a team of audio-visual (AV) technicians at a conference

revealed that they used a large pin-and-paper display to support their group
work in a communal space – a combined office and store room which they
regularly traveled through on foot while going about their daily work. They
used their large display intensively, and therefore in a five day field study a
great deal of usage could be observed, making it a suitable candidate for
observational study. This setting can effectively be described as an “on-
going usage” setting, as defined in the previous chapter: large amounts of
time was spent in the communal space, and the majority of the team made

56
up an established, long term community who had been working together for
at least a year. This chapter details an observational study of the AV team’s
use of their large display, the prototyping of a digital alternative called
“Wall-loader”, and a one-day field evaluation of this tool.

3.2 The Field Study

3.2.1 Method

The study was carried out using a combination of ethnographically-

informed observation, and contextual enquiry (cf. Agar, 1980; Holtzblatt &
Beyer, 1996). The audio-visual team was observed for five days, three days
being the actual conference, plus a day on either side where they undertook
administrative and transportation work. The team was shadowed for this
duration. Each day, team members were followed around and assisted in
their work. During this time they were observed and interviewed informally.
Interviews consisted of an on-going contextualized dialogue between the
participants and the interviewer, referring to their work practices and
artefacts. The method of data capture was primarily written notes and
recorded audio, using a dictaphone. Two-way radio conversations were also
recorded by connecting a radio directly to the dictaphone.

3.2.2 Observations

- The study setting

CHI’01 (Computer-Human Interaction, 2001) was a conference held at the
Washington State Convention and Trade Centre in Seattle. Approximately
100 sessions were run over three days. The time table consisted of four 1.5
hours sessions a day, with a one hour break between each session. Nine
parallel sessions were held at a time.

57
A team of twelve AV technicians from a company called “Audio-Visual
Headquarters” were hired to deal with the delivery, installation and
technical support of AV equipment for each session. This equipment
included data projectors, projector screens, sound systems, mixers,
microphones, video cameras, teleconferencing equipment, flip charts, and
all the cables, splitters, cassettes and battery packs required for these items
to function properly.

- The team

The AV team consisted of 12 people. There was one team manager, who
was in charge of booking the equipment and staff for each event. He was
also the team’s official point-of-contact at the conference, and in charge of
making any financial decisions. The remaining 11 team members were
technical support administrators. They were in charge of setting up the
equipment and offering technical support to help out with problems as they
occurred. The majority of the team knew each other very well, and had been
working together for at least one year. Three of the team members were
temporary employees, hired locally for this conference. Each team member
carried a two-way radio for remote communication.

- The communal space

The team had a large room in the conference centre which comprised their
shared office and storage space. The photographs in Figure 3.1 depict the
team’s resources: (a) shows the flight-cases containing their equipment –
data projectors, over-head projectors, projection screens, amplifiers,
speakers, video cameras and other miscellaneous equipment; (b) shows a
large trolley, located in the rear middle of the room, on which the chargers
for their two-way radios were located. Inside the trolley drawers was a wide
assortment of tools, cables, and connectors; (c) depicts the office area,
mainly used by the manager. Here they had a land-line telephone, laptop,
printer and internet access; (d) depicts the large paper wall display used by

58
the team in scheduling equipment and technical support, which consisted of
a series of columns of A4 printed time-tables pinned to the walls. In front of
the large display was a shelf area on which various coloured pens and
highlighters were stored.

(a) Equipment storage (b) 2 way radios and tools

(c) office area (d) large display

Figure 3.1: Resources in the team’s communal space.

The need to use communal resources regularly meant that there was a
continual flow of team members in and out of the space during the day,
particularly during busy times. The team members can be described as
“locally mobile” (Bellotti & Bly 1996), since they were continually moving
between conference rooms and their shared office throughout the day.

- The work practices

This section details the team’s work practices, revealing the complex nature
of their work. The following section goes on to detail the key role the large
display played in these work practices. The team had two main
responsibilities: pre-staging the equipment, and offering technical support.

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Pre-staging involved moving the correct equipment to the correct rooms at
the right time, so that when the conference sessions started, the presenters or
workshop organizers had the equipment that they requested. This was a
tricky task, since the team was often short of equipment. For example, a
typical strategy they used was to take a piece of equipment out of a room
where it had been “pre-staged” but was not currently being used, and move
it somewhere where it was needed immediately. They then later on needed
to ensure that they replaced the missing item with an equivalent piece in
time for the start of that session. This resulted in a complex “juggling”
activity, akin to a critical-path analysis problem. Additional to this was the
fact that equipment was spatially distributed through the floors of the
building, which could create a lot of heavy carrying work. They therefore
tried to minimize this by taking into account stairs and long distances. Often
they would store heavy equipment in rooms on different floors for this
reason. This created the problem of keeping track of their equipment,
particularly the expensive items.

The other aspect of their daily activities involved offering technical support
to the conference delegates who had trouble with the AV equipment. This
sometimes involved replacing faulty pieces of equipment, introducing the
additional problem of keeping track of the faulty items and finding
replacements, in turn introducing knock-on effects for equipment
scheduling through the rest of the conference.

The rhythm of the day involved two main deadlines for the team: preparing
and getting the morning sessions running, and then doing the same later in
the day for the afternoon sessions. One team member described the pace of
work as: “long periods of boredom interrupted by quick moments of panic,
as the quote goes”. In the run-up to the deadlines, a large number of last
minute technical problems would be discovered, which the team had to deal
with on the fly. They described this part of the work as “fire-fighting”, and
the individual problems as “fires”, connoting the fast paced and stressful
nature of the work. These problems generally consisted of complaints from
the session organizers and presenters. To quote one of the technicians:

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 “When you’re setting the show up, the people in the room,
their communications are passed on to us, and then we have to
communicate back, trying to find out where the thing went
wrong, and try to solve the problem. And that happens for
about an hour period, generally starting about thirty minutes
before the show. That’s kind of key… You kind of have to see
the whole thing. Its like a theatre show. Half the folks in the
house have no idea what it takes…”

Messages were transmitted from the session organizers to the team either
via a student volunteer runner, the conference organizers office, or directly
to an AV team member. They arrived either via radio, telephone or face-to-
face communication. If the message arrived already on a piece of paper, it
would sometime be stuck up on the wall by the large display. The messages
mainly consisted of equipment problems (e.g. malfunctions, usage
problems), equipment requests (e.g. missing equipment, extra equipment
needed) and occasionally requests to set up unscheduled events. During fire-
fighting, equipment was often moved between rooms in an emergency,
which had knock-on effects for the equipment schedule, which they
continually attempted to keep up to date. However, sometimes non-team
members moved equipment between rooms without notifying them, which
introduced problems. To quote from the interview transcripts:

Harry (the researcher) follows Dallas, who is setting up a

room for the afternoon session:
Dallas: (to Harry) Now it looks like the flipcharts I brought
up here earlier have been borrowed,… You see sometimes the
presenters just take stuff, they don’t realize it’s there for the
next session.
Harry: How are we going to find them?
Dallas: We start by looking in the rooms next door… [walks
down corridor]… We usually try to lock the rooms or we take
the expensive kit out. If we move things we’re pretty good at
putting it on the time tables [the large display], so we know
where everything is. It’s other people that’s the problem.

On some occasions, the same complaint arrived in the office multiple times,
even after it had been solved. For example, in one instance a session

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organizer panicked at the beginning of the session because their wireless
microphone was causing a buzzing sound. They then told everyone they
could to pass on the message to the AV team: a student volunteer, the
conference organizers, and also an AV team member. In such a situation
when the team received the same message multiple times, they needed to
engage in detective work to find out whether the reported problem was
current and required attention (e.g. “Has it been solved previously?” “When
and who by?”, “Has it re-occurred?”), as show in the following example:

This quote involves people in three places: Sharon, a conference

organizer, is located in the conference office. Abe and Ben are AV
team members in the AV team’s office, while Rob, the AV team
manager is roaming the floor of the conference. The people at the
three locations converse with each other via radio.
Sharon [conference organizer in conference centre over the radio]:
Yeah, Rob, we’re having some audio/visual problems in room 608,
they said that there is a buzzing…
Abe (technician in office speaks to Ben): Is that the room we
already fixed?
Ben (technician in central office replies to Abe): Yeah
Abe (To Rob and Sharon on radio): Hi Rob… this is Abe, I think
we did that one earlier.
Rob (A/V manager roaming, replies to Sharon over radio): Sharon,
How old is that report?
Sharon [reply is inaudible to all]
Rob (over radio): “yeah, I believe 608 is already fixed.”
Sharon (over radio): Umm, someone’s been and said that the
problem was worked on but the problem was still occurring…
Rob (over radio): Umm, Abe and Ben head up to the 6th floor.
Abe (over radio): That’s the room we already fixed but we’ll go
check…

-The role of the large display

The large display was used to schedule the movement of equipment

between rooms, and maintain an up-to-date representation of the current
state of affairs. At the beginning of the conference, the AV team was given
a provisional list of equipment requirements for each session. The team

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manager worked this into an initial schedule, drawing up four or five A4
tables for each day using Microsoft Excel™, printing them out and taping
them up to the wall in vertical strips (one for each day) to make a large
display (see figures 3.1d and 3.2). The font used was 12 point Arial,
meaning that this text could be read only while standing directly in front of
it. Figure 3.2, below, shows how the large display was located in the corner
of the room and was highly visible from all parts of the room.

During each day, considerable effort was made to keep the information on
the large display up to date, showing both the current state of affairs and the
upcoming scheduled work. Team members constantly made amendments to
it, which they did by hand using pencils, coloured pens or highlighters. At
the end of each day, when sheets were typically very cluttered with
annotations, the manager would consolidate the amendments and print out a
new sheets to replace the current ones. During particularly busy periods, the
information on the display became messy and disorganized looking,
occasionally causing team members to have problems in reading and
updating it.

Figure 3.2: a snapshot of the communal space in use.

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The team was asked why they bothered with the extra work of printing,
annotating and updating the large displays, when they could have avoided
this by just using the digital version in Microsoft Excel on the laptop. They
commented that it allowed them to scan-through all the schedules at a
glance. For example, one day’s schedule typically spanned three A4 sheets,
and they could look between them just using their eyes, rather than needing
to scroll with the mouse. The manager also commented that this way he
could easily see what changes had been made without needing to sit down
in front of the laptop. They also jokingly commented that some of the team
members might have trouble using Excel and make a mess of it for
everyone else. Team members were observed to prefer to hold discussions
around the large display, even though they had the capability to do so
remotely, via two-way radio. One team member commented that that
solving complex scheduling problems over the radio could be very difficult,
and it was easier for everyone involved to see the timetable being worked
on.

Figure 3.2 shows the room in use, during fire-fighting before a morning
session. While one team member (left) loads up a trolley with equipment to
take out to a room, another (middle) is retrieving tools and cables from the
drawer unit, in order to go and fix a problem, while another (right) is
checking that the display is up to date, and finding out what equipment
needs to be moved next. The remaining nine team members were out
roaming the corridors, either looking for “fires” to “put out” or in the
process of dealing with one.

While passing by, team members often walked over to the large display and
glanced at it, apparently to check for recent annotations, or to make an
annotation of their own. If a team member passing by the large display
noticed one of their colleagues working on it, they would often stop to see if
their help was required, in solving, for example, an equipment distribution
problem (e.g. “I’m short of a data projector for room 206 in the afternoon
session, where can I borrow one from?”). Similarly, if a team member
working at the large display found they needed help or information, they

64
often requested it from passers-by. It was also observed that congregations
often emerged in this way from a single user solving a problem, into three
or four people working on a problem together in front of the display,
discussing their ideas, gesturing to it and making amendments. A popular
activity during quiet periods was to congregate around the display as a
group, and try to re-plan the movement of equipment for the next session, so
that the least amount of footwork would be required.

Users of the display often used conspicuity in their annotations to grab their
colleagues’ attention. Unsolved problems would be highlighted using
fluorescent highlighter pens, by scrawling question marks and circles to
draw attention to recent changes. In some cases extra sheets of paper would
be stuck up by the large display. For example, in one case a team member
was observed to stick an extra sheet of A4 paper up stating “Need 4 cameras
for 302 PM session” in very large, bold writing, when they were unable to
find any spare cameras according to the information on the large display.
This served to get their colleagues’ attention, and, with the additional
knowledge, solve their problem.

It was noted that during fire fighting, when it was particularly busy, the
large display often became messy and disorganized in appearance, with
many crossings-out, and a “spaghetti” of arrows and annotations crammed
into increasingly smaller amounts of space. This tended to caused the team
problems in reading the display and understanding the current equipment
schedule status, requiring extra conversations and interpretation work, and
occasionally causing errors in deployment.

The large display was a physical hub for team activity within the office. All
team members regularly passed it by while bringing or taking away
equipment, and there would often be team members nearby working on the
equipment or taking refreshment breaks. Usage of the large display often
took place in groups.

65
3.2.3 Analysis of study findings

This study confirms and extends many of the things already learned in
section 2.3 concerning the inherent social properties of large displays. For
example, the team chose to use the pin-and-paper large display instead of an
adjacent laptop containing exactly the same information in a digital form,
even though this required extra editing and transcription work. Analysis
suggests that this was because it offered a number of other benefits which
outweighed the cost of this work. The benefits the team members explicitly
stated were that it provided “at a glance access”, overview of the timetables,
and ease of use. These benefits have been observed in a number of other
studies on large displays, such in Rogers and Bellotti’s (1997) newspaper
publisher study, and Whittaker and Schwarz’s (1995) software developer
study (detailed previously in Section 2.3). Further analysis of the
participants’ behaviours reveals some other important phenomena relating
to the nature of the way the large display was used.

The nature of the continual movement of the team members in and out of
the communal space can be described as flow. The range of shared
resources (equipment storage, office space, and the large display), and its
central location meant that the communal space was the “hub” of this flow,
and was the most likely place for team members to serendipitously bump
into each other, a finding consistent with various other field studies (e.g.
Twidale et al., 1995; Isaacs et al., 1996; Perry et al., 1999), as discussed
previously in sections 2.3.4 and 2.2.

The prominent location of the large display in the communal space was
therefore very sensible, since it made its displayed information readily
available, improving its information dissemination function. The
information shown on the display was an important resource for the team,
and as such, it attracted team members to it regularly as they passed it by.
Group congregations would often spontaneously form around it – which can
be described as a “honey-pot effect”. This term is borrowed from the term
“honey-pot” in human geography, where it describes physical locations,

66
such as national parks, that have attractive features which draw people to
them like bees around honey (Johnston et al., 2000). Here, “honey-pot
effect” is used to describe the phenomenon of the formation of social
gatherings in the vicinity of the large display.

The group was observed to prefer to converse about scheduling issues in

front of the large display, rather than elsewhere or via two-way radio. This
is directly related to the large display offering a shared point of reference –
the team were able to look at the display together, gesture to it, and talk in
reference to it (e.g. “What about moving that there?”). As discussed in
Section 2.3.3, prior research has found that shared points of reference
improve the quality of communication (Fussell et al., 2000; Veinott et al.,
1999; Whittaker, 1997; Nardi & Whittaker, 1993).

Particularly interesting was the way groups spontaneously formed in the

vicinity of the large display. This involved the public availability of usage
of the large display – team members could “oversee” their colleagues using
it. This is a similar finding to that made by Heath and Luff (1991), who
found in a study of a train line control room that overseeing colleagues’
actions provided an awareness function, supporting group coordination; and
also by Bentley et al. (1992) who found in a study of an air traffic control
room that team members monitored each others’ use of physical artefacts to
coordinate their work (see Section 2.3.2). Returning to the study in hand,
usage of the large display can be described as a “double duty” activity
(Heath & Luff, 1991; Luff & Jirotka, 1998). One the one hand, the user is
doing the thing they are directly concerned with, such as working on a
scheduling problem. On the other hand, they are also sending out a visual
signal to passers-by, showing them what they are doing, which creates
opportunities for passers-by to notice, stop and help. This enables the team
to have group gatherings around the display as and when they are needed,
without requiring any articulation about the planning or coordination of this
(cf. Schmidt and Simon [1996] on articulation work). In summary, the
public availability of interaction around the large display can enable
serendipitous group congregations.

67
However, as well as offering important benefits which gave the large
display a key role in their work activities, the paper-based nature of the
large display also caused them problems, since editing of annotations
involved crossings-out, arrows and re-writing, which became confusing
during peak times. This meant that equipment sometimes became lost or
deployed to the wrong rooms at the wrong times, and the team often held
conversations trying to work out what was written down. While they
aggregated the edits and re-printed the timetables every night, this could not
be done during the day since it was too time-consuming.

This is an inherent shortcoming of paper – it does not offer support for

editing and re-arrangement of information in the same way that computer
technology does (Moran et al., 1999). With this shortcoming in mind, it was
decided that an interactive large display prototype would be developed, to
address this problem while attempting to maintain the benefits of the paper
display. The following sections detail this work.

3.3 Prototyping and evaluating a digital large display

for the AV team
In an attempt to tackle the shortcomings of their pin-and-paper display, and
in doing so, to develop a better understanding of its nature, a digital large
display prototype was developed, called “Wall-loader”. Using an approach
called “vertical prototyping” (Nielsen, 1993), the fire-fighting aspect of
their work was selected to be supported fully. Initial designs of the
prototype were developed by drawing up a graphical storyboard, using the
services of a professional illustrator. This storyboard was scanned and put
into a PowerPoint presentation, which was emailed to the AV team. As a
group they spent an hour running an “expert evaluation” session, watching
the storyboard presentation, and annotating their feedback comments
directly onto the slides, before emailing it back. This technique is described
as “remote interactive storyboarding”, and is detailed in Rogers et al.,
(2002). The design of the representational format was a focus of much user-

68
centered design attention. A number of different formats were experimented
with, using “quick and dirty” user testing on paper-based prototypes,
including “Chernoff faces” (Chernoff, 1973). This is reported in detail in
Rogers and Brignull (2002). The aim was to design a representational
format that allowed to easily interpret the current state of affairs (the
“fires”), and to decide which needed immediate attention. A suitable
representational format for displaying the “fires” was found to be a Gantt
chart representation, since it allowed effective parallel visual comparison
between the items (cf. Rogers et al., 2002; Rogers & Brignull, 2003).

3.3.1 Wall-loader prototype system description

The Wall-loader can be described as an interactive Gantt chart. Along the

horizontal axis are a series of columns representing the different locations
(e.g. room numbers), while the vertical axis represents time elapsed, which
counts down to the deadline, at which time all the problems should be
solved (intended to be equivalent to the beginning of a conference session).
When a problem (“fire”) occurs, a user represents it on screen by clicking
on a toolbar button. This creates a coloured box, in which they can type a
label (e.g. “data projector problem”) and drag-and-drop it onto the relevant
location column (see Figure 3.4). The top of the rectangle starts at the
current point in time on the vertical axis, and continues to grow downwards
with the time-line until the user marks it as “done”, by clicking a button on
its top left corner. As a problem item ages, it grows longer and brighter in
colour, to show that it needs attention. When a user marks it as done, it is
grayed out. Any item can be edited at any time, and users have the option of
dragging team member icons onto the different columns, to represent their
current locations. The result is a Gantt chart style of representation which
shows the history and ongoing set of problems the team needs to attend to in
each room, as shown in figures 3.3 and 3.4, below.

69
Figure 3.3: Photo of Wall-loader in use

70
 Figure 3.4: Two snapshots showing part of the Wall-loader display.
Technician icons are superimposed on problem boxes as part of a chart, with location and time elapsed as its axes

71
3.3.2 Wall-loader Field evaluation

The Wall-loader prototype was taken to the same AV team at a conference

the following year (CHI 2002), for them to evaluate the system and give
detailed feedback about it. The participants were the same nine core team
members, with three different temporary staff. Since Wall-loader was only
a prototype, they were not asked to use it to actually carry out their work at
the conference. Instead, the system was set up in their office as a large
projected wall display running from a laptop and data projector, and the
group were given a 40 minute demonstration which detailed the interactive
features of the system. Following this, they were interviewed as a group for
half an hour, and then individual interviews were carried out consecutively
through the course of the day, each for a duration of approximately 15
minutes. Although they were very positive about the storyboards, this face-
to-face evaluation revealed some important reasons why Wall-loader was
not suitable for their use.

One key problem lay in the learning requirements of the system. After the
demonstration, one of the temporary employees commented that. “The next
guy might have trouble learning this… My briefing took 10 minutes!” They
commented that the paper time-tables on the large display hardly took any
explanation, since most people already knew how to read and write on a
timetable. During every event, the team consisted of approximately one-
quarter new temporary employees, so this rapid and easy learnability was
therefore a very important feature of any large display they would use.

They also voiced concerns that Wall-loader would be too time-consuming to

use. Most of the team members were non-committal about exactly why they
felt this was the case. Only the manager was more specific saying “…that’s
why we don’t use the laptop, too much clicking and scrolling… with the
time-tables [large display], you can see everything right there.” His point
relates to display resolution and information navigation: their large display
consisted of 13 sheets of A4, which was able to display approximately 13
times more information than the Wall-loader display, which only offered the

72
display estate of an average desktop computer monitor (1024 by 768 pixels:
note that display estate resolution is independent from physical size).

Therefore if Wall-loader were to attempt to display as much information as

their pin-and-paper large display, it would need to offer a navigation
technique such as scrolling, which would require lengthier interactions from
the users and would remove the “at a glance” quality of the display.

One problem of Wall-loader was its bulkiness: since it used a data projector,
it had a large footprint. As soon as the demonstration was finished, the team
packed it away to make space for their work, so that it would not interrupt
the flow of people through the space. Future re-designs could benefit from
considering the proportions of the destination space and the way it is used,
to select the most suitable large display technology to fit that space. More
compact alternatives to front projection include rear projection using
mirrors, LCD screens, plasma screens, or other forthcoming technologies
(such as electronic ink™ or OLED displays).

The automation in Wall-loader’s representational format was intended to be

an aid to usage. For example, problem items snapped into columns when
dragged, and the brightness of incomplete problem items increased with
time as a visual reminder, to help prevent them from being forgotten about.
However, feedback from the team revealed this to be restrictive, and that
they would have actually preferred more flexibility to allow them to display
things in the manner they wanted. The team explained that the importance
of a job was not represented by just age, but a number of factors –
complexity of job, size of session, and temperament of the session
organizer. Based on their judgment, they would mark important items on the
large display using highlighters, or in some occasions, pin up a separate
reminder sheet with large writing to increase visibility and allow passers-by
to notice the item more readily. This flexibility is reminiscent of a finding
by Håkansson et al. (2003) in which schedulers of a film festival using a
large display developed a practice of pinning “undecided” items at an angle
or out of line to represent the degree of certainty of the scheduled item. Put

73
another way, this flexibility could be described as allowing the community
to appropriate the tool and devise their own style of using it, which may not
be exactly how the designer originally conceptualized it (cf. Dourish, 2003).
Wall-loader overly constrained their use of the display, and prevented this
from happening.

3.4 Discussion
Findings from this field evaluation confirm many of the things already
known about the social properties of large displays, including their support
of information dissemination, awareness, serendipity, and provision of a
shared point of reference for co-present group interactions. This chapter has
described how these properties were effectively exploited by a team of
locally mobile technicians using a large display to support their work.

A key finding from this case study is that interaction with a large display in
a communal location is spatially distributed. Interaction does not take place
just in front of the large display, it involves the movement of people around,
into and out of its public interaction space (O’Neill et al., 2004). This
understanding led to the development of the concept of “flow” to describe
the movement of people in relation to the large display, and of the “honey-
pot effect”, to describe the way in which spontaneous group congregations
tended to form in large display’s public interaction space.

To elaborate, the large display did not just provide publicly available
information in the pinned-up sheets – the interaction of people around it was
publicly available, which provided an important awareness function,
allowing passers-by to “oversee” the usage (Heath & Luff, 1991; Luff &
Jirotka, 1998; Bentley et al., 1992). Overseeing created the opportunity for
passers-by to notice what their colleagues were doing, and stop and help if
appropriate. This enabled the team to have group gatherings around the
display as and when they were needed, without requiring any planning
effort. This can therefore be described as an informal mechanism for

74
coordinating group gatherings, resulting from the public availability of the
display and the interaction in its vicinity.

The prototyping and evaluation of Wall-loader served to further reveal some

important aspects of the beneficial nature of their “low tech” pin-and-paper
large display, which would need to be reproduced in some way if a digital
alternative were to be effective. Specifically, their low tech pin-and-paper
large display was extremely easy to learn, since it used familiar physical
media – alterations were done using pen and sheets, and could be added or
swapped using push-pins. This was particularly useful for the temporary
staff members who had only a small amount of training time before being
thrown into the job. Also, rapidity of use was found to be an important
property, facilitated by the high resolution of the pin-and-paper display
which allowed “scan reading” rather than needing users to scroll, turn pages
or otherwise navigate through the information bit by bit; a finding that is
confirmed by empirical research into screen resolution and reading speed
(Schneiderman, 1987; Jones et al., 1999; Nielsen, 1997). Finally, the pin-
and-paper display offered flexibility in the way users could size, colour and
position their annotations, which allowed the team to appropriate the tool
and develop a style of usage that best suited their needs.

The contribution of this chapter has been to provide a background of

understanding about the use of a large display in a communal space. In
particular, it has given rise to the concepts of spatially distributed
interaction, flow and the honey-pot effect. As detailed earlier, a honey-pot
effect serves to encourage social interaction and congregations from people
moving around a communal space. In the next chapter, it is postulated that
this may be useful to people at a social gathering – a “one shot usage”
scenario – where the intended activities involve socializing and recreation.
At such a gathering, some community members may not know each other
very well, and may benefit from assistance in “ice-breaking” and getting to
know each other. The next chapter details the development, study and
analysis of “Opinionizer”, a Community Display system for this purpose.

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Chapter 4

The adoption of a Community Display

in a one-shot setting.

4.1 Introduction__________________________________________ 77
4.2 Supporting the activity of socializing _____________________ 78
4.3: Designing a Community Display to support socializing
in a one-shot setting _____________________________________ 81
4.4 Opinionizer System Description _________________________ 82
4.5 Field Studies _________________________________________ 83
4.5.1 Study 1: The Book Launch Event ____________________________ 84
4.5.2 Study 2: A Welcome Party _________________________________ 86
4.6 Analysis of findings ___________________________________ 90
4.7 Discussion __________________________________________ 94

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4.1 Introduction
The type of one-shot setting selected to be studied in this chapter is a social
gathering event – specifically, a party. Other similar one-shot events occur
at conferences, trade-shows and festivals. These are unlike gatherings that
occur at familiar venues, such as a local pub or workplace common room,
because they are special one-off events. The event is short, typically ranging
from a few hours to a day long, the venue is typically borrowed (e.g. a
conference center), and when it finishes, the visitors may never return to the
same venue again. Community members often come together from remote
places for the duration of the event, making up a composition of friends,
colleagues, “familiar strangers” (Milgram, 1992) and unfamiliar strangers.
The event provides them with the ability to meet other community members
in person for the first time or to maintain existing relationships.

Activities at the event may involve learning (e.g. watching presentations,

attending seminars, viewing exhibits), recreation (e.g. watching live music,
eating and drinking), and informal social interaction. The kind of informal
social interaction engaged in at such events is referred to as “socializing”,
and it has a particular nature, detailed in the next section. In brief,
socializing is relaxed, consists predominantly of small talk, and is carried
out for the sake of its own enjoyment (Putnam, 2000; Oldenburg, 1989;
Goffman, 1963). This contrasts, for example, with the terse and task-
oriented conversations the team studied in the previous chapter would
engage in as they passed each other during their working day.

Organizers of social gathering events often make a great effort to facilitate

socializing. For example, a conference organizer might issue attendees with
name badges, provide exhibits and posters to entice people into
conversations; provide tables, chairs and refreshments in communal areas to
allow ad hoc gatherings; provide noticeboards to help people find each
other; and possibly encourage ice-breaker games in the smaller sessions (cf.
Newstrom & Scannell, 1995; Epstein, 2001).

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The findings of the previous chapter show the way a social gathering can
emerge around a large display and facilitate social congregation and
interaction, without the need for planning activities (the “honey-pot effect”).
This suggests that Community Displays may be useful in supporting
socializing activities. Unlike the large display investigated in the previous
chapter which was used for work activities, adoption of a Community
Display is voluntary. As detailed in Chapter 2, the voluntary adoption of
Community Displays is the core concern of this thesis. This chapter aims to
ascertain the role of situated social interaction in voluntary adoption within
a one-shot setting. Drawing on the findings of the previous chapter, the
concepts of flow and the honey-pot effect will be used as an analytical
frame and expanded upon within this context.

4.2 Supporting the activity of socializing

Putnam (2000) describes socializing activities as informal conversations that
are spontaneous and flexible in nature, and typically consist of small talk,
humour and gossip. Oldenburg (1989) suggests in such activities there is an
emphasis on “enjoyment of good company” (p. 38), rather than achievement
of a goal, and he describes an element of “loafing”, in that it involves idling
in the company of others, without any particular agenda. Similarly,
Goffman (1963) states:

“Some social occasions, often called … ‘recreational’, are felt

to be ends in themselves, and the individual avowedly
participates for the consummate pleasure of doing so. Other
occasions, called ‘serious’, are officially seen as means to
other ends.” (p. 19)

As well as spending time with existing friends and colleagues, socializing

also involves meeting and building relationships with new people, creating
and maintaining a network of “informal social connections” (Putnam,
2000), often referred to as “personal social networks” (Nardi et al., 2000;
Whittaker et al., 2002). Recent research has shown that people draw upon

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their personal social networks for information, work and favours, and thus
they play a very important role in their work lives. Nardi et al. (2000) state
“The old adage, "It's not what you know, but who you know," could,
paradoxically, be the motto for the Information Age.” (p. 1) Social capital
theory, described earlier (Section 2.2) suggests that people keep track of the
favours and good-will they pass on to each other, and draw upon it in a
manner akin to trade. Therefore building and maintaining a personal social
network is an activity of high value, even though it can involve apparently
frivolous socializing activities.

One of the problems for an attendee trying to meet new people at a social
gathering event is when the attendee is a new arrival to the gathered
community, and is not well linked within the social network. This means
that the attendee has to start conversations with strangers “in the cold”,
rather than being able to meet them via introductions through existing
colleagues. This activity can be difficult, and can hinder a person’s
socializing activities and thus their integration into a community (Borovoy
et al., 1998). Erving Goffman (1963), in his book on behaviour in public
places, suggests that a widespread ritual which enables strangers to meet is
via an introduction from a third party. Clark’s (1996) theory of Common
Ground is relevant here – it describes how the mutual knowledge, beliefs,
and suppositions shared between two people are prerequisites for interaction
to occur, in that all communication depends on an understanding of one’s
audience. Clark goes on to claim that the establishment and development of
common ground is crucial to the development of acquaintedness. However,
the development of common ground can be a difficult and time consuming
process.

It is for this reason that name badges, ice-breakers and other such activities
are used at social gathering events (cf. Newstrom & Scannell, 1995;
Epstein, 2001), to facilitate the development of common ground.
Researchers such as Krauss and Fussell (1990), and Borovoy et al. (1998),
have postulated whether technology could be a useful aid for this. As well
as Community Displays, a large number of other kinds of tools have been

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developed in recent years for this purpose, which fall under the banner of
“social software” (Tepper, 2003). For example, during 2004 alone, over 100
web-based “social networking” and “friend of a friend” services have
appeared, such as Friendster™ and Orkut™, which enable people to make
new acquaintances on-line by being able to view and correspond with their
friends’ friends (Boyd, 2004). With the emergence of mobile technologies
such as WAP and MMS on mobile phones, a number of similar mobile
services have emerged, such as Jabberwocky (Paulos & Goodman, 2004),
MamJam™ and Dodgeball™, which enable people to discover if friends are
nearby (e.g. in the same area of town) and meet up with them, or to meet
new people with shared interests who happen to be co-located (e.g. in the
same café). Other bespoke mobile technologies offer similar services, such
as nTag™, SpotMe™, and in the research domain, Intellibadge (Cox et al.,
2003) and Thinking Tags (Borovoy et al., 1998).

At the outset of this work (early 2002), only a small amount of research had
looked at the use of Community Displays to support the activity of
socializing at social gathering events. For example, Borovoy et al. (1999)
developed “Community Mirror”, a Community Display which showed
aggregated user information, based on the use of infra-red badges called
“thinking tags”. Sumi and Masse (2001) developed and tested “Agent
Salon”, a community Display which used small cartoon avatars representing
nearby users, that engaged each other in speech bubble conversation about
their shared interests. Since then, a number of others have appeared,
including the “Intellibadge” Community Display (Cox et al., 2003),
McCarthy’s “Proactive Displays” (2004), MIT’s “Palimpsest” (Agamanolis,
2003), as well as efforts by Carter et al. (2002) and Agostini et al. (2002).

As detailed in Section 2.5.1, voluntary adoption in one-shot settings relates

to whether users can discover the functionality of a 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.

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4.3: Designing a Community Display to support
socializing in a one-shot setting
Drawing upon the analysis of the nature of socializing in Section 4.2, the
problem of supporting socializing between strangers was selected to be
explored through the prototyping of a system called “Opinionizer”. This
was another use of the vertical prototyping approach, in which a prototype
is designed to support one aspect of a problem in a fully functioning
manner. Socializing between strangers is also a particularly important aspect
of the problems of socializing, since strangers do not have the linkage of
common colleagues or friends. Section 4.2 shows that it is crucial for people
to establish common ground when attempting to hold a conversation (Clark,
1996; Borovoy et al., 1998). As such, “establishment of common ground”
was taken to be a motivation for this Community Display’s functionality.
Specifically, the Community Display was designed to provide a publicly
available surface displaying topical themes for discussion, and the means
for adding opinions to the surface. For this reason, it was named
“Opinionizer”. Opinionizer was not intended to be like a chat room or
discussion board, through which participants hold on-line discussions, but
instead it was intended to be a public resource which people could
contribute to, and use to initiate face to face conversations. Emphasis was
placed on ensuring the themes were topical and relevant, and that the
interaction was lightweight and fun. Drawing from the literature review of
one-shot Community Display studies in Section 2.5.1, some initial design
suggestions were made:

• Immediately obvious functionality and benefits: ensure that users

can easily discover what the system does and why they would want
to use it (Carter et al., 2002)

• Rapidity of learning: ensure the details of the manner of interaction

with the system can be learned quickly (McCarthy, 2004; Cox et al.,
2003; Chapter 3, this volume)

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 • Low effort interaction: ensure that interaction involves minimal
effort and time from users (McCarthy, 2004; Cox et al., 2003)

• Content relevancy: ensure that the content is interesting to the

gathered community (Agostini, 2002)

These initial design suggestions were taken on board and used in the
specification and development of the following system, which was coded
using Macromedia Director™.

4.4 Opinionizer System Description

The Opinionizer system provides a large publicly available surface for the
capture and display of community members’ opinions on topical themes. It
is composed of a large projected display, controlled by a single laptop. The
interaction model can be described as follows: a large title along the top of
the screen suggests a topical theme to which users are invited to post up a
comment (see Figure 4.1 overleaf). The topical theme is selected by the
administrator from a list pre-written for the target community, and rotated
every 15 minutes or by discretion. These themes are represented by a large
image as well as a written sentence, to make the display as eye-catching as
possible (see Figure 4.1). Users post up their comment by first choosing a
small cartoon avatar (from a selection of heads and bodies) and a speech
bubble (to indicate the mood of the message – either thoughtful, speaking or
shouting), using the menu shown in Figure 4.1 (the dialogue box located in
the bottom center). They can then type their comment into their avatar’s
speech bubble and drag it to a spatial location in one of four quadrants, each
shaded concentrically from low to high intensity. The labels of the
quadrants were selected to be suitable for the specific community in hand
(the labels in Figure 4.1 were chosen for an academic community), to give
some relevant categories of mood or personality. Together with the avatars,
this “landscape” was intended to provide users with additional means of
expressiveness. There was also the option of adding a nickname to the
avatar.

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Figure 4.1: A screen shot from Opinionizer taken at the book launch
party (study 1)

4.5 Field Studies

Opinionizer was deployed in two observational field studies. Firstly, a book
launch party held at a large international conference (CHI 2002), and
secondly, a welcome party for newly arrived postgraduate students at
Sussex University.

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4.5.1 Study 1: The Book Launch Event

- The Study Setting

The setting of this study was an evening book launch party during the CHI
2002 conference, located in a large room at the top floor of the Minneapolis
Hilton Hotel. The room was octagonal, and offered a long buffet table, eight
round tables with chairs (seating for 48 people) and a bar. The Opinionizer
Community Display was set up on a raised platform next to the bar, as
depicted in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2: Floor plan of set-up at the book-launch event

The size of the Opinionizer screen was approximately 6’ wide by 4.5’ tall.
The text on the screen was legible from approximately 16’ away, while the
screen itself was visible from anywhere in the room. The laptop served as
the input point, and was positioned on a table close to the display. The
projected display mirrored the laptop’s, providing an identical but larger
view. A helper stood by to explain to people what Opinionizer was and how
to use it. The party lasted for 2 hours, during which approximately 300
people passed through, milling around the area near the display (usually on

84
their way to and from the bar). Opinionizer was deployed for the full 2 hour
duration of the party. Activities were observed and observational notes were
taken. Video was not used since the event organizers expressed privacy
concerns.

- Observations

At the beginning of the party, the first people to arrive tended to congregate
near the buffet table, a few meters from the Opinionizer screen (in the centre
of the room). This left an empty space around Opinionizer. At this point,
few people came forward to try out the Opinionizer, and when people were
invited to come over and try it out, they seemed rather shy of doing so. Fake
opinions were added by the researcher to encourage interaction. However,
this alone did not seem to encourage usage.

Figure 4.3: The crowd around the Opinionizer input point (laptop),
pictured bottom right.
As the room filled up, a congregation developed around Opinionizer, and
more people started to try it out. People were observed watching and talking
to others using it. Groups of people were also seen talking about it, (i.e.

85
looking at it, gesturing, laughing) without actually interacting with it, as
shown in Figure 4.3 above. The congregation seemed to create a honey-pot
effect as found in the previous chapter, whereby the more people who
interacted with it, the more other people followed suit. This seemed to result
in an increase in rate of contributions to the Opinionizer over time, as shown
in Figure 4.4 – the comments began spaced out, and progressed to be closer
together as the event wore on (Total number of contributions: 38. Data
gathered from system log).

Figure 4.4: Timeline showing incidence of participation (in seconds).

Dots represent comments, vertical lines represent theme changes.

As time passed, it was observed that people were able to interact with the
Opinionizer without needing any explanation from the helper, either
learning by observation, or being shown or told how to use it by other users.
Some of the users became proponents of the system and were observed
going to fetch friends to view and try it.

In total, about 40 people added their opinions to the Community Display

and many more stood around observing what was going on. Over 60% of
the opinions were humorous and befitting to the setting. Generally people
chose to identify themselves on screen only by their first names or
nicknames.

To avoid repetition, the analysis of this study’s findings will be reported

together with the second study’s findings, in Section 4.6.

4.5.2 Study 2: A Welcome Party

- The Study Setting

The setting for the second study was a welcome party for postgraduates
entering a school at a university. The same Opinionizer system was used but

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with different themes, intended to be more relevant for the community of
newly starting postgraduate students at Sussex University. An example was
“What do you think of the food at Sussex University?” The projection
screen was the same size, with the same legible and visible distances
(legible from approximately 16’, visible from anywhere in the room,
occlusion from crowding not withstanding). As shown in figures 4.5 and 4.6
overleaf, the room was a different shape, being rectangular. Approximately
150 people passed through the space during the study. Several had met
before and formed groups but there was a sizeable number of people who
were there by themselves. The party lasted for about five hours, with the
Opinionizer active for the first two and a half of those. Two video cameras
were deployed near the display to record group behaviours and track
people’s movement. They were placed high up to be unobtrusive as
possible, so as not to affect people’s behaviours. As well as video recording,
two assistants helped capture other data: one person was employed as a
roaming interviewer, another as a observer, taking notes and photographs.
Interview questions are shown in Appendix 1. A third person stood on-hand
next to the input point, to help participants and explain the system if asked.

Figure 4.5: Photo of the set-up used at the welcome party event

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Figure 4.6: Floor-plan of the set-up at the welcome party

- Observations

Similar to the book launch event, at the beginning of the party people
congregated some distance away from the Opinionizer, collecting food and
beverages from other tables. One person commented, later "Nobody really
knew what it was when they came in and there was a whole kind of fear
because it was something new". This can be seen in Figure 4.7, where many
people are standing some distance from and face away from the Community
Display. As time wore on, the room filled up. People began to congregate
around the display, paying it attention, watching others using it and talking
about it between themselves. This is shown in figure 4.8 (p. 94).

Figure 4.7: Participant behaviour in the early stages of the event

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In total, out of approximately 150 people who passed through the space
during the study, approximately 60 interacted with Opinionizer, i.e. 40%
(deduced from system logs). During the study, 23 people were interviewed
(see appendix 1 for questions), selected at random from the room to gain a
cross section of people who had used and had not used Opinionizer (mean
age 29; 14 males, 9 females). Over half of those interviewed made positive
comments about Opinionizer, and stated that they felt comfortable
socializing around it and talking with others about the opinions displayed.
Over three-quarters of respondents stated that they had socialized with
people they hadn’t previously met while standing near Opinionizer. Hence,
it proved to be a highly effective ice-breaker.

The negative comments from the interviewees mainly centered around

social awkwardness which they experienced in taking part. To quote one
interviewee “I was definitely aware of other people watching, which made it
kind of awkward”. In fact, over half of the users interviewed reported that
they experienced embarrassment and did not feel relaxed. Some commented
that they felt under pressure not to make typing mistakes, not to be hesitant
while interacting, since they knew they had an audience of onlookers. Some
of the participants also experienced pressure to provide a comment that was
socially accepted as humorous and clever by their peers. For example, one
interviewee said, “...there was pressure to formulate something not too
dumb.

This level of self-consciousness and awkwardness was also noticed by the

onlookers. Those participants who were interviewed who did not interact
with Opinionizer all indicated social awkwardness as the core reason for not
having done so. They also stated that they expected to have not felt relaxed
if they had tried it out. Participants were also asked about what they thought
about the possibility of having been able to input their opinions via SMS
text message, using their mobile phones. A number of them expressed that
they might have enjoyed this feature, since it could have avoided queuing
and would have provided more anonymity. Some felt the anonymity could
have been beneficial and encourage usage, while others believed it would

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bring down the tone of the comments, and encourage facetious or even
offensive comments. One participant interestingly commented: “It's
perhaps safer [to input remotely] but not all the fun of going round the table
together".

4.6 Analysis of findings

This section is based on an analysis of the findings of both studies. In
observing people’s behaviour in relation to the Community Display, it was
found that behaviours could be classified into three types of activities:
peripheral awareness activities, focal awareness activities and direct
interaction activities. These can be summarized as follows, below:

A. Peripheral awareness activities: Typically eating, drinking and

socializing elsewhere at the party. In general, people in these activity
spaces are peripherally aware of the display’s presence and do not
know much about it.

B. Focal awareness activities: People in these activity spaces are

engaging in socializing activities associated with the display - talking
about, gesturing to and watching the screen being used. Here they
give the display more attention and learn more about it.

C. Direct interaction activities: In this activity space, an individual (or

a group acting cooperatively) type in their opinion to the display

A photograph from study two, depicting these three categories of activity is

shown in Figure 4.8, overleaf. The group labeled “peripheral awareness” are
standing away from the immediate vicinity of the Opinionizer and engaged
in conversations with each other, perhaps also in the process of fetching and
consuming food or beverages. Groups in this category were typically
observed to be aware of the Community Display – they would occasionally
glance at it and the people around it, but were generally preoccupied with
talking to their conversational partners.

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People would often then move to “focal awareness” activities. This involved
standing in view of the Community Display, looking at it in more detail, and
socializing with people in relation to it (e.g. having conversations about the
displayed themes or comments). To quote one interviewee from study two:
“I didn’t see people using it at first, but I did see people standing around it
so I stood beside and watched it for a while”. Transition from peripheral
awareness to focal awareness activities would often take place when other
conversations had finished, and people were apparently looking for
something interesting to occupy themselves with. Also, people who arrived
at the event alone often progressed into focal awareness activities on their
own, and were observed to often engage with others who also were looking
at the Community Display.

Figure 4.8: Photo showing the three categories of activities in relation to

the Community Display (taken 1 hour into the study)

From focal awareness activities, people often then moved into direct
interaction activities – moving to interact with the Community Display’s
user-interface via its mouse and keyboard. Although ultimately only one
person could add comments to the display at a time, group efforts were

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observed where the adding of an opinion was cooperative and where
different individuals took turns to be “the driver” and enter data via the
keyboard. People engaging in direct interaction activities typically had an
audience, who were watching their interaction.

As stated in the introduction of this chapter, one of the aims in developing

the Opinionizer Community Display was to facilitate a honey-pot effect, in
which people were attracted to congregate and socialize in its vicinity. The
results of the two Opinionizer studies show that this aim was successful.
During the course of both studies, there was a progressive increase in the
number of people in the immediate vicinity of the Opinionizer, where a
“buzz” of socializing conversations occurred. By standing in this space and
showing an interest (e.g. visibly facing the screen or reading the text),
people seemed to give a tacit signal to others that they were open to
discussion and interested in meeting new people. As expected, the displayed
information was used as common ground to strike up and hold
conversations between people (Clark, 1996; Borovoy et al., 1998). In the
second study, three-quarters of participants who were interviewed stated
that they met new people and conversed with them while standing in the
vicinity of Opinionizer.

The honey-pot effect observed has a parallel with that observed in the AV
team case study, in which the team members would oversee their colleagues
using the large display and would stop to help if needed. In both cases, the
public availability of the display and the interaction around it provided a
mechanism for enabling serendipitous group congregations. However, in the
case of Opinionizer, socializing was the aim rather than solving work
problems, and the congregations were much larger, up to approximately
eight people rather than two or three, as in the case of the AV team.

In the Opinionizer studies, there were many simultaneous gatherings in

which conversations were going on at the same time. Goffman (1963) refers
to the spatial nature of these gatherings as multiple “clusters”, “knots” or
“conversational circles” (p. 99), and refers to such gatherings as being

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“multifocused” in nature (p. 91). The flow of people in the space can be
described as mingling, whereby people moved between “foci”, i.e. clusters
and resources such as food and refreshments (rather than moving directly in
and out of the communal space as in the AV team case study). As well as
this mingling, a flow was observed in the movement of people towards and
away from the Community Display.

In the previous case study of the AV team, a physical bottleneck occurred in

the space due to the large footprint of the Wall-loader large display, which
created a blockage in the flow of people to the extent that they removed
Wall-loader from the communal space. In the Opinionizer studies, no such
physical bottlenecks were observed owing to the large size of the spaces.
However, what can be described as “psychological bottlenecks” were
uncovered in study 2: all of the interviewees who did not try Opinionizer
also had negative conceptions about the experience of using it. A specific
issue was social awkwardness – a phenomenon seen in other studies of
group activities involving technology, e.g. Nunamaker et al.’s (1991)
“evaluation apprehension”, in which people are fearful of negative
evaluation from an audience of onlookers. Thus it is not just the user’s
conception of the system but also their expectation of the experience of
using it – “Will it be awkward or embarrassing?”, and “Will it be a
comfortable experience?” These negative conceptions can form a
psychological bottleneck and deter usage. This evaluation apprehension
seemed to stem from both the public availability of their behaviour, and the
nature of the activity – even though the topics were designed to be trivial
and fun, one participant did report that there was a pressure to formulate a
comment that was “not too dumb”. Even though just one sentence long,
participants apparently felt a pressure to write something witty and
entertaining.

Another issue was the delay involved in the queuing – some interviewees
stated that they found this off-putting. This is consistent with predictions
about the nature of one-shot settings- that attendees are only there for a
short amount of time, and are likely to spare only a small window of time to

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interact with a Community Display system. Also, given the many other foci
of activity (other conversation circles, food and drink tables, etc), the
Community Display is in direct competition for the attendee’s time.

The issue of queuing could be remedied by allowing multiple input points,

e.g. via SMS text message using mobile phones, a suggestion to which
interviewees in the second study were generally receptive. However, this
would make input remote and diffused, and therefore would lessen the
honey-pot effect the system is seeking to achieve. It would be interesting to
consider how multiple input points could be situated within the Community
Display’s public interaction space to reduce the one-by-one queuing, and
make the input itself into a more sociable activity, since users were often
observed attempting to input as a group, crowding around the keyboard and
mouse together and taking turns with them.

4.7 Discussion
As noted in the second study and shown in Figure 4.8, activities in relation
to the Community Display can be described in three categories: peripheral
awareness, focal awareness and direct interaction – each representing a
different level of engagement with the Community Display. Goffman
(1963) suggests this is common in public gatherings: “…a differentiation is
sometimes found among full fledged participants and various grades of
onlookers” (p. 18). This has a parallel with the findings from the AV team
case study, in which team members could go about their own activities, yet
be peripherally aware of what their colleagues were doing, owing to the
public availability of their actions.

In terms of voluntary adoption, the focus of interest lies in the achievement

of usage. Thus, the goal is to encourage people to move between these
different categories of activities towards direct interaction. Evidence
detailed below suggests that there are two key thresholds that a person needs
to cross in moving between each category of activity to a progressively
higher level of engagement with the system, and ultimately interacting with

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it. These thresholds are defined here as the “threshold to attention” and the
“threshold to interaction”. These concepts of flow, activities and thresholds
make up a model of interaction with the Community Display, as shown in
the schematic diagram in Figure 4.9, overleaf. The term threshold is used
here in a psychological rather than physical or spatial sense. Psychological
“hurdles” seem to occur at these two thresholds, with notable differences in
their nature.

Figure 4.9: A diagram showing a model of public interaction flow

across thresholds

In crossing the threshold to attention and moving from peripheral to focal

awareness activities (e.g. from chatting to someone on the other side of the
room to deciding to move within view of the display to have a better look),
findings suggest a person will base this decision on fleeting glances at the

95
system while they are involved in another activity, such as conversing with
other people. Then, having chosen to, they will give the display more
attention, and perhaps move to stand in a position with a clearer view.

Once they are attending to the Community Display, they may then cross the
threshold to interaction, deciding whether to actually interact with the
Community Display. Essentially, the two thresholds represent two levels of
granularity of detail. At the threshold to attention, the person will judge the
system based on the broad-grained details available to them at a distance
and from brief glances, essentially asking themselves “Is it worth taking a
closer look?”. Then, at the threshold to interaction, the person has
committed to spend some time and effort finding out more about the
Community Display. Here they will be able to discover more fine-grained
details, such as “vicariously” learning the details of interaction with the
system by observing others using it (Reber & Reber, 2001), including the
length of the interaction, and exactly what the system does and the benefits
it offers. Here they can also develop a detailed expectation of what the
experience of using it would be like, including its comfort, or conversely,
social awkwardness.

There are different design implications in encouraging onlookers to cross

each threshold. For the threshold to attention, the designer needs to plan to
ensure high visibility of the Community Display: being noticed by passers-
by is a prerequisite for all further interaction. This means the designer needs
to consider bodily occlusion: for example, placing the display at least
partially above head height so it can be noticed from a distance. Also, as
both studies showed, people attract people, and conversely, lack of people in
the vicinity of the Community Display could make passers-by wary of
entering it. One strategy used in both studies was to place the Community
Display in a location where it was visible and accessible from other natural
flows of people through the space – in study one it was placed adjacent to a
bar at which drinks were served, in study two it was placed adjacent to
tables with food and drinks on them. Thus while moving through these other
flows, passers-by had the opportunity to notice the Community Display.

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Similar strategies are also used by shopping psychologists in placing
information displays, advertisements and plinths in shops (e.g. Underhill
2002).

At this broad-grained stage, an aesthetic “wow factor” seemed to be an

effective way of drawing the interest of potential users. A number of
participants commented that they noticed the novel graphical appearance of
the Opinionizer display – consisting of kitsch cartoon characters,
photographic centerpieces and colourful concentric rings. Even though it
may seem superficial, this aesthetic wow factor seemed to serve the
important function of enticing passers-by to ask themselves “What is that?
I’d like to find out more.” However, following this is the threshold to direct
interaction, which consists of a different set of design issues. Having
decided to pay attention to the Community Display, the user will then aim to
find out some of the fine-grained details about the system.

Vicarious learning, i.e. learning by observing others (Reber & Reber, 2001),
was a key mechanism by which onlookers learned these things, and it
allowed the spread of usage to become “self perpetuating” to an extent.
Here the suggestion for designers is to ensure that the system has a visual
user interface that is readily observable. However, this observability also
brings the problem of on-lookers’ fear of social awkwardness and
evaluation apprehension, which was noted in both studies. Opinionizer’s
clear and simple function of requesting users to write a one-sentence
opinion may have reduced this fear – it can be postulated that more complex
functionality and user interfaces could have been a greater deterrent.

In all, the findings of these studies confirm the applicability of the design
suggestions posed at the beginning of this chapter, which were used to
inform the design of Opinionizer: present immediately obvious functionality
and benefits, ensure rapidity of learning, low-effort interaction, and
relevance of content so that members of the local community find it
interesting. Returning to the concept of disposable time, a person’s spare
time and effort in a one-shot setting is limited, and can be likened to a

97
currency which they will only spend if they see themselves benefiting over
and above the other alternative things they can “spend” it on, such as
conversing with other people elsewhere in the social gathering.

This model of interaction shows how people move between different

activities in relation to a Community Display and suggests the kind of
information a person needs to acquire if they are to be encouraged to cross
the different thresholds. Consequently, this chapter has gone some distance
in clarifying the nature of social behaviour in relation to a Community
Display, showing the stages which users go through towards adoption, and
revealing some important implications for designers of Community
Displays for one-shot settings.

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Chapter 5

Designing a Community Display for

on-going usage settings

5.1 Introduction................................................................................... 100

5.2 Informing the design of Dynamo ................................................ 102
5.2.1 User Experience Principles for on-going settings ............................... 103
5.3 Dynamo Version 1 System Description ...................................... 109
5.3.1 The Dynamo Display Surface.............................................................. 111
5.3.2 Interaction points ................................................................................. 111
5.3.3 The Dynamo Device Hub .................................................................... 112
5.4 Evaluating Dynamo Version 1 ..................................................... 113
5.4.1 Feedback Session ............................................................................... 114
5.4.2 Laboratory study of a group task using Dynamo................................. 117
5.4.3 Analysis of findings & implications for re-design ................................. 121
5.5 Dynamo Version 2: System Description .................................... 124
5.5 Discussion .................................................................................... 130

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5.1 Introduction
The previous chapter investigated the nature of adoption and usage of a
Community Display in one-shot “social gathering event” settings,
uncovering some pertinent design issues. This chapter will present the
design process carried out on Dynamo, a Community Display for on-going
usage settings, i.e. places like workplace common rooms and coffee areas,
or public cafes and recreation venues which have regular patrons. Voluntary
adoption problems in on-going usage settings are different in nature to those
in one-shot usage settings, such as those reported in the Opinionizer studies.
Rather than being a foreign and temporary artefact, when adopted in an on-
going usage setting a Community Display can go on to become integrated
into community life, and involved in social activities, norms and practices.
This on-going process of adoption is often referred to as “appropriation”, as
defined by Torpel et al. (2003):

“Once an artefact is available in a certain setting, it may be

used according to the purposes for which it is suited. Users
discover and make the possibilities of the artefact available to
themselves for their specific purposes, resulting in an artifact-
mediated practice specific for the artifact and for their setting,
situation and practices. This process and outcome has been
referred to as “appropriation” (Leont’ev, 1978; Leontyev,
1981)” (p. 384)

There is a body of theory relating to appropriation, such as Gidden’s (1984)

“Structuration” theory, Poole and Desanctis’ (1990; 1994) “Adaptive
Structuration” theory, and, in a broader sense, Activity Theory (e.g.
Engeström, 1990). However, the in-depth discussion of these lies outside of
the scope of this thesis. To summarize, a technological artefact can be
described as offering a number of functions, as created by a designer. A
social activity is something a person or a group does with those functions in
a social context. This often involves creativity on the part of the users – they
can “re-invent” the artefact to fit their needs (Torpel et al., 2003), and
“design” their social activities involving it (Suchman, 1994).

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For example, Agostini et al. (2002, p. 711) describe Community Wall users
as having re-invented the Community Display during a longitudinal field
study. They observed that since the system did not provide search facilities
in Italian (the national language at the deployment site), users found this
frustrating. Through time, members of the user community took on the role
of “Italian search engine” using their own knowledge to help others to
search for information and to suggest related items (p. 701). Also, Churchill
et al. (2004) found that in a 14-month study of Plasma Poster, social norms
started to emerge that specified the styles of acceptable use, community
members were observed to complain about when broken. These implicit
rules share a parallel with explicit rules such as FAQs or “codes of practice”
often used by established virtual communities, such as USENET or web
discussion boards (Preece, 2000). As well as social norms, emergent social
activities can also give rise to practices – these are activities which become
established and understood customs within a community (Torpel et al.,
2003). In contrast, in one-shot settings, the process of appropriation is
curtailed due to the short duration of user exposure to the system. While
users may engage in creative social activities, they cannot develop
community practices and norms, because they do not use the system
repeatedly and regularly with their peers.

This chapter explores the issues involved in designing a Community

Display for on-going settings, i.e. designing for appropriation. Specifically,
it details a case study of the design of the “Dynamo” system: a Community
Display for on-going settings, developed as part of a group research project.
First, findings from the previous case studies in this thesis, together with an
analysis of the Community Display research literature, are drawn upon to
derive some high-level user-experience principles for on-going settings.
Being a group research project, a number of technical goals were also
produced through group workshops, which are summarized here. These
principles were then interpreted into a specific instantiation: Dynamo
Version 1 (V1). In order to prepare the system for deployment in an
authentic on-going setting, it was then evaluated in a group user-feedback

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session to review its suitability, and in a laboratory study, to test its user-
interface and interaction models. The findings of these studies are then used
to recommend some iterative re-designs for the system, which were
integrated into Dynamo Version 2 (V2).

5.2 Informing the design of Dynamo

As detailed in the preface, the Dynamo Community Display is the product
of an EPSRC funded group project of the same name, which this thesis
research contributed towards. Technical infrastructure design and
implementation work was carried out by other parties on the group project –
see Izadi et al. (2003) for details. An initial set of technical goals were
derived from workshop meetings between members of the Dynamo project
group. For example, the computer scientists on the project were motivated
by a need to work on a technically interesting research challenge, involving
a distributed “Ubiquitous Computing” type infrastructure (see Izadi et al. for
details). The technical goals derived in these workshop meetings can be
summarized as follows, for the Dynamo Community display to:

• Provide facilities for display, sharing and exchange of documents

and media between users.

• Support the interconnection of end users’ personal devices, such as

laptops or digital cameras.

• Offer an innovative interaction model for sharing and exchange of

digital files between users, which takes advantage of a distributed
system architecture.

• Offer facilities for simultaneous multi-user interaction on the

Community Display (cf. Single Display Groupware, Stewart et al.,
1999), via provided keyboards and mice, or users’ own laptops.

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Izadi et al. (2003) detail and expand greatly upon these principles and their
underpinning motivations.

5.2.1 User experience principles for on-going settings

This section puts forward some user-experience principles for Community

Displays in on-going settings, with a view to encouraging voluntary
adoption, i.e. appropriation, as it is referred to in these settings. These are
derived from the literature review and an analysis of the findings of the
previous case studies. A short description of how these should be applied in
the design of Dynamo is also put forward. It is acknowledged that each
proposed design “solution” that is drawn out of a user experience principle
is but one possibility in a multitude of others in the design space: this is the
difficulty of designing for “Wicked Problems” (cf Fitzpatrick et al., 1996; as
detailed in Section 2.7.3).

- Provide open-ended and flexible functionality

With existing Community Displays for on-going settings it can be seen that
designers typically aim to provide a range of open-ended and flexible
functions which users can employ in various different ways. In essence, this
is design for appropriation. For example, the designers of Blueboard
(Russell and Sue, 2003) provide a range of “immediate-display-and-
exchange” functions (see Section 2.4.2), such as the means to enter text,
display images, arrange them, annotate on top of them using the
touchscreen, and share them in various ways. This functionality is flexible
and can be used in a “freeform” manner. For example, it could be used in a
group meeting to support the discussion of architectural plans, it could be
used as a brainstorming tool, or it could be used for socializing, e.g. by
someone who bumps into a colleague and decides to show them some
photos from a recent trip. Community Wall (Grasso et al., 2003) provides a
range of noticeboard functions (see Section 2.4.3), allowing users to post up

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various media types and annotate them in different ways (e.g. via web
interface or touchscreen). Again, this could be used in any number of ways,
depending on what the community themselves choose to use it for. For
example, it could be used to display a firm’s stock and productivity figures
in the foyer area for clients to see. Alternatively, it could be used to display
humour and jokes for socializing in a less public shared kitchen area.
Although the functionality is the same, the social role given to the
Community Display is very different.

In comparison, Community Displays for one-shot settings can be described

as offering relatively simple and inflexible functions. For example, in
Proactive Displays (McCarthy, 2003), Agent Salon (Sumi and Masse,
2001), Palimpsest (Agamanolis, 2003) (reviewed in sections 2.4 and 2.5),
the designers seem to aim to constrain and guide users into engaging in
certain social activities, with the apparent aim of short-cutting the process of
appropriation so it can fit into the limited time scale available, to encourage
first time usage. In other words, the designers of one-shot Community
Displays often aim to offer “pre-packaged” social activities for users to
engage in, rather than offering flexible and open-ended functions for a
community to gradually appropriate and “evolve” their own activities over
time that they find most suitable to their needs.

The technical goal specified for Dynamo to offer a surface for general
“display, sharing and exchange” purposes is consistent with the need to
provide open-ended and flexible functionality for an on-going setting. For
example, Dynamo will be appropriable as a noticeboard, a presentation
screen, an information display, a surface for note-taking, or even an ice-
breaking socializing tool, (among many other possibilities), depending on
the users’ needs.

- Support vicarious learning through observable interaction

In the Opinionizer studies it was found that vicarious learning, i.e., learning
by observing others, was a key process by which community members

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learned about Opinionizer. Drawing upon this, it is suggested that Dynamo
should offer a visual user interface that is easily observable by onlookers, to
facilitate the vicarious learning process. For example, keyboard shortcuts
and small gesture-based commands will be avoided, and instead iconic
palette based interfaces will be used.

- Build upon familiar interaction models

To speed the learning process and encourage uptake, it is suggested that

familiar interaction models should be built upon, rather than designing
completely new styles of interaction. Thus it can be recommended that
keyboard and drag-and-drop interaction within a WIMP (Windows-Icons-
Menus-Pointers) user interface should be used, so that users do not have to
re-learn the means to achieve basic interactions. This contrasts with other
more experimental interaction techniques used elsewhere in interactive large
displays, such as iRoom’s “flow menu” (Guimbretire et al., 2001) or
Flatland’s (Mynatt et al., 1999) gesture-based interface.

- Facilitating community-wide buy-in

Encouraging community-wide buy-in and achieving “critical mass”

(Ehrlich, 1987; as cited in Grudin, 1988) involves being inclusive to as
many members of the community as possible. As shown in both the
Opinionizer studies (Chapter 4) and the AV team case study (Chapter 3),
community-wide buy-in is facilitated when the effort and investment
required from members is very low: potential users should be able to walk-
up and use Dynamo without prior preparation or training. As stated in
Section 5.2, one of Dynamo’s technical goals was to support the
interconnection of personal devices. Community members may already own
a heterogeneous selection of devices, from music players to digital cameras,
PDAs and laptops, which they use in their daily lives. In order to encourage
usage of Dynamo, it is important that community members are able to use
their own existing devices, rather than needing to go to the time and effort

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of acquiring a particular type – the findings of the Opinionizer studies
suggest that requirement of time and effort can outweigh the perceived
benefits of the system and deter people from using it. Furthermore, some
community members may not even own a personal device, and if they do,
they may not carry them at all times. The system should be inclusive to such
people since they are potential users. In summary, a wide range of personal
devices will be supported in order to not exclude any potential users.
Furthermore, personal devices will be conceptualized as an optional benefit,
rather than a pre-requisite to interaction with Dynamo.

- Encourage a honey-pot effect

As shown in the AV and Opinionizer case studies, the honey-pot effect is a

useful phenomenon which can facilitate social congregation and interaction
around a large display without the need for planning activities, and it
therefore should be encouraged and supported. It has been postulated that
the honey-pot effect can be encouraged by making the vicinity of the
Community Display a comfortable and attractive place to be in and interact
socially (Brignull & Rogers, 2003); for example, in terms of location,
furniture and space. Dynamo’s technical goal (as stated in Section 5.2) of
providing simultaneous multi-user interaction seems to be highly
compatible with the aim of encouraging a honey-pot effect. To elaborate,
multi-user interaction involves the provision of multiple keyboards and
mice (and/or employment of users’ own laptops) to enable people to gather
round and interact simultaneously, in a manner similar to Single Display
Groupware (e.g. Stewart et al., 1999; Tse & Greenberg, 2004). This should
have the effect of preventing the one-by-one queue effect seen in the
Opinionizer studies, previously found to cause delay and deter usage, and
instead encourages a more social gathering around the Community Display.
The keyboards and mice are also portable, allowing users to choose to move
around to various tables and chairs in the vicinity, and choose the
arrangement they find most comfortable.

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It was also hoped that simultaneous multi-user interaction will allow open-
ended and flexible range of group uses. For example, a single small group
could gather round and each of them have a mouse and keyboard.
Alternatively, individuals could arrive alone, and use the Community
Display independently, or in pairs (etc). Or instead, a group of 12 people
could gather in the room, and congregate in groups of four, with one mouse
and keyboard on each table, among many other possibilities. In other words,
this interactional and spatial flexibility could provide new opportunities for
social use, and thus encourage a honey-pot effect.

- Support the scaling and arrangement of media

The AV team case study showed how team members often highlighted text,
and used large text sizes to draw attention to particular items on their large
display. This served an important function of disseminating information to
passers-by at a distance, and also of indicating the recency and importance
of these large items. To interpret this into a design decision for Dynamo,
user-controlled scaling of media windows (e.g. photos, videos) and font
sizes will be supported, since it is flexible function that community
members could potentially utilize to disseminate information and indicate
importance.

- Allow open access to all resources

Access control was a question posed in the initial Dynamo project group
discussions: should media (e.g. graphics or documents) placed on the
Dynamo surface be “lockable” so that other users can’t move it? Should
media be specifiable as “private”, and accessible only by the owner, or
“public”, and accessible by anybody? Findings from the AV and
Opinionizer case studies suggest that an open access, laissez-faire model
can be effective, as this keeps the system simple. This thereby facilitates
learning and adoption, while access control, if needed, can be socially
negotiated, and even supported through the development of community

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norms and practices. For example, participants in the AV team knew when
it was and was not appropriate to alter someone else’s annotations on the
large display. Also, participants in the Opinionizer study tended not to
manipulate other people’s comments, because they knew it was not socially
appropriate. Recent research in the area also implies support for this user
experience principle – for example, in Dix et al.’s (2004) user studies of the
“Hermes” situated door display (for the booking of shared rooms in an
office environment), they found that abuse of the open-access model tended
not to occur, because on-lookers provided a function of “neighborhood
watch”, to quote:

“…the public setting of a situated display acts as a resource

for security. The very publicness creates a social auditability
that prevents certain kinds of abuse.” (p.1)

Similarly, O’Hara et al. (2004), in user studies of another similar office door
display system, found that:

“The visibility of the reservation information made people

more accountable and socially aware that they were using
shared resources that others might need… there was an
emerging ‘Hall of Shame’ phenomenon in which people’s
now visibly antisocial reservation behaviour was being
monitored by others…” (p. 235)

Based on these findings, an open access model was chosen to be

implemented in Dynamo Version 1. However, the suitability of this model
was later refuted in the evaluation studies, and instead it was found that
optional access control should be offered. See Section 5.4.1 and 5.4.2 for
more details.

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5.3 Dynamo Version 1 System Description
Drawing upon the project group’s technical goals and the user experience
principles put forward in the previous section, the Dynamo system was
designed and implemented. It should be emphasized that the resultant
system is just one instance of many systems that could potentially have been
created on the basis of these goals and principles: it is exploratory research.

From a user-centric viewpoint, the Dynamo system is composed of three

parts, depicted in Figure 5.1 overleaf. Summarized below, these are detailed
in the following subsections:

• The Dynamo display surface: a large shared wall display, typically

composed of a plasma or projected screen

• The interaction points: keyboard and mouse pairs, or laptops, which

are used for multi-user interaction

• The device hub: a USB (or Firewire) hub where users’ mobile devices
are plugged in and accessed as media storage units

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Figure 5.1: Schematic diagram of the Dynamo system

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5.3.1 The Dynamo Display Surface

In summary, the overall function of Dynamo is to provide a large visual

surface which supports a range of display, sharing and exchange functions,
and allows the interconnection of a variety of personal devices and media
types. To reiterate some of the ways in which it can be appropriated, it may
be used as a noticeboard, a presentation screen, a surface for group “show
and tell” activities, for exchanging files, for browsing the web and
multimedia in groups, and generally, providing a shared point of reference
for conversational support.

Dynamo is a multi-user system, allowing simultaneous interaction from

multiple simultaneous users, via keyboards and mice. Users’ cursors are
colour coded, and their personal icons are displayed whenever appropriate
to allow them to easily identify each other on the surface. Multi-user access
to windows is optimistic (in Dynamo V1) and relies on social negotiation
between the co-present users. For example, all windows can be manipulated
by any user, regardless of who created them.

In terms of the contents of these windows, Dynamo supports most common

media types. Visual media types can be scaled – i.e. stretched to larger or
smaller sizes. All media types can be displayed, played, navigated through
or interacted with. However, owing to technical limitations, the only
editable media type is text, although forms on web pages and in java applets
can be filled in. The specific media types supported are: Text, Microsoft
Word and PowerPoint, Images (including JPEG, GIF, PNG and many
others), Audio (including MP3, WAV, WMA and many others), Video
(including MPEG, AVI, WMV and many others), Adobe PDF, Web
documents, Flash animations and Java Applets.

5.3.2 Interaction points

Interaction points are the means by which users interact with Dynamo.
“Base” interaction points are provided for users who do not have a
Windows laptop, while those with their own laptop can utilize it as a

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“mobile” interaction point if they wish. In a normal set up, three base
interaction points are provided. Any combination of base and mobile
interaction points can be used. Additional interaction points can be added
(or taken away) at any time during usage.

A base interaction point is a mouse & keyboard pair, typically wireless,

which any user can pick up and employ to interact with the Dynamo. Each
mouse & keyboard is connected to a Windows™ PC (typically hidden from
view) which is running the Dynamo Telepointer Application. This
application sends mouse and keyboard events to the Dynamo Display
Server.

If a user has a laptop which they can put on the Local Area Network (via a
wired or wireless connection), they are able to run the Dynamo Laptop
Application. This allows the desktop of the users’ laptop to tile with the
Dynamo surface, so that when a user moves their mouse to the top of the
screen, it appears on the Dynamo surface as a colour-coded pointer. Users
are able to drag and drop media files from their laptop desktop to the
Dynamo surface, and vice-versa.

5.3.3 The Dynamo Device Hub

A USB hub is provided which allows users to physically connect their

personal devices to Dynamo, with the exception of laptops, which are
connected via LAN. Dynamo is compatible with a range of personal devices
that users may bring with them to the community hub. Most devices, when
connected to Dynamo’s USB hub, are treated as removable disks. They
appear iconically on a palette on the Dynamo surface, and their contents can
be browsed and opened, and items can be copied to or from them. Figure
5.2, below, lists a selection of compatible devices and their features of
media capture and storage.

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 USB Flash Drive (termed “Pen Drive”). Designed to be held on a key-
ring, these devices serve as small storage devices. They plug directly
into a USB port without requiring a cable.

MP3 Player: Many serve the double function of music playback and
audio recording.

Digital Still Camera: Many have the capability for recording video and
audio clips as well as still photos.

Multimedia Jukebox: This new genre of device are for storage, viewing
and playback of multimedia, including video, images and audio.

Smart Phone: Among other features, these devices offer a range of

digital photo and video capture, music playback, document editing and
storage.

PDA: As with smart phones, many PDAs have capabilities for taking
photographs, video, audio, document editing and storage.

Windows Laptop: When connected via LAN and running the Dynamo
Laptop Application, the user is able to drag and drop media to and from
their desktop and the Dynamo surface.
Figure 5.2: Dynamo Compatible Devices

5.4 Evaluating Dynamo Version 1

Dynamo V1 was evaluated in two different ways, in order to achieve an

effective spread of findings – first, a feedback session was carried out at a
public event, to ascertain the reactions and opinions of potential users of
Dynamo, and gain some critical feedback. Secondly, a laboratory study was
carried out, where groups of participants were given a cooperative task to
perform using Dynamo (as reported in Section 5.4.2). This served to
investigate the usability and suitability of user-interface and interaction
models when used intensively by groups. In other words, the aim of these
evaluations was to carry out a design iteration prior to the main Dynamo
field study (Chapter 7), enabling the more minor design issues to be dealt
with before approaching the important research questions about real-world
in-situ usage.

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5.4.1 Feedback Session

In order to gain user feedback on the system, Dynamo V1 was deployed at a

small conference for computer scientists for the duration of one day. Since
the user group were expert computer users, it was hoped that they would be
able to articulate their feedback better than average end users. This made it a
type of “expert evaluation” session (Bias & Mayhew, 1994).

- Study Setting

Dynamo V1 was deployed in the foyer area of the hotel at which the
conference was being held. A diagram of the floor plan is shown in Figure
5.3a below, and a photo of the layout is shown in Figure 5.3b, overleaf.

Figure 5.3a: Floor plan of foyer area

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Figure 5.3b: Annotated photograph of the system layout

The system configuration involved a single SXGA projector used as the

Dynamo display (approx. 2.5m wide by 2m tall, positioned approx. 1m
above ground), with two base interaction points, composed of two pairs of
wireless keyboards and mice, and one mobile interaction point, consisting of
a laptop connected via Wireless LAN.

Evaluation took place in an informal session: delegates were free to wander

up to Dynamo and try it out as they pleased during their breaks. Two
Dynamo researchers were on hand as helpers, to give instructions when
needed. Users were observed interacting freely with the system, and were
interviewed afterwards in an semi-structured manner, to gather their
reactions and opinions about the Dynamo system. Data was recorded using
written notes.

- Findings

Overall, Dynamo was well received and the feedback showed that it had
promise in being an effective Community Display. However, problems in
ownership and access to media and devices caused concern for users. This
section will detail these findings.

In total approximately 65 delegates passed by the deployment during their

breaks. Approximately 40 showed an interest in the system, of which

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approximately 30 interacted with the system; some as individuals and others
in small groups, while others watched. Some users commented that they felt
“on stage” or under the spotlight. One commented, “I hope I don’t break it
in front of everyone”. This social awkwardness and apprehension of using
technology for the first time in front of an audience is consistent with the
analysis made on the Opinionizer studies in Chapter 4 (cf. Rogers &
Brignull, 2003).

Users were questioned on their feelings about the ability to simultaneously

interact on Dynamo. Respondents almost unanimously considered this to be
beneficial and sociable, to quote one interviewee: “It’s more sociable than
using laptops around a table”, while another stated “Instead of being a back
seat driver we can have two front seat drivers!” and yet another stated “...
you can just give something to someone by just dragging… [Gestures]
Bang! I think that’s important”. Also, a honey-pot effect was observed to
occur on some occasions, whereby conference delegates would go and join
in a conversation with a group or individual who was displaying media on
Dynamo, and a gathering would develop.

However, despite these benefits, a notable problem was observed in the lack
of representation of ownership and access rights of devices and media on
Dynamo’s surface. Of all the study participants, five users tried their own
pen-drives on Dynamo, browsing or sharing their personal media. In one
interaction, a pair stood together with an interaction point each, one of them
with a pen-drive plugged into Dynamo. When the owner tried out Dynamo,
opening and showing some documents to his colleague, the colleague
started browsing through the disk further. The colleague found an
application form on the disk for a grant proposal, which initiated a
conversation on the topic. In this case the pen drive owner did not mind his
colleague “nosing” through the contents of his disk. However, another
observer fervently complained to us about the possible breach in privacy
that could have occurred. Using the above example, he stated that that the
item found could have been something private, such as a secret job

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application or a compromising photo which he would not have wanted his
colleagues to see.

Reflecting on this complaint, it becomes obvious that there is a mismatch

between ownership rights in the real world, in which personal device
contents are private and are physically held out of reach from intruders (e.g.
in a bag or the user’s hands), and ownership rights on the Dynamo surface,
in which anyone can access any device that is connected and any window
that is displayed. While this open access approach was devised to provide a
simple, easy and rapid-to-use interface, it is clear that the contents of
personal devices may be considered private, and that people may not be
willing to rely on social protocol to prevent abuse. Indeed, accidental
misuse is a risk, as in the example above, where a colleague may open a file
expecting it to be an item acceptable to display publicly, and then finding it
is not. Furthermore, owing to the fact that it is a large publicly visible
display potentially being watched by on-lookers, the risk is not just of theft
of private documents – there is an immediate risk of other social problems
such as embarrassment, disgrace or humiliation.

5.4.2 Laboratory study of a group task using Dynamo

The aim of this second study was to observe the effectiveness and suitability
of Dynamo’s user-interface and interaction models, when used intensively
by groups. Specifically, a co-operative task was given to groups of
volunteers which they were asked to carry out using Dynamo. This study
was carried out on Dynamo Version 1.

- Participants

Participants were recruited via email advertisement which was sent to

undergraduates at the University of Sussex. Specifically, groups of four
friends or colleagues were requested to volunteer to participate in a study
using some new interactive technology in a group activity. Prior to the

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study, they were given a consent form, explaining that participation was
voluntary, the data collected was confidential, they could ask any questions
they liked, and that they were free to leave at any time without needing to
give a reason. Participants were paid £5 each.

- Study design

The given task involved the group creating an “interactive poster” on the
Dynamo surface, effectively preparing it to be a community noticeboard for
a hypothetical community who would use the space. This involved them
browsing through and choosing media from a mixed selection which they
were each given on different pen-drives as they arrived at the study. Each
participant’s selection was mixed in terms of relevance, aesthetics and
physical proportions, to engender discussion and decision-making. The task
was to spatially arrange the media on the Dynamo surface, with the option
of creating text and of displaying web pages if they wished. The scenario
given to them was that they were to create a poster which aimed to
encourage prospective students to come and study in Brighton. They were
told that the poster was to be displayed in a public space during an open
day, and passers-by had the option of interacting with the media and
downloading items to their own USB disks if they wished. The content was
chosen to be relevant to our participants (who themselves were based in
Brighton) and to be familiar enough to encourage a relaxed atmosphere and
discussion.

Four groups of four participants were studied. Within each group, two
participants were given wireless mice and keyboards (connected to PCs
running the telepointer application), one was given a laptop running the
Dynamo laptop application, and the fourth was given no device of their
own, and was instructed to contribute through discussion and by sharing
devices with the others. Three pen-drives were given to three of the users,
each containing a different selection of multimedia (images, video clips,
PowerPoint™ and Word™ documents). A further selection of multimedia

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was placed on the desktop of the laptop, allowing the laptop user to drag
and drop this material onto the Dynamo surface. Each session lasted 45
minutes. Before each session, 15 minutes were spent talking the users
through a detailed set of instructions explaining how to use the system.

Users were seated at two tables arranged in a wide “V” shape in front of the
Dynamo display, to allow users to be able to easily look at each other and
Dynamo. They were videoed from two angles – one camera was pointed at
the group, to record their physical behaviours, while another was pointed at
the Dynamo display, to record their behaviour on screen. A still of the video
capture set-up is shown in Figure 5.4. After the sessions, participants were
debriefed and interviewed about their experience of using Dynamo.

Figure 5.4: a still of the video capture set-up used in the laboratory
study (Dynamo is shown picture-in-picture, top left)

- Findings

Overall, although each of the four groups successfully completed the task,
they often experienced problems with the “open access” access control
model, in that they often inadvertently got in each others’ way,

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manipulating each others’ windows and working in each others’ space. This
section will detail these findings (also reported in more detail in Izadi et al.,
2003).

In general, when users started out using Dynamo, many of them had
difficulties in understanding the etiquette of using the communal surface.
Some users were very polite and asked the group before they opened any
documents on the public surface, while others were more forward and
dominated the display estate with less regard for others’ needs. Once they
became more familiar with Dynamo, users often helped each other and
worked together without using much discussion about how to cooperate
using the interface. This is shown in Vignette 5.1, below, where “P” and
“R” assist “L” who is having trouble grabbing and moving a window
containing a photo of an old lady from an overlapping pile of windows:

Vignette 5.1:
L: Can anybody move this one? [has trouble grabbing title bar
of a window] I’m trying to get the old lady to the front. [takes
hand off mouse momentarily]
P: [immediately grabs an occluding window and moves it out
the way, helping L]
R: [immediately grabs another occluding window and moves
it out the way – leaving L’s desired window visible.]

All the groups successfully completed the cooperative task, and expressed
satisfaction with the end result. However, in all the groups, when interaction
at the interface was most intensive, it was common to see users hindering
each other by overlapping, closing or “stealing” each others’ windows; or
using space on the surface that another user had considered their own. In
Vignette 5.2, below, ‘J’ closes a window that ‘R’ was using, and apologizes;
while in Vignette 5.3, ‘H’ and ‘M’ bicker over the control of two windows.

Vignette 5.2:
J: [makes some space for his new window by closing one in
its way.]
R: Oh, you closed my Events!

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 J: Oh sorry R, Did I?
R: That was mine that was!
J: Oops! I do beg your pardon!

Vignette 5.3:
H: See I can’t move your thing, look!
M: You can...
H grabs his window while he is talking and moves it while M
is trying to use it
M: [angrily] No!
M [resizes his window to cover H’s]
H: Oi! [He grabs the offending window and moves it out of
his way]

To quote one user in the debriefing interview: “I think it’s actually quite
chaotic unless you work to some sort of plan, because basically it’s like
having a desktop but harder because you can’t control it, you know, and
when you put something there, somebody’s going to put something over
what you’ve just put down.” Even though they were trying to cooperate,
users found it hard to stay aware of what the others were doing and, more
specifically, the windows and spaces the others were using.

5.4.3 Analysis of findings & implications for re-design

The two studies detailed above showed that the user-interface and
functionality of Dynamo V1 shows promise for group usage. In the
feedback session (Section 5.4.1), participants gave positive feedback about
the system and a honey-pot effect was observed. In the laboratory study
(Section 5.4.3), users achieved cooperative activities during a group task,
and were generally satisfied with the end result. However, some important
problems were also uncovered with Dynamo V1’s support for the
management of sharing and ownership of resources. In summary, the
feedback session showed that Dynamo V1 needed to support the ownership
of personal devices when plugged into the system, to avoid privacy
concerns. The laboratory study showed that Dynamo V1 needed a
mechanism for managing the sharing of the communal resources on the

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display, i.e., the real estate and the media items, to avoid conflicts between
users, particularly during periods of intensive use. This requirement created
a tension with the original user experience principle of “allowing open
access to all resources” in order to keep the interaction with the system
simple and thus facilitate learning and adoption (detailed in Section 5.2.1).
In other words, how could the system be kept simple to use for first-time
and novice users while also providing these additional features of access
control, which would add complexity to the system? The following
subsections detail how this tension was addressed in the redesign of
Dynamo, i.e. version 2 (V2).

- Ownership of personal devices

In order to implement ownership of personal devices without complicating

usage of the system for novice users, the following design changes were
made. For any user who desired private access to their personal device, they
could optionally register it with the system, by filling in a brief registration
dialogue box or using a command-line utility on any Windows™ computer.
When an unregistered device is plugged into Dynamo V2, it appears on the
public palette, and is accessible by anyone, thus maintaining the simplicity
of the original design. When a registered device is plugged into Dynamo
V2, it appears on a separate, personal palette, to which a user logs in by
typing their password, and no other user can have access unless explicitly
granted. Details of the new palette system are given in Section 5.5.

- Managing the sharing of the communal resources

To briefly revisit the origin of the design tension of ease-of-use and access
control, in Section 5.2.1 a number of pieces of evidence were found to
support the design of an “open access” access control model into Dynamo,
since they showed that social protocol could be sufficient in providing

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access control rules (Specifically, the case studies in Chapters 3 and 4; Dix
et al., 2004; O’Hara et al., 2004). Furthermore, an “open access” model
enabled the system to be easier to learn and use, and for this reason such a
model was designed into Dynamo V1. However, the laboratory study
reported in Section 5.4.3 shows that during intensive group usage, conflicts
between users became highly evident, in the form of accidental overlapping,
closing or stealing each others’ windows or space. In order to address the
tension between providing ease of use while also providing a means of
access control, facilities for access control were designed to be optional,
defaulting to the open access model for first time and novice users, while
offering advanced access control features via registration for those users
who desired them. In addition, the screen real-estate was re-designed to be
significantly larger, as detailed in section 5.5 and figure 5.6.

The mechanisms for access control designed for Dynamo V2 were called
“Carving”, and “Parcels”, inspired from other multi-user systems. For
example, many multi-user document sharing systems allow users to “check
out” documents they are working on and check them back in when they are
done, to prevent two people from accidentally working on the same item at
the same time (e.g. Macromedia Dreamweaver™). Also, multi-user shared
document editing tools which allow users to simultaneously work on the
same document (e.g. SubEthaEdit™), often use a technique of colour
coding to visually demarcate the section each user is working on, to prevent
accidental clashes. This inspired the design of the “carving” mechanism,
detailed in the following section. Also, various operating systems provide
means to administer access control of folders, allowing users to aggregate
media and store it iconically on their desktop, serving to provide an
organizational function, and freeing up valuable screen estate. This inspired
the development of the “Parcels” mechanism, also detailed in the following
section. Additionally, the size of Dynamo’s display estate was substantially
increased to address this problem, to provide more space within which
multiple users can position their media.

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5.5 Dynamo Version 2: System Description
This section describes the changed and additional features introduced into
Version 2. Repetition of the unchanged features stated in Section 5.3 is
avoided for the sake of brevity. A detailed video demonstrating the features
of Dynamo Version 2, is available in Izadi et al., (2003b). Figure 5.5
overleaf shows screen shot of the system in use. Following this section,
“Dynamo V2” will generally be referred to as just “Dynamo”, for the
purpose of brevity.

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Figure 5.5: Screenshot of the Dynamo (V2) system in use

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- Increased screen estate

Dynamo V2 allows a Dynamo surface to be spread across multiple screens,

the default being two tiled side-by-side (although theoretically offering any
configuration, and as many screens as the server’s hardware can support),
This offers substantially more screen estate for simultaneous interaction and
the concurrent display of media on the surface, as shown in Figure 5.6.

Figure 5.6: comparing the screen estate size of Dynamo V.1 with the
intended size of Dynamo V.2

- System registration

To register with the Dynamo system, the user needs to own a compatible
personal device, such as a pen-drive, a digital camera or a laptop.
Registration with the system can be carried out away from the Dynamo
surface, via a dialogue box on Dynamo or by running a command-line
registration application on any Windows™ computer. This deposits a
configuration folder onto the user’s device: this includes an XML document
specifying their full name and their password (encrypted). Their chosen
personal icon is also placed here, as an image file. This is customizable by
the end user at any time.

- Logging in

A registered user logs into Dynamo by plugging in their device, and then
clicking on their personal palette and entering their password into the small
dialogue box which appears adjacently. The system then associates their

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chosen interaction point (wireless mouse and keyboard) as owned by that
user. Non registered users are able to use the system at any time as
anonymous “guest” users. Unlike registered users, any window they open is
publicly accessible, and they are not able to create or belong to any carve-
regions (see later for details), since the system cannot identify them as
unique individuals.

- Personal and public palettes

Users access the available communal resources as icons on a shared public

palette which is located at the top of the screen. These include services, such
as a web browser and annotation tool, and any shared or unregistered
devices, as shown in Figure 5.5. Registered users have their own personal
palettes (see Figure 5.7), which appear when they plug in their personal
device, located in a row on the bottom of the screen. Personal palettes are
identified by colour code, together with the user’s icon, which they choose
themselves. Figure 5.7 shows a photograph of the user’s face as their chosen
icon.

Figure 5.7: an example of a Personal Palette

- Taking and giving copies of media

Users can take copies of media items by grabbing a window’s content and
dropping it onto their personal icon on their personal palette. Similarly,
users can give other users copies of media in the same way.

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- Addressable Parcels

Parcels provide users with a means of storing media on the dynamo surface
for future access. Parcels are like “folders” seen in normal GUI
environments (such as Microsoft Windows™), except that they have an in-
built and readily accessible visual access control tool. Parcels have two
states – iconic and open. When iconic, a parcel is shown as a parcel icon
(shown as either “sealed” or “previously opened”, as depicted in Figure
5.8), and has a textual label. When open, a parcel is shown as a media
viewer window, which allows users to view the contents of the parcel and
open each item. It also offers facilities for setting access control, sealing the
parcel, and deletion. An access control pane offers simply a list of registered
users, which can be selected via the mouse, as well the option to make the
parcel “public”, i.e. publicly accessible by any user.

Figure 5.8: Parcel icons, shown sealed (left) and opened (right).

Carving – communal surface management

Carving is a mechanism which provides a means for communal surface

management. In other words, carving allows a user to take control of a free
area of screen estate, display this ownership, share it with chosen others,
and relinquish it when done. Any windows placed inside a carve region
become owned by the owner (or owners) of the region. A user creates a
carve by holding down the right mouse-button and dragging diagonally
downwards and to the right. The region becomes colour-coded to their
cursor/palette colour, as depicted in Figure 5.9, overleaf. A user can give
others access to the space by dragging the carve’s key icon from the top

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right of the carve, and dropping it onto the target user’s personal icon on
their personal palette. This causes the joining user’s icon to appear with the
owner’s in the top left of the carve, as depicted in Figure 5.10, overleaf.
Access can be provided for users who are not present at the time by putting
the carve’s key icon into a parcel and addressing it to them. Access can be
revoked by dragging their personal icon out of the carve and dropping it
onto the Dynamo surface. A user who does not have access is shown this by
their cursor developing a “shield” icon around it, as depicted with the green
cursor in the red carve region, in Figure 5.9. A carve region can be
discarded by clicking the “discard” button in the bottom left of the carve
region.

Figure 5.9: Detail of two carve regions. (from Brignull et al., 2004)

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Figure 5.10: Adding (right cursor) and revoking (left cursor) a user
from a carve region (from Izadi et al., 2003)

5.5 Discussion
This chapter has presented the design process carried out for Dynamo, a
Community Display for on-going usage settings. Evaluation of Dynamo V1
revealed it to be promising as a Community Display, yet it suffered from a
problematic lack of facilities for the management of sharing and ownership
of the communal resources on the display, i.e. personal devices, the media
displayed, and the screen real estate itself. Analysis suggests that such
facilities will be important for usage in on-going settings. To draw an
analogy of Dynamo’s resources with the tables and chairs in a typical on-
going communal space, these are both intended to free for anyone to use as
they wish. However, for this communality to work, there is also a need for
signifying temporary ownership. With tables, chairs, and personal
belongings, people mark their ownership physically, with their bodily
presence. The mechanism of carving in Dynamo is intended to be the digital
equivalent of marking ownership, in the absence of physicality.

It is interesting to consider how these issues of managing sharing and

ownership did not emerge in the Opinionizer studies. In Opinionizer, since
the usage activity was designed to be simple and to encourage socializing, it
is possible that this content was too trivial and temporary for community

130
members to become concerned about ownership. Indeed, such lack of
concern is consistent with the design goals aimed for with Community
Displays for one-shot settings. However, in on-going usage settings, where
owned, non-trivial content may be used (as observed in the field
evaluation), and community members may invest more time and effort in
usage of the display (as observed in the laboratory study), issues of
managing sharing and ownership come to the forefront of the users’
concerns.

Management of sharing and ownership aside, the evaluation studies carried

out suggest that the user experience principles put forward at the beginning
of this chapter were generally effective in informing the design of Dynamo.
However, the main evaluation is reported in the next chapters. In Chapter 6,
a preliminary study of an authentic on-going setting is reported, to provide a
point of comparison for the effect of Dynamo once deployed. In Chapter 7,
the main study is reported, in which Dynamo was deployed in that setting
for a duration of two weeks. This reveals many interesting insights into the
way it became appropriated by the community within the initial adoption
period.

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Chapter 6

Preliminary Observational study of an

on-going setting

6.1 Introduction_________________________________________ 133

6.2 Preliminary observational study ________________________ 133
6.2.1 The Deployment Site and User Community ___________________ 133
6.2.2 Rhythm and flow in the common room _______________________ 134
6.2.3 Activities and practices in the common room __________________ 135
6.2.4 Survey of digital information sharing practices _________________ 141
6.3 Discussion _________________________________________ 143

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6.1 Introduction
This chapter describes a one-week 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 provide a grounding description of the community’s existing
activities, practices and flow, to offer a point of comparison with the effects
of Dynamo after it is deployed.

6.2 Preliminary observational study

6.2.1 The Deployment Site and User Community

The site selected was the common room of Blatchington Mill 6th form
college, used by a student community. An initial visit suggested this site
would be suitable for the following reasons: it was used regularly by its
community members; the space was large enough to house Dynamo; the
members showed an interest in the capabilities of the system; and they were
willing to be videoed during the study.

The common room had 300 square meters of floor space, and contained
enough tables and chairs to seat 44 people. As detailed in Section 6.2.4, the
common room contained a number of resources, including lockers, pigeon
holes, vending machines and so forth. The rhythm and flow of usage is
detailed in the following section (Section 6.2.2).

The community was composed of 150 students aged 17-19 years old. All
members were studying for their A-level exams, and had been doing so for a
duration of 1-2 years. Community members were, in general, on familiar
terms with their peers, although some cases were noted where students did
not know each others’ names. Most students treated the common room as
their base on the college campus, and used it as a place to hang out, work,
socialize, read, listen to music, and locate friends. Approximately 50
individuals spent most of their spare time in the common room: from an

133
hour and a half, to three hours in total a day. The majority used it for less
than an hour a day, to access resources such as the tea bar, their lockers, or
to hang out while eating meals or having coffee with friends.

6.2.2 Rhythm and flow in the common room

All students shared the same general timetable structure. Specifically, this
meant that they shared a twenty minute morning break at 10:50 am, and an
hour long lunch break at 1:10pm, during which time a tea bar in the
common room was open, and students could buy hot food and drinks, which
drew a flow of students into the room – at these times, the room was at its
fullest. Also, lesson change-overs occurred every hour, at which time many
students would return to the common room to use their lockers and have
passing conversations with their friends. During these change-overs, the
room would fill and empty rapidly – within a period of 5-10 minutes.
Different students had different timetables, owing to the fact that they were
all studying different combinations of subjects. They also often had long
gaps between their timetabled lessons, time they would often spend in the
common room. Some students enjoyed spending time in the common room
so much, that even if they had no more lessons that day, they would stay
there until the end of the day at 3:50 pm. Other streams of flow occurred in
which students accessed other communal resources in the space. As shown
in Figure 6.1, these included vending machines, a photocopier, a
noticeboard, their pigeonholes, and the deputy headmaster’s office which
was often used for student meetings.

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Figure 6.1: Floorplan of the common room

A honey-pot effect was also observed to regularly occur in the common

room, similar to those described in the previous two case studies, except
here without a large display involved. People would often check the
occupancy of the room by glancing into one of the windows as they walked
past. On the footpath leading up to the building, the occupants of the room
could be clearly seen through two large windows (depicted in blue on the
top edge of Figure 6.1), and in the corridor adjacent to the common room
leading to other teaching rooms, students could glance in a window by the
door. This enabled them to locate friends they were looking for, but also, if
they noticed a social gathering, they would often pop in to socialize and see
what was going on. In a similar manner, people would be drawn in from the
various other streams of flow to the gathering. Conversely, if there was
nobody in the room, they were less likely to stay in there on their own. As
such, spontaneous gatherings would occur, even during normally quiet
times.

6.2.3 Activities and practices in the common room

The common room was used by the community for a range of different
activities, as depicted in Figure 6.2. Figure 6.2a depicts a student reading

135
literature quietly for their coursework, while on the other side of the table,
another student has left their folder and pencil case at the table, in the midst
of working on an essay. Figure 6.2b depicts a gathering around a table,
where one reads, two eat their lunch and another has their work on the table.
In the background someone is putting on a CD, as shown close up in Figure
6.2c. Mixed in with these different activities is typically number of
simultaneous threads of informal conversation. These threads would move
and interweave as people joined in and left, reflecting a continual
undercurrent of socializing and mingling activities. Figure 6.2d shows a
student giving a musical performance on their guitar. Other similar
performances involved students telling stories and jokes, and playing music
on the stereo, such as newly released albums. The common room would also
be used as a convenient location for group work, for example, students
working on group projects or proof-reading each others’ essays.

Figure 6.2: Activities carried out in the common room.

Overall, many of the activities carried out in the common room had the feel
of performance for the benefit of onlookers – the common room was a place
to see and be seen. For example, mobile phone conversations were often
held loudly; students would often announce text messages to their friends

136
that they had received or were sending; and the act of entering would often
be carried out with a flourish, a loud “hello” and handshakes or hugs. This
resonates with Goffman’s (1969) sociological analysis of social life being a
“theatrical performance” involving performer and audience.

Figure 6.3: (a) Student noticeboard by the entrance. (b) Notices

attached to walls, (c) Makeshift cardboard noticeboard.

Large displays were employed in the common room to display notices. As

shown in Figure 6.3a, a noticeboard and whiteboard were located near the
door to the room, which staff and students would use to publicize events and
important information. For example, on the right hand side, there is a
scrawled notice from students to other students, about their Christmas party,

137
stating that fancy dress was optional and everyone was invited. On the left
hand side, the pin board is predominantly used by the staff to display
“official” notices about lesson cancellations and room changes, among other
things.

Figure 6.3b also shows the use of the walls as a surface for displaying
notices (on the left is a request to keep the room tidy, on the right an
advertisement for another evening social event). Figure 6.3c shows a
makeshift cardboard noticeboard constructed by the student committee (a
group of students involved in organizing events and representing the
community in staff meetings). This makeshift noticeboard was evidently
constructed for lack of available existing display surfaces, and was used to
display a list of people who had not paid for an upcoming theatre trip. Once
paid, their names were crossed off, providing a public record.

In addition to the pinning up of notices, flyers were often distributed around

the room by students advertising upcoming events such as jumble sales (see
Figure 6.4b) and by the staff distributing “official” materials, such as gap
year information leaflets (see Figure 6.4a).

Figure 6.4: use of flyers to distribute information

Also shown in Figure 6.4 is a magazine left on one of the tables – students
tended to leave magazines out for others once they had read them.
Magazines and other artefacts were often used as conversational props, i.e.
providing a resource for conversational topics and a shared point of
reference. Other artefacts used as conversational props included CD cases,
text and photo messages on mobile phones, and digital cameras. The

138
following vignette is an example of this practice – specifically, it involves a
group of students passing around a digital camera and chatting about the
photos. Figure 6.5, overleaf, shows a series of video stills from the event,
with corresponding descriptive text.

To give a background for this vignette, it occurred in morning break

(11.30am) on a Tuesday (day 2 of the study). Frame 1 depicts 4 girls (names
anonymised) – Mary standing on the left, next to Cathy, holding her digital
camera, followed by Penny on her right, and on the far right of the photo is
Becca, who is busy writing. The four girls sit at a table, with their
coursework and writing materials out. Cathy has just taken out her digital
camera, and has begun to browse photos with Penny, looking over her
shoulder. As the text in the figure describes, they browse the photos as a
group, either passing the camera round, holding it out for everyone to see, or
leaning in close. As the group looks through the photos, this furnishes them
with material to talk about, and provides a memory function for them to
reminisce over the photographed events. It is clear that the group takes
considerable enjoyment through looking at the photos and chatting about
them – they serve a socializing and entertainment function (see over).

139
 (1) Cathy & Penny (middle) talk about
and laugh at the photos on the camera,
while Becca (right) studies. Mary (left)
notices their gathering and
approaches…

(2) Mary leans in to see the photos, and

chats to Cathy and Penny.

(3) Cathy puffs her cheeks out doing an

impression of herself in one of the
photos, the group laughs loudly. After a
few minutes, Mary says bye and moves
off, ending up socializing with another
group.
(4) Becca, asks for the camera to see the
photo they are currently looking at.

(5) She looks through the photos, and

when she finds one she likes, she holds
the camera out for everyone to see.
They gossip about the featured couple.

(6) Cathy takes the camera back, and

browses some more, showing Penny
each photo. Penny asks for a copy of the
photos from their night out (a selection
of those on the camera).

(7) After some deliberation, since the

photos were determined to be too big
for email, Cathy agrees to record a CD
for Penny tomorrow night, when she
can get help from her brother.

(8) They continue browsing & chatting.

Becca finds a photo of herself that she
disapproves of, but when she tries to
delete it, Mary insists on taking the
camera off her (pictured) and looking at
it with Penny, before doing it herself.

Figure 6.4: Vignette of Group socializing with a digital camera

140
The small screen of the digital camera poses some limitations to their group
viewing activity – which they remedy with the “work around” of passing the
camera around (e.g. frame 3), leaning in (e.g. frame 2), and holding the
camera out (e.g. frame 5). During the 4 minutes and 22 seconds of the
vignette clip, the camera was moved and the people re-arrange themselves
22 times- an average of approximately once every twelve seconds, which
may be an unnecessary amount of ‘re-arranging’ work if instead a
Community Display like Dynamo was used. However, there may be other
benefits to using the camera, such as privacy of visibility within the group.
Frame 7 shows how the sharing of the digital photos had to be deferred for
two days, since the camera alone did not provide this function, and the
owner did not know how to carry out the CD-recording procedure without
help. This also suggests that Dynamo may be suitable in this setting, since it
allows sharing and exchange to be easy and spontaneous.

This discussion of technology usage leads onto a survey carried out on the
community’s usage of digital technologies, reported in the following
section.

6.2.4 Survey of digital information sharing practices

During the preliminary study, a short questionnaire (included in appendix 2)

was distributed to all the students in their pigeonholes, in order to find out
about their level of computer expertise, use of personal devices, and their
digital information sharing practices. The aim of this survey was to provide
a grounding understanding to inform the interpretation of the students’
uptake of Dynamo. Of the 150 students in the community, 43 completed the
questionnaire (20 male, 23 female, mean age: 18). To summarize the data,
the majority of them reported that they used computers on average 2 hours a
day, and rated themselves as “average” computer users on a 5 point Likert-
type scale. They were asked to indicate from a list which personal devices
they regularly used at college. The results of this question are shown in a
bar chart in Figure 6.5, below:

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Figure 6.5: Personal devices regularly used at college, as indicated by
survey respondents.
In rank order, the most popular to least popular devices were: non-mms
mobile phones (60%), followed by mms (photo-capable) mobile phones
(35%), digital still cameras (28%), recordable CDs (26%), zip disks (21%),
mp3 walkmans (16%), floppy disks (14%), pen-drives (9%), laptops (7%) ,
digital video cameras (7%), and PDAs (2%). Of particular note here is the
prevalence of physically small pocket-sized devices, of low value –
typically under £100. This is likely to be due to the fact that students had
little money to spend on expensive hardware, and traveled long distances on
foot each day, therefore needing their bags to be light. This data also
suggests that Dynamo would be particularly suitable for this community
since many of them regularly used personal devices that were compatible
with Dynamo.

The survey also asked the students to select from a list which digital
information sharing activities they regularly undertook. Results of this
question are shown in Figure 6.6, below.

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Figure 6.6: Digital information sharing activities regularly undertaken,
as indicated by survey respondents.

In summary, the most dominant practice was mobile phone voice calls, at
95%, followed by textual emails (91%), SMS (91%), emails with
attachments (88%), instant messaging (53%), MMS (picture, video or
sound) messaging (28%), web discussion boards (19%), photo-sharing
websites (e.g. shutterfly.com) (9%). The rarest practices were Bluetooth file
sharing (5%) and use of shared drive or ftp servers (5%). This shows that
the respondents engaged in a range of digital information sharing activities,
which implies a further potential suitability of Dynamo to this community.

6.3 Discussion
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, having studied together and used
the space for a period of 1-2 years. They used the room on a daily basis, and
a subset of approximately 50 used the room for over 1.5 to 3 hours a day.
The room was used for informal social interaction (predominantly
socializing rather than work-related), and contained a number of resources,

143
contributing to its centrality and offering opportunities for serendipitous
interaction. In general, the common room was observed to be a comfortable
place in which people passed time and interacted with others (Oldenburg,
1989) for the purpose of enjoyment.

Responses to the survey showed that the sample of community members

were of average level computer expertise, carried an assortment of personal
devices, and engaged in a range of information sharing practices.
Noticeboards and flyers were also widely used for asynchronous
information dissemination. Together with the vignette example of social
digital camera usage, this suggests a great potential for Dynamo to be
employed in this setting to support their existing practices.

144
Chapter 7

The adoption of Dynamo in an on-

going setting

7.1 Introduction_________________________________________ 146

7.2 Study Details ________________________________________ 149
7.2.1 Duration _______________________________________________ 149
7.2.2 Study set up ___________________________________________ 149
7.2.2 Participant briefing and instructional materials _________________ 151
7.2.4 Participant consent ______________________________________ 152
7.2.5 Observation and data capture ______________________________ 152
7.3 Study Findings ______________________________________ 154
7.3.1 Overview of findings _____________________________________ 154
7.3.2 Analysis of log data ______________________________________ 157
7.3.4 Overview of vignettes ____________________________________ 163
7.3.5 Vignette (a) enticing social interaction ________________________ 166
7.3.6 Vignette (b) concurrent group use for socializing _______________ 168
7.3.7 Vignette (c) low engagement group interaction _________________ 170
7.3.8 Vignette (d) opportunistic use in a transition ___________________ 172
7.4 Analysis of Study Findings ____________________________ 176
7.4.1 Appropriation: the emergence of practices over time ____________ 176
7.4.2 Levels of engagement and gradual buy-in ____________________ 180
7.4.3 The role of entry points in enabling direct interaction ____________ 183
7.4.4 Community advocacy, support and tutoring ___________________ 185
7.5 Discussion _________________________________________ 188

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7.1 Introduction

Figure 7.1: Community use of the Dynamo System

This chapter describes an observational study of Dynamo V2 in an on-going

usage setting, detailing the manner in which the Community Display is
appropriated over a period of two weeks (depicted in Figure 7.1, above).
Video data is summarised as vignettes, which provide a rich description of
the initial adoption of the system and the behaviour of the users. The
findings of a post hoc survey are reported, which show patterns of the
uptake of Dynamo and information about its effect on community life. Also,
quantitative data captured in the system log files is analysed, depicting the
progress of system usage and the adoption of its individual features over
time.

In general, the findings show the progress of appropriation over the course
of the deployment, detailing how the community progressed from complete
naivety regarding the system and treating it like a normal PC, to gradually
developing a shared understanding of the usefulness of the system for their
needs, in the development of activities, practices and norms. Practices they

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developed included using Dynamo as a prop to entice social interaction with
peers; using it as a stage to give entertaining performances to large groups
during breaks; using it as resource to support socializing and mingling in
“multifocused gatherings” (Goffman, 1963); and engaging in policing and
tidying activities to maintain it as a communal resource that benefited the
majority. Vignettes describing these practices are analyzed in detail.

The vignettes reveal many parallels with their prior practices. For example,
prior to Dynamo, they would give performances, e.g. playing guitars or
telling jokes; they would socialize using magazines and digital cameras as
props; and they would maintain the room’s communal resources (e.g. tables,
chairs and the stereo) through policing and tidying carried out by particular
community members. This emphasizes how they appropriated Dynamo to
meet the needs of their own community setting, i.e. to do familiar things in
new ways, and this shows the importance of providing flexible and open-
ended functionality to enable them to do this.

As found in the previous case studies, interaction in relation to the

Community Display occurred at various different “levels of engagement”,
from peripheral monitoring through to direct interaction. In this study.
analysis of the findings shows how peripheral monitoring and low-
engagement interactions were used to learn about the system by watching
others interacting (vicarious learning).

Two community members were very keen and adopted the system on the
first day, acquiring and registering pen-drives as soon as they could.
However, a majority of the community “bought in” (i.e. invested interest,
time and dedication) to the system and its related practices gradually and at
their own pace. In general (though not exclusively) they would begin by
engaging with the system in a predominantly peripheral manner, learning by
overseeing, while doing other things in the locality. Initially, they would
“dip in” to Dynamo-related group interactions on occasions, and then, over
time, the length and regularity of these occasions would increase. Also,
within these interactions, they would progress from a predominantly

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conversational role, to gradually using interaction points and devices more
and more often. Furthermore, they would often get support and help from
their friends, in the form of “over the shoulder” learning, side-by-side
tutoring and “back seat” tutoring, which was facilitated by Dynamo’s multi-
user functionality.

Social interaction involving Dynamo but not involving direct interaction

with it was also regularly observed, for example in presenter-audience type
activities. This was found to be a legitimate form of participation which
enabled the wider community to benefit from learning about the displayed
information (e.g. awareness of their peers’ interests and activities outside of
college), and more generally, to benefit from the enjoyment of the social
interaction itself.

A number of different factors were observed to vary in usage situations. For

example, the spontaneity or planned-ness of the interaction, the type of
personal device used (if any), individual or group arrangement, and the type
of support given by colleagues, if any. These factors were observed to
combine into a wide range of contingencies, referred to as “entry points”,
which are described as being either “open”, allowing an interaction to
proceed, or “closed” preventing the interaction from happening. Examples
are given of both types, drawing from the study observations, and it is
suggested that this concept of entry points is useful in evaluating
Community Displays for the purposes of suggesting re-design
improvements, to facilitate voluntary adoption.

The structure of this chapter is be as follows. First, the study details are
reported, including the arrangement of the room, the instructional materials,
and the data collection approach. Then the study findings are reported,
including an overview, patterns in the system log data, and a series of five
vignettes. An analysis of these findings is then reported, and finally, the
discussion section describes the contribution of this chapter as a whole.

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7.2 Study Details
7.2.1 Duration

Dynamo was deployed in the Blatchington 6 Common Room for a total of

10 days in December 2003. The room was available to students on
weekdays from 8.30-5.30.

7.2.2 Study set up

The deployment setting was described in detail in Chapter 6, and is not

repeated in this section. Figure 7.2, overleaf, shows a floor plan of the room
in use, with Dynamo fully deployed. The Dynamo Displays (two 52”
plasma screens) were deployed against a free wall, and the Dynamo
hardware was housed in a security cupboard adjacent to this.

Two digital cameras and a number of pen drives were provided on a free
loan basis. Students could simply sign out items and borrow them as they
pleased. Also, pen drives were offered for sale to students who wished to
buy them.

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Figure 7.2: Floorplan depicting the spatial configuration of Dynamo.

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7.2.2 Participant briefing and instructional materials

Prior to the preliminary study, a number of students had been told

informally about Dynamo by the researchers and by the staff at the school.
They were made aware that two large plasma screens connected to a
computer were going to be installed in the common room, allowing them to
display and share documents and multimedia. On the first day of the study
when Dynamo was installed, a briefing session lasting 30 minutes was
carried out with 18 students. This involved a demonstration of the system’s
features.

As well as the students, the teaching staff were introduced to Dynamo, and
were informed of the possibilities of using Dynamo for student learning and
group activities. Three teachers designed activities involving Dynamo and
advocated them to their students as voluntary activities for their spare time.
The photography teacher asked students to scan their portfolios and put
them on Dynamo to get critical feedback. She also created a public parcel
containing work of a number of famous photographers, and questions about
technique and style, which she hoped would stimulate verbal discussion and
annotation using Dynamo’s text note facility. The Drama teacher created a
page of web links relating to the drama students’ coursework on Romeo and
Juliet, and posted it on the Dynamo surface in a parcel. This was done with
the hope of students browsing the pages, learning useful information and
discussing the material in groups in their spare time. The geography teacher
also advocated use of Dynamo for group web browsing of course-related
materials, and reminded them of this possibility a number of times.
Interestingly, these teacher-advocated activities failed and were not engaged
in by students, as reported in Section 7.4.1.

Also, throughout the study, A4 leaflets containing instructional materials

were available to the students (see appendix 2), although interestingly, only
7 were taken out of the 100 leaflets provided, the implications of which are
discussed later. Students were also encouraged to ask for help from the
researchers whenever they needed it.

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7.2.4 Participant consent

Permission was gained from the college allowing us to observe and record
the students’ use of Dynamo. This blanket agreement was possible since the
college held the legal position of “in loco parentis”, i.e. acting as the
students’ parents while they were at the college. As a further courtesy to the
students, they were also given participation consent forms (see appendix 2
for more details). Only 2 students expressly did not wish to participate in the
study at all. A further 5 students agreed to participate but requested that any
video and photos of themselves remain confidential and unpublished. At the
same time as the consent forms were distributed, a disclaimer form was also
distributed, which students had to sign in agreement in order to participate.
This stated that they agreed not to use Dynamo in an anti-social or illegal
manner, and that if they did, they took full personal responsibility for their
actions. Copies of these documents are available in appendix 2.

7.2.5 Observation and data capture

Four observation and data capture techniques were used. Firstly,

observational data was recorded in written notes, along with the time,
allowing it be associated with the time-stamps in the recorded video.
Secondly, video was recorded simultaneously from three camera angles, as
shown in Figure 7.3, below:

Figure 7.3: Camera angles recorded during the study

The “screen camera” was positioned half way down the side of the room,
pointing towards the screens. This mainly recorded the screen activity and

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the users’ behaviours in the immediate vicinity. The “behaviour camera”
was pointed from the side of the plasma screens outwards towards the users
and the room behind. Finally, the mobile camera was hand-held and was
moved or zoomed around the room in order to record the detail of any on-
going user interactions.

Each day, 9 hours of video was captured from three simultaneous angles,
producing a total of 270 hours of video. This video was captured digitally,
and the different camera angles were synchronized using Final Cut Pro™.
Three months were spent transcribing the video footage into a written report
for each day of the study. Using Jordan and Henderson’s (1995) Interaction
Analysis approach, these reports were analyzed according to a set of defined
foci. These included chunking the reports into events, locating the
beginnings, endings, and segmentation within these events, the rhythm and
periodicy of daily activities, spatial organization of interaction, and trouble
and repair in these interactions (Jordan and Henderson, 1995). In addition to
Jordan and Henderson’s foci, “flow” and the “honey pot effect” were also
used as foci, drawing upon the findings of this thesis so far. This led to a
condensed set of vignettes (reported in sections 7.3.4 – 7.3.8), which
provide insights into the key issues uncovered by this analysis.

In addition to qualitative data capture, log data was also captured by the
Dynamo system, recording the occurrence of feature usage during the study.
Specifically, this log data detailed high level interactions, such as plugging
in or out a device, logging in or out, dragging media onto or off the surface,
creating, moving and resizing windows, parcels, notes and carves, and use
of palettes. Low level interactions, such as telepointer movements, were not
recorded.

Finally, a post-hoc survey was carried out after the study, in order to
ascertain their perceptions of Dynamo and their opinions of its impact on
their daily lives. This was distributed to all 150 community members in
their pigeon-holes, and 39 responded.

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7.3 Study Findings
The findings are reported in the following manner. First, an overview is
provided, to give a feel for the findings as a whole. Then, the log data is
analyzed, giving an understanding of the progression of feature usage over
the duration of the study. Some aspects of the post hoc survey are also
reported here to show the uptake of Dynamo and the progress of registration
over time. Then, a series of five illustrated vignettes will be detailed.
Finally, the findings are condensed into a set of key principles.

7.3.1 Overview of findings

In all, the Dynamo deployment can be regarded as a success. The system

was used throughout the study by a range of different community members
and for a number of different kinds of activities. Post hoc feedback on the
system was overwhelmingly positive from the users (78% of survey
respondents wrote positive comments), and many indicated disappointment
when the system was dismantled at the end of the study. Also, the
community appropriated Dynamo and developed practices and styles of use
that were unanticipated by the designers, as reported in later sections.

As observed in the preliminary study (Chapter 6), approximately 50 of the

150 strong community were regular and intensive users of the common
room, spending 1.5 to 3 hours in there spread out through each day. This
subset of approximately 50 became the core community of Dynamo users,
using it most intensively, and making up the majority of those who
registered with Dynamo (15 out of the total of 21 who registered, i.e. 71%).
In addition to this core were members who came into the room generally
during breaks and lesson change-overs, and often interacted with Dynamo
and its associated social activities in a peripheral or “low engagement”
capacity, for example, watching others, enjoying the displayed media and
performances given, joining in conversations, or having “spin off”
conversations about the media displayed. Only 6 people out of this wider
group registered with Dynamo (making up 29% of the registrants). More

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analysis about the important role of “low engagement” and peripheral
interaction with Dynamo is carried out in Section 7.4.1.

It was noted that that the common room became progressively busier
through the study. Feedback from the post hoc survey tallies with this
observation. In response to a question asking about Dynamo’s effect on life
in the common room, selected participants responded:

“More people stayed in the common room.”

“A lot more people spent time in common room.”
“Dynamo made people socialise more in the common room
and was fun to use.”
“It made the common room more interesting and a lot more
crowded”

Respondents also commented on the positive effects Dynamo had on

socializing and community interaction, as shown below. Although these
quotes do not provide conclusive evidence, they provide a general feel for
the perceived effect of Dynamo on community life in the common room:

“…adding photos and sharing things meant you spoke to

people you wouldn't usually”
“Brought everyone together and made us share things and
laughs”
“Dynamo created a much more social atmosphere within the
college common room & enabled people to share fun things
they had made.”
“It brought more life within the common room, made people
socialise more.”
“It made the common room busy and the filming brought
people together so it affected us in a good way.”

Quantitative results from the post-hoc survey also indicate some broad
patterns in participant behaviour. The graph in Figure 7.4, below, shows the
timing of first time usage among survey respondents. The average first time
usage was on the third day (S.D. 2.40), although the majority (14) was on
the first day, as a result of the briefing session then. There was a wide
spread in this data (indicated by the standard deviation): participants

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continued to try Dynamo for the first time from day 1 right up until day 9 of
the study. In total, 21 students registered with Dynamo, of which 16
responded to the post hoc survey.

Figure 7.4: Graph showing the occurrence of first time use and system
registration (data from post hoc survey responses)

Although system registration is not a direct indicator of the progress of

adoption, since unregistered and peripheral users are equally legitimate
users, this pattern is nonetheless interesting to observe (shown in pink in
Figure 7.4). Registration levels were fairly consistent, at 1 to 3 registrations
per day. A further analysis of the data shows that the gap between first time
use and system registration was on average 2.94 days (S.D. 1.98), again
ranging widely, from 0 days (i.e. same day) to a 7 day gap. This data
indicates that there was a great deal of individual differences between
participants’ behaviour in terms of their uptake of Dynamo. In other words,
each student bought in to Dynamo at their own pace. For example, some
were very keen to try Dynamo and registered at the beginning of the study.
Others were more hesitant and did not try Dynamo until later on, and either
did not register with Dynamo at all, or took their time in deciding to
register.

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7.3.2 Analysis of log data

The log data collected by Dynamo comprised a time-stamped report of

certain types of user interactions. These included plugging a personal device
in or out of the Dynamo hub; dragging media onto or off the surface via
palettes; creating, moving or resizing windows for media, parcels, notes and
carves; and interacting with windows using toolbars and scrollbars. These
interactions were totaled up for each period of each day, to show the overall
rhythm and density of interaction over the study as a whole. This is shown
in Figure 7.5 overleaf.

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(Legend: White=0, light grey = 1-200, medium grey = 201-400, dark grey= 401-600, Black= 601+)

Figure 7.5: Aggregate usage through the study (Brignull et al., 2004).

158
The patterns shown in Figure 7.5 indicate a rhythm of usage that followed
the overall daily timetable, with usage peaking around morning break and
lunch break. The log data also captured the occurrence of usage of different
media types over the course of the study. Figure 7.6, below, shows a bar
graph depicting the amount of media displayed on the Dynamo surface. The
most popular media types throughout were images (shown in turquoise)
followed by video (shown in maroon), reflecting the popularity of activities
relating to use of digital cameras (both those provided and the students’
own). Internet connectivity was not available in the first week due to college
network issues, but in the second week it was fixed, which explains the
sudden upsurge in HTML content in the second week (shown in yellow). It
is interesting to consider the popularity of community generated media
(photos and video from cameras), in comparison to other kinds of media,
including web-sites in the second week.

Figure 7.6: Occurrence of media displayed on the Dynamo surface

(Brignull et al., 2004).
The occurrence of media downloaded from Dynamo onto personal devices
shows a slightly different pattern of popularity, as depicted in the bar graph
in Figure 7.7. Here, audio was most popular, followed by images and video.
This difference can be explained if the nature of the media is considered – a
great number of photos and videos were captured, and many of these were
browsed through on Dynamo while students decided which were worth

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keeping, and which were blurred or poorly framed. This accounts for the
large amount of images and videos displayed on the surface, but not
downloaded to personal devices.

Figure 7.7: Occurrence of Media downloaded onto personal devices

from the Dynamo Surface (Brignull et al., 2004)

Another interesting facet of the log data was the patterns of feature usage
over time. Figure 7.7 shows the parcels and carve usage over time – two of
the most advanced features which allow ownership, storage and access
control. For parcels this was the number of times a new parcel was created,
or an existing parcel was opened. For carving this was the number of times
a user carved a region and added a window (or set of windows) to it.

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Figure 7.8: Adoption of the “parcel” and “carve” system features
(Brignull et al., 2004).

As the graph in Figure 7.8 shows, carving (in blue), was used more
frequently in the first week than in the second, where it dropped to a
consistent low. Together with the observations of user behaviour, this can
be interpreted meaningfully: in the first week, carving was typically used
exploratively, as users familiarized themselves with the interface, and as a
mechanism to play and socialize with others – by either carving over
another user’s active window or carving over the free space on screen to
deny access to others. This unanticipated and playful usage helped users
strengthen their familiarity with this feature. By the second week carves
were used in more targeted ways, when users found a genuine need to
control access to shared content such as notices and images. In comparison,
the adoption of parcels (shown in red in Figure 7.8) started low, and showed
a progressive increase in use as time went on.

In order to find out more about whether parcels were being used for actual
viewing rather than being opened and closed playfully or exploratively, data
was aggregated to show the average length of time media items were
displayed, comparing media within parcels to media sourced outside (e.g.
from a personal device or a palette). The pattern exhibited by image media
files is particularly apparent, as shown in the bar graph in Figure 7.9.

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Figure 7.9: bar graph showing the increasing use of parcels to display
images (Brignull et al., 2004).

The bar graph in Figure 7.9 shows that in the first couple of days, images
were displayed on the surface in a fairly ephemeral manner. The duration of
image displays on the surface steadily increases in the first week. This is
because students had filtered out the popular photos and tended to keep
them on the surface for longer. However, even at its peak these photos did
not remain on the surface for long (less than 1 hour). Towards the end of the
first week, students were often observed being frustrated when they returned
to Dynamo to find that the pictures they had put on display had disappeared.
This seemed to encourage students to experiment with parcels. Initial
evidence of parcel usage is seen in the first week, while in the second week,
the adoption of parcels increases rapidly. This represents a development in
the community’s understanding of Dynamo, moving from conceptualizing it
as being just “like a PC”, into a communal surface for storage, organization
and asynchronous sharing. Associated with this was the development of
practices associated with the use of parcels. For example, following a group
session on Dynamo in which a group had viewed an array of media, users
learned to put the most popular items into a parcel for later viewing by other
parties. Similarly, the practice of “catching up” emerged, whereupon
arriving in the room, people would browse the new parcels to see what new
and interesting things had been going on in their absence. Contained in the

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parcels was often photographs of students out of college on their breaks, or
their activities from the previous evening or weekend, and thus this “catch
up” activity provided an awareness function.

7.3.4 Overview of vignettes

The video data and observational notes from the study were analyzed using
Jordan and Henderson’s (1995) Interaction Analysis approach, (see Section
7.2.5) to create an index of notable events and social behaviours that took
place each day of the study. From this index, a selection of five vignettes
were taken (shown in Figure 7.10), chosen on the basis that each provided a
rich and insightful description of the different kinds of practices engaged in
with Dynamo.

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Figure 7.10: Overview of vignettes

Vignette (a) (Figure 7.10a) shows an individual user enticing social

interaction with others in the room, by bring in his own media on his
personal device and giving a show on Dynamo. Soon after the moment of
the photograph, the individual’s activities led to socializing, a honey-pot
effect, and ultimately a colleague joined him for a lengthy conversation and
cooperative use of Dynamo together. Vignette (b) (Figure 7.10b) shows a
typical large group direct interaction with Dynamo, where a group of 6
people shared 3 interaction points, and held multiple intertwined socializing
conversation about the websites and media displayed.

Vignette (c) (figure 7.10c) shows a typical example of low engagement with
Dynamo. The room is busy, and usage of Dynamo is in the background,

164
while the majority of people go about other activities such as studying or
talking between themselves, only being involved with Dynamo through
low-engagement interactions such as peripheral observation and shouting
comments.

Vignette (d) (Figure 7.10d) shows an example of opportunistic use during a

lesson change-over. The interaction begins with the intention of rapidly
showing an image from one person to another, and quickly changes into a
large group conversation about the displayed media. Vignette (e) (Figure
7.10e) shows an example of the “individual-to-group” performances that
were occasionally seen. Here one user gave an entertaining performance
displaying photos, videos and music to an audience which quickly swelled
owing to a honey-pot effect.

In summary, this overview of vignettes shows a diversity in the ways

Dynamo was appropriated by the community, ranging from prepared to ad
hoc use, from individual to group use, and from low engagement to high
engagement use. The following five sections will detail each vignette in
turn. Following that, an analysis is carried out to glean the key principles
from the findings.

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7.3.5 Vignette (a) enticing social interaction

Vignette (a) took place on day 8 of the study (10.30am), and is detailed in
Figure 7.11, overleaf. This vignette illustrates the use of Dynamo as an
audio-visual conversational prop in enticing socializing, i.e. using it to
tempt people into a conversation, to furnish content and provide common
ground. It is also an example of a planful use of Dynamo - Alan (the
individual) collected a selection of media from his home computer in
advance to show his acquaintances at college. Having some spare time, and
seeing some familiar faces at the back of the room, Alan prepares some
media on the Dynamo screen, and then initiates a conversation with them
about it. His choice of media is also of interest – he plays the group a series
of tracks of electronic music he composed himself at home. He gets positive
feedback and, as a result of then putting his tracks in a public parcel, the
tracks are re-played repeatedly over the following few days, are talked about
by various people, and are downloaded 5 times. As well as disseminating
knowledge of Alan’s work and skills, this may have given Alan a sense of
satisfaction, popularity and kudos within the community.

Finally, a honey-pot effect occurs while Alan shows his cartoons, as people
arrive and sit down to watch his activity. Someone joins Alan and strikes up
a conversation about the cartoons, and then progresses to interact with Alan
on Dynamo.

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 (1) Alan arrives alone and sits at the front table (left).
He plugs in his pen drive, and browses some of his
media, opening it on the screen. He then glances to the
group behind him (right).
(2). He turns to the group at the back and calls over:
“Hey, Donny, my home-made music”. He starts an
MP3 playing. Anna comments: “wow! It’s amazing!”,
and Don says “You made that?” – Alan replies “On
fruity loops… and cubase.” Don goes over and stands
next to him, appreciatively miming a drumming action
with the pen in his hand.
(3) Alan opens another tune “This one is the newest
one of mine”. Anna comments “I love it!”. She goes
over to stand next to Alan and Don, and appreciatively
claps along with the music.

(3) When the music stops, Alan creates a parcel and

fills it with his MP3s, labeling it “Adam’s Beats’.
During this quiet period, Anna asks Don to buy her
some food. They head to the tea bar at the back of the
room.

(4) Next Alan browses a folder full of Flash animated

cartoons on his pen drive. He begins to play one.
During the cartoon, a number of people arrive in the
room.

(5) An arriving boy goes to sit with Alan and starts to

chat with him, asking the name of the cartoon he’s
showing.

(6) More people arrive and sit down, watching the

cartoons that Alan plays. When the cartoons finish,
attention moves away from Dynamo, while Alan
continues to chat with his friend at the front of the
room, and they interact with Dynamo together.

Figure 7.11: Vignette (a) : Enticing social interaction

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7.3.6 Vignette (b) concurrent group use for socializing

Vignette (b) occurred on day 5 of the study (1.30pm) and is detailed in

Figure 7.12, overleaf. It is an example of concurrent group use of Dynamo
for socializing. At the front of the room, six people sit in a row facing
Dynamo. As depicted in frame 1, two on the right share an interaction point,
the second from the left has his own interaction point, and the person on the
far left, and two others (out of frame) share an interaction point between the
three of them. Dynamo’s functionality, allowing multiple media windows to
be displayed concurrently, and allowing different users to dip into each
others’ windows, is used here for socializing. The group chat amongst
themselves, using the displayed media like a buffet of conversational topics.
The conversations held are relaxed and lightweight, without any clear goal
apart from enjoyment of the interaction.

Also of note in this vignette is the distribution of expertise. The two most
novice interactors (pictured far right in the blue t-shirt and far left in the
grey shirt) are paired up and share an interaction point with a more
experienced user. Finally, there is the involvement of the community
members in the background. As shown in frame 3, a group sits drinking tea
and chatting behind the Dynamo group, as do other group of people out of
frame. They can see Dynamo being used and thus learn about the practice of
using it in groups for fun socializing. Also, during the crossword game
(frame 4 onwards), people in the background join in, shouting out answer
suggestions from time to time.

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 (1) Seated left to right: Joe, Rich, Mike, and Bob (also
Colin and Charlotte, out of frame on the left). Colin, Rich
and Bob have interaction points, which they share with the
people sitting next to them. Two simultaneous
conversations occur: Mike and Bob talk about iPods, while
Colin, Joe and Rich talk about mountain-biking, and look
at Rich’s own website detailing his mountain-biking
hobby.
(2) [Mike] “What else shall we look at?” [Bob] “Oh I
know!”- Mike and Bob move on to looking at a site about a
cartoon from their youth (the web browser window
pictured left)..

(3) This inspires Colin to go to a site about another

cartoon. The two conversations converge into one as the
whole group talks together, and then splits into two again.
This happens repeatedly. During the chat, Rich quietly
takes a copy of the website URL onto his pen-drive.

(4) Bob then browses to a website listing games, and loads

a crossword. This grabs everyone’s attention, and they all
begin to play the crossword together, reading out the
questions and shouting suggested answers to each other.

(5) Meanwhile Rich goes to a crossword helper website

which suggests solutions.

(6) They continue to play the crossword game together for

about 10 minutes. From time to time, other people “pipe
up” from elsewhere in the room and suggest ideas for
answers. After 10 minutes, the bell goes and the majority
of them leave for lessons. Rich puts the crossword in a
parcel so they can return to it later.

Figure 7.12: Vignette (b): Concurrent group use

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7.3.7 Vignette (c) low engagement group interaction

Vignette (c) occurred on Day 3 of the user study, in the morning (9.45am),
as detailed in figure 7.13, overleaf. In this vignette, usage of Dynamo was in
the background while most people studied or sat in clusters around tables
talking quietly, and only becoming involved in Dynamo interactions in
passing from time to time. It is the nature of this low engagement,
background participation that is of particular interest in this vignette.

Around the room, people sit in circles around tables, either working or
chatting. They are generally oriented away from Dynamo, preoccupied with
what they are doing. Nina decides to put on some music from her walkman
(frame 1), and she goes over. She asks a question loudly and Anna, who was
quietly working in the background overhears and shouts “yep!” in reply.
This helpful involvement required minimal effort or disruption to Anna,
enabled by her peripheral awareness of the environment.

Another example is when Peter helps Nina open her media (frame 4 in
Figure 7.13), there is very little attention from other people in the room –
they are all busy, going about their own activities. However, when he puts
on her song, people visibly demonstrate their peripheral level of
participation – one girl shouts out a request to “turn it up”, while others
express their appreciation physically, by bobbing their heads and dancing
along with the music in their chairs.

The point being made here is that engagement in activities around Dynamo
occur at a number of different degrees along a scale, from low engagement,
to high. As cited previously, Goffman (1963) suggests this is common in
public gatherings: “…a differentiation is sometimes found among full
fledged participants and various grades of onlookers” (p. 18). The
implications of this low engagement, peripheral interaction is discussed in
detail in Section 7.4.

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 (1) Nina decides to put on a song from her personal
MP3 player. She has never connected her MP3 player
before. She asks if she is plugging it into the right
place, and someone shouts “yep” from the background.

(2) She plugs in and her personal disk icon appears.

Meanwhile Crispin plays a video of Peter. Nina
watches but there is relatively little attention from the
room as a whole, people are predominantly involved in
their own conversations or work.

(3) Amy moves to sit down. Note the lack of attention

of others to her or the screen.

(3) Nina interrupts Peter’s conversation (pictured rear

left) and asks him to help her play her music on
Dynamo. He replies that he doesn’t know how, but
then he gets up and helps her. They chat about her
music collection and the upcoming theatre trip.

(4) Peter opens Nina’s music on the Dynamo surface

and sets it playing

(5) Before the music starts, people in the room are

giving Dynamo little attention.

(6) When the music starts, a number of people glance

over. Katy (front left) exclaims how much she likes
this song. A number of people bob around in their
chairs in time with the music. One of them exclaims
“Turn it up!”. Peter responds by increasing the volume.
2 minutes later, attention generally moves back away
from Dynamo, and people continue with their activities
Figure 7.13: Vignette (c) showing low engagement interaction

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7.3.8 Vignette (d) opportunistic use in a transition

Vignette (d) took place on day 6 of the study (12.10pm), during a change-
over between lessons. As depicted in Figure 7.14a, it shows how Dynamo
was sometimes used for rapid interactions during brief windows of
opportunity, such as the five minutes between lessons or before the bus
arrives. It also shows how Dynamo was given the role of an open forum in
which public involvement was expected and welcomed.

As depicted in Figure 7.14b, the vignette begins as Peter notices Charlotte

passing through the room on the way to her lesson, and he asks to show her
a photo he had previously been talking to her about. He has very little time
to do so, because she is already late for her lesson. However, he rapidly logs
in, finds, opens and up-sizes the picture to a very large size. Charlotte’s
friends gather in a honey-pot effect, and chat about the displayed media
before leaving, demonstrating Dynamo’s role as an open forum for public
involvement.

The multi-user nature of Dynamo enabled Peter to just grab a free

interaction and carry out his interaction rapidly, rather than having to wait
his turn, which would have resulted in his window of opportunity being
missed and Charlotte leaving for her lesson. Interestingly, Peter’s use of
Dynamo coincided with another group using it, which they manage to both
carry out concurrently without any problems or verbal negotiation.

At the end of the interaction, Peter puts the files in a parcel like Alan in
vignette (a), another example of the practice of leaving a public archive of
media from a group interaction as a gift to the wider community. Days later,
Peter and Charlotte return and conclude their interaction. Together they
cooperatively drag the selected files from the parcel to Charlottes’ pen
drive.

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Figure 7.14a: panoramic view of vignette

(1) Peter notices Charlotte passing through in a lesson change

over, and calls over: “Charlotte, I’ve got that song, I was playing
it… I’ve also.. got a really big picture of Justin, on stage, in the
middle, sittin’ down” [Sally interrupts] “with a hood up!’ [Peter
continues] “I’ll show you… Do you have a lesson?’ …

(2) Charlotte (pictured standing) and the other girls (out of shot)
wait in the area by the door, in view of Dynamo from a wide
angle. [Peter] “Wait! I’ll show you! Wait stay there and I’ll show
you… Are you ready?”

(3) Meanwhile, Gemma starts separate conversation with Crispin.

“Crispin! There’s a picture of you on here” [Crispin responds]
“Where?” Then Heather finds the picture of Crispin that Gemma
was talking about and enlarges it, covering 1/3 of the right screen
(pictured). Crispin responds “Oh my lord!”.

(4) Peter logs in and finds the photo from his pen drive. [Peter]
“Are you ready for this Charlotte? … Are you ready for this?”
Peter opens the picture up and enlarges it, in place of where
Heather’s was. [Sally] “What is he wearing?”

(5) [Sally] “I know, he’s got a hoodie” [Charlotte] “Ahhhhhh! I

love him… Did you see him when he wore his red leather
tracksuit”’ [Peter]“Yes…” [Crispin oversees and interrupts]:
“Who’s that?” [Peter] “It’s Mister JT!” Peter plays an MP3 of
the concert. Moments later, one of the girls says “We’re late” and
they hurry out of the room.
(6) Peter then leaves the MP3 up in a parcel, which is replayed on
a regular basis over the following few days. 3 days later
(pictured), Peter uses Dynamo with Charlotte in another
transition moment (before catching their bus). Peter helps
Charlotte use her pen drive to download the MP3 from the parcel
he created previously.

Figure 7.14b: Vignette of opportunistic use in a transition

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7.3.9 Vignette (e) individual performing to a large group

Vignette (e) took place on day 7, at the beginning of the lunch break
(1.10pm). As depicted in Figure 7.15a, this vignette emphasizes how the
community as a whole benefit from the system without them all needing to
be active Dynamo users.

As shown in Figure 7.15b, the room is busy since it is a cold day. Leo
arrives in the room with some friends and word goes round that Leo is going
to show some videos on Dynamo. After Leo starts his interaction, no-one
else touches an interaction point, and it becomes a clear “presenter-
audience” style of interaction. He selects media that is entertaining to the
audience and provides awareness about community members, particularly
information that is normally hidden, e.g. people’s activities in the holidays
and on weekends, and in one case, photos of a community member who had
not been seen in college for months. The audience talk between themselves
during his performance, often laughing loudly, and shouting things out to
him or the room in general. This demonstrates audience participation, yet
the level of effort and investment on their part is very small in comparison
to Leo’s.

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Figure 7.15a: panoramic photo of vignette

(1) At the beginning of the lunch break, people arrive to buy

food, eat and hang out. It is a cold day so the crowd is larger
than usual. Leo arrives and heads to the laptop at the back of
the room to prepare the content on his pen-drive for the show
he is about to give. He sorts his media into folders, putting
the media for the show in the root directory, and all his other
files into a directory called “stuff”.
(2) When ready, Leo goes to sit at the front of the room by an
interaction point. He clears some space on the Dynamo
surface, and is assisted by a friend on another interaction
point. Thereafter nobody interacts with Dynamo apart from
Leo during his show. The audience grows as more people
arrive in the room.

(3) Leo plays a series of home videos showing him and other
community members “hanging out” on holiday (which he
edited at home to include credits and music using Windows
Movie Maker™). In between each video he gives a
humourous introduction. During the show people laugh and
chat between themselves.

(4) Following the videos Leo shows a series of humorous

photos of community members in fancy dress. Some are of a
student who has not been seen recently, which arouse
interest. Finally, he fills a parcel with the media and then
creates a locked carve containing photos and textual notes
(pictured left).

(5) There is now talk of going for a cigarette break. Leo logs
out and the audience disperses. Later on that day, Leo
removes his carve to make space for other uses, but leaves up
the publicly accessible parcel containing all the media he had
shown.

(6) Leo’s media is reviewed repeatedly over the duration of

the study. Pictured here is a pair on the following day,
reviewing Leo’s media, while a girl watches from the back of
the room while working.

Figure 7.15b: Vignette: Individual performing to a large group

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7.4 Analysis of findings

7.4.1 Appropriation: the emergence of practices over time

As the study progressed, there was increasing evidence of appropriation –

the community came to understand Dynamo as relevant to their own needs,
and developed practices that reflected this. For example, they came to
conceptualize Dynamo as a tool for socializing and fun interaction, rather
than a tool for work. They developed practices of initiating conversations,
group social interaction and the giving of performances through Dynamo.
Also, they learned about Dynamo’s facilities for storing and displaying
media persistently, and developed practices for managing the emergent
clutter and sharing the use of the display estate. This section will detail each
of these appropriations, and show how many of these have marked parallels
with the social practices engaged in prior to the arrival of Dynamo.

- Sense of community ownership

Upon initial deployment of Dynamo, it was a new and foreign artefact, but
over time, the community laid claim to ownership of the system. They used
it for socializing and recreation activities and completely rejected all of the
work-related activities advocated by the teachers, such as using it as a
discussion forum for Geography A-level related web sites (refer back to
Section 7.2.2 for details). One telling example of this developing sense of
community ownership was on day 6 of the study, when a teacher put up a
notice advertising a concert he was playing in on the following weekend.
Shortly after he left the room, a student closed his window to make space
for some photos of their peers that they were was posting up.

- Persistence

When Dynamo was first introduced, users tended to habitually close down
all the windows open at the beginning or end of an interaction, in a manner

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similar to the way people use normal desktop PCs when they log in and log
out. However, as time progressed, they began to realize the potential of
persistence in leaving up media, notes and parcels as a means for showing
and sharing with the wider community. This was most prevalent in the form
of leaving public parcels and public, open windows on the surface, as shown
in the log analysis detailed in Section 7.3.2. Initially, people would leave
items in the center of the display, but as time went on, they tended to
become more considerate, and would leave persistent items sized down to a
compact size at the far left and right edges of the displays, leaving ample
open space for public usage and avoiding occlusion of the palettes.

Interestingly, other users learned not to close these items down, by judging
whether they looked like they had been intentionally left up for public
consumption. In doing this, they would also often close down media that
looked like a “waste of space” (such as extraneous file browser windows) or
that had been on display a long while. This provided a mechanism for
“cleaning up” and clutter management, as detailed in the following section.

- Cleaning up and clutter management

In the post hoc questionnaire, participants were asked to list a bad aspect of
their experience with Dynamo (see appendix 2 for the questionnaire). One
responded “When people take up the screen with a load of crap and you
can't get rid of it”. This refers to the challenge of dealing with clutter on the
communal surface. As previously stated, users tended to remove and tidy up
publicly accessible media. However, registered users were able to leave
locked media that no-one else could move. This gave rise to the practice of
“policing”, i.e. keeping track of users who left locked windows, and
reminding them to close them down. One user in particular (called Gemma,
[name anonymised]) took on this role.

Parcel tidying was also an activity that became increasingly engaged in as

the study went on and more parcels were scattered around on the surface.
Users would gather up these parcels and tidy them into rows or groups,

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sometimes putting newer or personally favoured items first, and older items
last. Again, one particular user (called Crispin [name anonymised]) took on
this role, as shown in Figure 7.16, below.

Figure 7.16 Crispin tidying parcels on days 5 (left) and 9 (middle), and
a paper notice (right)

Both the users who took on maintenance roles with Dynamo were also
members of the student union: a small group of students who had a position
of responsibility and were partially in charge of managing the upkeep of the
common room. For example, Crispin not only took responsibility for parcel
tidying, but also was responsible for putting up the posters for keeping the
room itself tidy. Therefore there was a strong parallel between the practices
and roles of responsibility, tidying and maintenance in the physical common
room, and on the Dynamo surface.

- Performances

As detailed in Chapter 6 (Section 6.2.3, Figure 6.2), prior to Dynamo’s

deployment, the community often used the space to give impromptu
performances, such as playing guitar and singing, telling jokes, and playing
music on the communal stereo. It was observed that many of the activities in
the common room had the feel of performance for the benefit of onlookers,
and that it was a place to “see and be seen”. Their use of Dynamo showed
strong parallels with this, as shown in vignette (a) (Section 7.3.1), where
Alan gives a performance of his own composed music and selected
cartoons, and even more prominently, in vignette (e) (Section 7.3.9) where
Leo gives a well-prepared show of photos and home-edited videos to a large
audience. In essence, the community seemed to give Dynamo the role of a

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stage for their performances, which they gave using digital media where
previously they used traditional delivery methods.

- Concurrent multi-use for socializing

As stated earlier, the initial reaction towards Dynamo was to use it in a

manner similar to using a desktop PC. As well as clearing the screen before
and after use, they also began by taking in turns in using it, even though it
supported multiple simultaneous users. They quickly realized they could use
it concurrently, and, as time went on, they started to engage in multi-user
activities.

The activity of enticing a socializing conversation and group interaction

with Dynamo became a common practice. This is demonstrated in vignette
(a) (Section 7.3.5), where Alan invites some friends to come over and talk to
him, using Dynamo as an audio-visual prop to provide an enticing stimulus
and topic of conversation. This ultimately ends in a friend joining him for a
conversation and the two of them interacting on Dynamo together. In other
cases, such as frame 3 of vignette (d) (Figure 7.14b), users would locate an
item of media that was relevant to a passer-by, in this case a photo of them,
in order to grab their interest and provide an entertaining topic of
conversation. This behaviour was observed often, and it seemed that users
treated the people around the room and passers by as a “pool” of people to
potentially socialize with, and they would use Dynamo’s large screen to
draw attention and as a visual resource for conversational topics and social
entertainment.

Another emergent practice involved the co-browsing of media folders by

two or three people together. For example, they would plug in a digital
camera full of images, and then share a file browser window, each pulling
out images they personally found interesting, positioning them on the
surface, and chatting together about them. They would then often leave this
collage open on the surface for others to see, or they would then
cooperatively fill a parcel together. Also, pairs and trios would browse the

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web together, as detailed in vignette (b) (Section 7.3.6), using it as a
resource to spontaneously find and display media to socialize about. These
progressed from being occasional activities to familiar practices which
people engaged in, becoming part of the community’s “vocabulary” of
things to do with Dynamo.

7.4.2 Levels of engagement and gradual buy-in

People in the vicinity of Dynamo were able to “oversee” (Heath and Luff,
1992) interactions while going about other things, i.e. without needing to
give it their full and undivided attention. As detailed in Chapter 2 (Section
2.3), O’Neil et al. (2004) refer to this property of visibility in the
surrounding area as a “public interaction space”. This property also
supported a model of “informal performer and audience” where the
performer or performers can be keen Dynamo users, putting effort and time
into the interaction, while the informal audience of people in the room can
dip in and out of their own activities (e.g. studying, reading, chatting),
watch the performance and interact verbally. This meant that the wider
community could benefit from the social interaction, disseminated
information and awareness information provided, without having to go to
much effort to do so.

This section will describe how Dynamo’s support of these various levels of
engagement enabled community members to engage with Dynamo in their
own chosen manner, and buy-in to it gradually, at their own chosen pace,
providing a path for initially less motivated community members to become
users. As exemplified in vignette (c) (Section 7.3.7), the level of
engagement a person invests in an interaction can vary from low to high
levels. This is shown in Figure 7.17 below, which lists a series of example
activities representing different levels of engagement. It should be
emphasized here that these levels are not intended to be conceptualized as
“steps” that a user must pass through, in order to reach a “gold standard of
high engagement”. Instead, they simply describe the level of engagement

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for a particular interaction, or, as Goffman puts it, the “various grades of on-
lookers” (p.18).

Figure 7.17: levels of engagement

Beginning at very low engagement, the scale begins with “being present”.
Although this in itself is not explicit interaction, it alters the ecology of the
room and provides the opportunities for further interaction. Next on the
scale is “bodily reaction”. This includes re-orientation towards the screens
(e.g. craning neck or turning chair to watch), and “bobbing” or dancing in
time with music. Next on the scale is “chirping”. This term was coined
during analysis to describe brief, low effort and low commitment
vocalizations, such as the helpful “Yep” shouted out in reply to a question in
vignette (c) (Section 7.3.7, Figure 7.13). Other “chirps” observed elsewhere
included “Ahh!” or “Oooh!”, or one-word statements such as “Yes”, “uh-
huh” and “Wow”. At a slightly higher level of engagement, “Shout outs”
were observed, in which users sometimes shouted out instructions to people
directly interacting with Dynamo, such as in the vignette of “low
engagement group interaction” (Section 7.3.7; frame 6 of Figure 7.13),
where someone in the background shouts “turn it up!”. Again, in this
example these low engagement interactors are still going about their own
activities and are not investing much effort in their involvement. Further up
the scale still, at a fairly high level of engagement, is chat and discussion
with people interacting with Dynamo, which typically consisted of talking
about the displayed media. At the top of the scale is direct interaction with
Dynamo. Here people interact either individually or as a group with
Dynamo, paying a great deal of attention to the system and conversational
interactions relating to the system and the media displayed.

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The significance of these levels of engagement was that it enabled “gradual
buy-in” in that over the course of the study, a number of users tended to
move from typically low engagement or occasional use of Dynamo, to
progressively higher levels, and in doing so, their expertise of Dynamo
increased. In other words, people learned about the system piecemeal and
while going about their normal daily activities in the common room, without
them necessarily intending to do so. Although two community members
were highly motivated, and became dedicated users of Dynamo from the
first day onwards, the post hoc survey data shows that the majority of
community members took their time. As previously discussed in Section
7.3.1, there was a wide spread in the respondents’ day of initial use, and for
those who registered, there was a wide spread in the length of time between
initial use and registration. The following interview quote (from an
interview with Charlotte after the study) illustrates the nature of the gradual
buy-in that many community members engaged in:

“What motivated you to get a pen drive and register?”

“It's not like I really wanted to get a pen drive, I'm not that
into computers. But I did in the end [...]”
“Was there a point when you made a big decision to start
using it, or did it happen gradually?”
“Oh, I got into it gradually […] at the beginning when Leo
and everyone was using it, I wasn’t that bothered really […]
when Becca and Penny [her close friends] borrowed the
camera I had a go on it, and stuff.
Did you find it hard the first time you used it?
“Not really […] I'd seen everyone using it so it was pretty
obvious… Becca showed me how to swap stuff.”

The interviewee clearly states how she had learned by observing others
(very low engagement interaction) before her first usage of Dynamo, and
that upon her first usage, she was supported by two of her friends (high
engagement). This led to her acquisition of a pen drive and registration with
the system, and she went on to interact with Dynamo on various occasions
throughout the study (occasional high engagement).

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Another example can be given with a short description of Heather’s
progress of buy-in to Dynamo. The point of note here is that nowhere along
the line did Heather explicitly set out to learn about Dynamo, her expertise
effectively “crept up on her”:

1. Days 1 & 2: Heather was rather uninterested in Dynamo, and tended

to only watch videos when they were played by other users (very
low engagement).

2. Days 3-4: She started to use it occasionally with her friends to pass
time between lessons (occasional episodes of high engagement).

3. Day 5: In an interaction with a registered friend on Dynamo, she

learned about the benefits of registration, in particular, the use of
carving for access control and posting items permanently on the
surface. This spontaneously motivated her to register with the
system

4. Days 6-10: From there on, she used Dynamo more often, bringing in
and taking home media, putting up photos in carve regions, and so
on (i.e. regular episodes of high engagement).

In summary, the features of the Dynamo Community Display coupled with

the more generic property of public availability, seem to make it suited to
gradual buy-in by supporting varied levels of engagement.

7.4.3 The role of entry points in enabling direct interaction

An “entry point” is defined here as an instance when a user or group of

users attempt an activity which involves direct interaction with the system.
It describes their attempted activity, and their usage situation. For example,
referring back to vignette (d) (Section 7.3.8), this shows two people
achieving an interaction in a small period of time, and then later that day
returning back for another very short interaction. In both cases they were in
a hurry, either late for class or needing to catch a bus, so they needed the

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interaction to fit into this window. In this sense, the entry point was “open”
and enabled this interaction. Had lengthier interaction been required by the
system, or had they needed to queue to use it rather than being able to just
grab a free interaction point, this would have prevented their interaction, i.e.
the entry point would have been “closed”. Other factors these entry points
varied upon included:

• Spontaneous or planned interaction

• Type of personal device used, if any

• Registered or unregistered interaction

• Individual or group interaction

• Type of co-operative support received, if any

These factors combined into a wide array of contingencies. For example,

one contingency might be a spontaneous interaction using a digital camera,
while unregistered, alone. In general, Dynamo successfully supported many
of the possible contingencies. In the case of vignette (a) (Section 7.3.5) the
multi-user nature of Dynamo provided an entry point for someone to go and
join Alan, start interacting with Dynamo simultaneously, and receive
tutelage and encouragement from him. In the case of Vignette (c) (Section
7.3.7), Nina spontaneously decides to try and see if her MP3 player will
work on Dynamo, and succeeds. Had the system required registration of her
devices in advance, or was not compatible with such a wide range of
devices, this entry point would have been closed to Nina, and she would
have had to go to more effort to find a different entry-point to achieve the
interaction. The implication of closed entry points is that they can slow
down or deter users’ buy-in to the system, by frustrating them and giving
them a negative impression of the system.

Other examples of closed entry points included when users attempted to use
the web functionality of Dynamo in the first week, and gave up when it did
not work. Conversely, in the second week, this became an open entry point
as the college system administrators enabled the internet connection. On the

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Tuesday of the second week, a novice user was observed entering the room
alone during a quiet period in the afternoon, and, upon seeing a familiar
Google search page that happened to be open on the surface, sat down and
started browsing the web. Shortly afterwards a friend entered the room, also
a Dynamo novice, and they started co-browsing together and learning more
about Dynamo.

One of the most frequently observed closed entry points was that
registration with the system required the user to have a personal device
(owing to the way the system was implemented). This meant that if a user
did not own one, or happened not to have one with them at that point in
time, they could not register. In the following quote, Martha sees Daniel
making carve regions, (a facility only available to registered users), and
learns about their access control function from playing with him:

Martha: "How do I make those coloured boxes?" [referring to

carve regions]
Daniel: "You need to register"
Martha: "Show me how!"
Daniel: "er you need a pen drive, they cost a fiver"
Martha: "oh right.”

Had it not been for the need to have a personal device, Martha may have
registered with the system at this point. As such, it can be considered a
barrier. If the system was to support registration without a device, and
allowed addition of a device to the account at a later time if desired, this
would remove the barrier and facilitate further adoption.

7.4.4 Community advocacy, support and tutoring

It was observed that the community members themselves became advocates

of the system, demonstrating the system to others (e.g. vignette [a]), and
inviting their friends to join them in group interactions with Dynamo (e.g.
vignette [e]). Indeed, these interactions served a double purpose - as well as
engaging with others in a socializing activity, users were also introducing

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them to the system and showing them activities it could be used for. It is
interesting to consider this against the fact that out of the 100 instructional
leaflets that were provided adjacent to the Community Display, only seven
were taken. This shows that the mechanism of informal learning and support
from community advocates was more prominent than the use of formal
instructional materials. Agostini et al. (2000) make a similar observation in
field studies of the Campiello Community Display system:

“[…] the community came up with its own system-oriented

practices for fostering the peripheral participation of new
users until able to acquire the knowledge necessary for acting
alone and maybe becoming ‘trainers’ themselves. For
instance, at the Campiello stands we often saw that after
having registered and grasped the basics of Campiello, kids
kept coming back with friends or relatives, proudly helping
them to do the things they had just learned. Therefore […] the
places where the system is made accessible should allow and
possibly stimulate the creation of these practices.” (p. 719)

Thus it seems a successful Community Display can develop a self-

sustaining momentum through user advocacy that can propagate adoption
through the community. Furthermore, the busyness of the common room
and the close-knit nature of the community meant that help was never far
away when needed. For example, in vignette (c) (Section 7.3.7), Nina
merely called out for assistance to no-one in particular, since she was
confident that someone in the vicinity would know the answer and be
willing to help out.

Also, as expected, Dynamo’s multi-user facilities enabled users to help each

other within Dynamo’s user interface, tutoring and cooperating with each
other (Section 5.2.1; cf. Stewart et al., 1999). For example, a user who does
not know how to fill a parcel can be helped by a friend, as they can
simultaneously fill the parcel together with their own mice. This was the
case when Peter helped Charlotte at the end of vignette (d) (Section 7.3.8),
and was observed numerous other times during the study.

For novice users, there was also the possibility of being helped by other
users through the user interface, or alternatively, by sharing an interaction

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point with a more experienced user, as was the case for the pairs in vignette
(b) (Section 7.3.6). The various possibilities of supported interaction
through the multi-user Dynamo interface can be conceptualized as a set of
open entry points, since they provide a number of paths by which a person
can enter into an interaction with Dynamo. However, upon closer inspection
of the observations, the multi-user interface was found to also present some
closed entry points.

For example, when unregistered users tried to use Dynamo cooperatively

with a logged-in user (only registered users could log-in), they were
typically prevented from doing so because of the way the access-control
model was implemented. Specifically, windows opened by logged-in users
could not be manipulated by anyone but the owner, unless the owner used
carve regions to provide access to others. However, the carve region
interaction model required the user to drop the key icon on the personal
palette of a logged-in user. Since un-logged-in users did not have a personal
palette, they could not be given access, which was observed to pose
frustration to a number of users. This vignette that occurred during lunch
break of Day 2 of the study, illustrates this point. Ben is one of the first
registered users of Dynamo, and invites his friend Nick to interact with him.

Ben sees Nick him and invites him over: “[…] You’ve got to
try this, it’s cool, we both get a mouse!”
Nick goes over, stands next to him, grabs a free mouse and
starts interacting with Dynamo. He cannot gain access to any
of Ben’s windows and misdiagnoses the problem:
Nick: “It doesn’t work, I can’t click on anything […] The
mouse is broken.”
Ben: “It worked earlier […] Look these are the photos from
last week”
After being shown a few photos, Nick says he is going outside
for a cigarette and leaves.

This clearly shows how Nick almost had his first ever interaction with
Dynamo, which would have been tutored and probably quite beneficial to
his understanding. However, the system’s default access-control model

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prevented him from achieving the tutored interaction. Later in the study,
some registered users discovered that they could put items in a public parcel
to give access to unregistered users, or log out to interact freely with
unregistered users. However, these work-arounds were not always clear,
and users either gave up on such interactions or interacted independently of
each other, unable to take advantage of the possibility of tutoring by means
of simultaneous interaction.

7.5 Discussion
The bulk of the discussion of the findings will be reported in depth in
Chapter 8. As such, this section provides an overview of the findings and a
discussion summary.

As suggested in the findings of the preliminary study reported in the

previous chapter, this study has confirmed that Dynamo was well suited to
the on-going setting of the Blatchington Mill 6th form common room. Post
hoc survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive – the community
genuinely enjoyed using it, and many members commented that the
common room became busier, more sociable, and a more desirable place to
be. Dynamo was used thoroughly by a range of community members, and
for a number of different kinds of activities. Over time, behaviour towards it
progressed and developed. At first it was treated like a normal desktop
computer with a big screen – users would take turns using it and would
close windows after using them. As time progressed, they began to
appropriate it and developed practices that fully took advantage of its multi-
user sharing and display facilities. It became used predominantly as a tool to
support socializing – consistent with the use of the room previous to
Dynamo’s arrival. They would use it to entice social interaction, to furnish
them with conversational material, and to interact in groups concurrently,
co-browsing photos, videos and music, playing games, and leaving up
community relevant media in parcels to share it with the community as a
whole.

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While the phenomena of “overseeing”, “vicarious learning” and the “honey-
pot effect” were evident here, they manifested themselves differently to that
observed in the one-shot setting studies. These differences can be
summarized in the following three concepts, as put forward in Section 7.4.
“Levels of engagement” describes how people were able to be involved
with interactions relating to the Community Display without having to be
completely immersed in the interaction. This meant that they could be
involved in interactions while going about their normal daily activities in
the space – e.g. hanging out, talking to friends, drinking coffee, studying,
and so forth. This enabled incidental and vicarious learning, which was the
most important way in which community members became users. The
second key concept put forward was “gradual buy-in”. This describes how
most community members tended to decide not to become fully-fledged
users on the spot, but adopted the system in a piecemeal fashion, in a
gradual manner that suited them. The third key concept put forward was
“entry points”. These are defined as the various contingencies in which
users attempt to initiate an interaction using the Community Display. For
example, they might attempt to interact unregistered, with a certain personal
device, a certain arrangement people giving help to each other in a certain
way, engaging in a particular activity. This is but one possible combination
of contingencies amongst many others. Thus, the wide array of entry points
helps enable gradual buy-in, since users can engage in a variety of
unplanned interactions, with a variety of different kinds of help or support
from their peers.

The following chapter will discuss these concepts in depth and draw
comparisons between them and those put forward in the other case studies.
It will also put forward a number of design suggestions for Community
Displays.

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Chapter 8

Discussion

8.1 Introduction_________________________________________ 191

8.2 Understanding the Phenomena of Situated Social Behaviour
around Community Displays ______________________________ 192
8.3 Understanding Adoption in one-shot settings ____________ 200
8.3 Understanding Adoption in on-going settings ____________ 208

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8.1 Introduction
This chapter will address the research questions posed for this thesis in
Chapter 2. It will do this by reviewing and consolidating the findings of the
user studies, and will draw out design suggestions, which will be shown as
grey highlighted boxes throughout the body of the chapter. These design
suggestions are clarifications and improvements on the suggestions and user
experience principles put forward earlier in the thesis. They are intended to
enable Community Display system designers to browse through this chapter
and quickly locate the parts most relevant to them. The research questions
are repeated below.

1. Understanding the phenomena of situated social behaviour around

Community Displays
a. 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 settings.

a. 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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8.2 Understanding the Phenomena of Situated Social
Behaviour around Community Displays
This section will address research questions 1a, 1b and 1c by discussing
them generally:

1a. What common phenomena of situated behaviour are observed

across all the case studies?
1b. How are the social properties of the Community Display
involved in these phenomena?
1c. How does this relate to the process of community adoption?

Common to all three of the case studies were phenomena relating to the
public availability of usage of the display and people in the vicinity
overseeing these activities, which resulted in mechanisms that supported
usage and adoption. This section will detail these phenomena in each case
study.

In the first case study, a team of audio-visual technicians used a large

display to represent and manage their on-going work. Here, usage of the
display was mandated, so voluntary adoption was not under investigation.
Instead, the aim was to ground the research by observing the practices of a
established community use of a large display in a real world setting

Here, the large size of the display and its conspicuous positioning in the
shared office meant that when a team member used it, for example while
working on a scheduling problem, their team members could see them doing
it as they passed by. This was because there was a continual flow of people
in and out of the office, owing to its centrality in the local environment and
the collocation of shared resources there (e.g. storage of the audio-visual
equipment). Thus usage of the display was a “double duty” activity (Heath
and Luff, 1991; Luff and Jirotka, 1998; Robinson, 1993). On the one hand
the user was working on their task, while on the other, they were sending
out a tacit invitation to passers-by that they were working on a problem on
the large display, and that they might benefit from the help and extra
knowledge their team members could offer them. This often created

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spontaneous gatherings of three or four people who would stand together
and work on the large display, discussing it, gesturing and annotating on it.
What was particularly beneficial about this mechanism was that it enabled
co-operative group work to occur, without requiring any effortful
coordination or articulation work (cf. Schmidt and Simone, 1996, on
articulation work). For example, the person in need of help did not need to
radio out a message to the team requesting it and negotiating a time to meet
in front of the display. The quote below from Jordan and Henderson (1995)
postulates that a similar mechanism may occur with large displays used in
industrial process control rooms.

“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. […] anomalies 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)

Thus, the observational evidence from the audio-visual team case-study

adds weight to Jordan and Henderson’s postulation. This “mechanism of
spontaneous group congregation” is defined in this volume as the “honey-
pot effect”. This was observed to occur in different ways in each of the case
studies

G1: General Design Suggestion

Consider the social interaction in the vicinity of the Community
Display to be the key to its success
The informal social interaction that takes place in the vicinity of the
Community Display is just as important as direct interaction with it. It is not
like a supermarket queue where the aim is to get as many people through
as quickly as possible. Metrics of interaction with the system miss out on
the crucial informal social interaction that takes place in the vicinity. The
vicinity needs to be large enough to house a gathering of people, and be
considered comfortable.

In the studies of the Opinionizer Community Display in one-shot settings,

the honey-pot effect exhibited a “positive feedback loop” effect akin to
momentum, whereby once there was a crowd of people around the display,

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this self sustained as people seemed to be stimulated to find out more about
what the crowd was involved in and to join in the social activities. This
resonates with Whyte’s (1980, 1988) analysis of urban parks and plazas in
the USA, in which he states that above and beyond the features of the space
itself, what attracts people most is other people. A further and more detailed
analysis of the facilitators of interaction this setting is carried out in the
following section.

G2: General Design Suggestion

Consider positioning and flow to facilitate the honey-pot effect
The spatial positioning of the Community Display in the target setting and
the flow of people around it should be a primary consideration, since it
plays a very important role in the key mechanisms of the honey-pot effect
and vicarious learning. For example, the AV team studied in Chapter 3
positioned their large display in a manner so that there was a clear line of
sight from all the doorways in the room (the key points of flow), and so that
there was enough space for three people to cluster closely around it. Also,
the Wall-loader prototype was found to be unsuitable for their needs
because it was physically too bulky for their space, and interfered with the
normal flow of people through the space.

The honey-pot effect is not intended to be conceptualized as peculiar to

Community Displays alone, and should instead be conceptualized as an
effect of any “publicly available”, observable artefact or activity carried out
in a centrally located communal space. For example, during the preliminary
observational study in the Common Room on-going setting (Chapter 6),
when a member gave a performance (e.g. playing their guitar), a gathering
would spontaneously emerge from on-lookers and passers-by in the vicinity
(see Section 6.2.3).

In the audio-visual team case study, the benefit of the honey-pot effect was
to save them coordination work, enabling them to collaborate with less
effort. In the other case studies, the benefit of the honey-pot effect was
different – the activities in these settings was not group work but relaxation,
recreation and a mix of other activities depending on the specifics of the
setting and the individuals themselves.

In the Opinionizer one-shot setting studies, the Community Display played

the role of bringing people physically together and facilitating conversation

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between them. In reflection, one of the benefits here was that it allowed
people to engage with the Community Display and with each other at their
own discretion: it was up to them who they wished to freely associate and
mingle with. Thus the Community Display helped the community engage in
group interactions without requiring any formality or pre-arrangement. This
is particularly relevant in this kind of one-shot setting, where there is a
strong emphasis on recreation and enjoyment in interaction with other
people (cf. Goffman, 1963) - an experience which is highly subjective.

In the on-going setting studied, the activities engaged in and the topics of
discussion were very ad hoc. For example, in vignette (b) reported in
Chapter 7 (Section 7.6.3), the conversation held by the group was
“meandering” and much of the interaction was spent looking for an
enjoyable activity or topic of conversation. As such, it would not make
sense to try to planfully coordinate this sort of open-ended interaction.
Instead, on-lookers and passers-by judged for themselves at any particular
moment whether they found an interaction to be interesting, and could join
in “off the cuff”. For example, in vignette (a) in Chapter 7 (Section 7.3.5)
someone enters the common room, sees a friend interacting with Dynamo
displaying cartoons, and decides to go and join them for a conversation.
Also, in vignette (d) in Chapter 7 (Section 7.3.8), two on-lookers join into
an interaction that began between two people, their interest stimulated by
the content being shown (stills and music from a recent pop concert).
Coordinating such gatherings would be effortful since the community
members tended to have very different schedules and were often
geographically spread out (e.g. in different rooms on campus, working from
home, on a break in town, etc), not to mention potentially expensive should
it be carried out using SMS messages or mobile phone calls.

The second mechanism relating to public availability of usage of a

Community Display, and overseeing by people in the vicinity relates to
“vicarious learning”. This was seen to be highly important in both the one-
shot and on-going settings. In the one-shot settings studied, people would
arrive with no conception of what the Community Display did, nor initially

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any knowledge of its existence. To quote one interviewee “Nobody really
knew what it was when they came in”. The members would progress in their
understanding of what the Community Display is by observing others using
it. To quote another interviewee “… I did see people standing around it so I
stood beside and watched for a while” These observations allowed them to
learn about the system vicariously – allowing them to ascertain what the
system did, how long it seemed to take, whether it looked easy or socially
awkward, and so on. Based on these observations, they would evaluate
whether or not to try out the Community Display themselves.

G3: General Design Suggestion

Learnability should be easy, rapid and build upon the familiar
In the AV team case study (Chapter 3), the team’s temporary members,
were able to start using their large display system because it consisted of
simple time-tables printed on paper, which were annotated with pen or
sticky notes. This familiar medium enabled the temporary staff to learn
how to use the system very rapidly. One way of achieving rapid
learnability in the digital medium is to utilise familiar WIMP (Windows,
Icons, Menus and Pointers) interfaces, rather than other newer interfaces
such as gestural (e.g Guimbretière et al., 2000; Vogel and Balakrishnan,
2004) In the AV team case study (Chapter 3), one of the reasons the Wall-
loader prototype failed because the interface was not immediately obvious
to an untrained user.

Moving onto on-going settings, in the Dynamo study, 100 instruction

leaflets were printed and left in a dispenser next to the Community Display
(see appendix A2). After the study they were counted and only seven had
been taken during the whole study. To quote one user in the Dynamo study
in an on-going setting, when asked if they found it hard to use the first time
they tried it, they replied “Not really […] I’d seen everyone using it so it
was pretty obvious…” Essentially, the lesson here is that given an informal
and social setting, a designer should expect people to learn about the
Community Display in an informal and social manner.

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 G4: General Design Suggestion (4)
Use a visual interface to support vicarious learning
If the interface is highly visual and displayed on the Community Display,
an observer can learn the steps of interaction with the system by watching
others using it. “Hidden” interactions like key combinations, gestures or
interaction on an associated private display is hidden and will prevent this
mechanism of learning. However, this observability has also been
documented to cause evaluation apprehension in one shot settings which
can deter usage. This is a trade-off that needs to be considered carefully
(see Section 8.5.1)

Vicarious learning through public availability and overseeing is a very

dominant mechanism in community adoption of Community Displays,
primarily due to their large physical size. However, the following example
shows that the mechanism of “vicarious learning through public availability
and overseeing” is one that applies generally to any technology that is used
in a communal space in a publicly available manner.

Seely-Brown and Duguid (2000) recount the manner in which Bell Co.
stimulated the adoption of the telephone in the late 1800s. At the time, the
telephone was a completely novel technology and its benefits were not
immediately apparent to end users. For example, Western Union in the US
and the Post Office in the UK both declined Bell Co.’s offers to sell the
patent to them at a very low price. Indeed, the chief engineer at the British
post office famously replied that they did not need the telephone because
“…we have plenty of messenger boys.” (Preece, 1876; as cited in Cosier
and Hughes, 2001, p. 9). As a result, Bell Co. instead took a grass roots,
bottom up strategy of getting the telephone directly into the hands of the end
users. This involved putting telephones in hotel rooms for calling the front
desk, and in offices as intercoms. But most interestingly, they also put
phones near lunch counters in diners and lunch rooms, to quote Seely-
Brown and Duguid: “…that way, it reasoned, people who didn’t know how
to use them would be likely to see people who did know how and in this way
learn about the phone system.” (p. 7)

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This strategy has a great deal in common with the design suggestions drawn
from the findings of the case studies in this thesis (see the grey boxes on
previous pages). By positioning by a lunch counter, Bell Co. are likely to
have considered public availability of the telephone usage, the highly
concentrated flow of people past the telephone as they queued to buy their
food, and the stage-like “performance for an audience” nature of this spatial
arrangement. Indeed, the choice of setting was a communal space in which
people were on breaks from their work and likely to have the disposable
time available to try out a new technology. It is interesting to consider how
Bell Co leveraged situated voluntary adoption to facilitate marketplace
adoption. Indeed, many modern marketing promotion techniques used in
encouraging marketplace adoption have similarities, for example, television
advertising and product placement in films, in which interaction with a
technology is depicted as a performance for potential users to observe and
learn from (Kotler and Armstrong, 2004).

Another implication of this example is that since the mechanism of

vicarious learning through public availability and overseeing clearly applies
beyond the scope of Community Displays, it would be an interesting avenue
for future research to pursue further. For example, the concepts developed
in this thesis (e.g. “honey-pot effect”, “thresholds of interaction”, etc) could
be applied to other technologies used in communal spaces. For example,
Swartz (2003) carried out a series of observational studies of information
kiosks in public places and noted that many were often not noticed or used.
He postulates that this may be because the kiosks were not visually
conspicuous enough and argues that future research is needed to investigate
this further. Similarly, Screven (2003) states that encouraging people to
interact with museum exhibits is a difficult challenge since visitors are often
fatigued, pressed for time, and distracted by many other things in the
environment; and he also states that the field is in further need of research.
A sensible overarching research goal would be to attempt to unify these
areas of research on public technologies used in communal spaces and bring
together the different conceptual frameworks and theories.

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Having discussed the findings that relate to research questions 1a, b and c,
the questions relating to the two different types of setting arise. However,
before these are moved onto, another design suggestion first needs to be
made. Referring back to Chapter 2, an analysis was carried out on of a
number of published Community Display research studies which were
aggregated on a set of dimensions. From this analysis, two marked clusters
appeared: “one-shot” and “on-going” settings, which were defined on the
dimensions of “permanence of communal space” and “community
interconnectedness” (Section 2.5). The findings of the Opinionizer and
Dynamo case studies provided further evidence of their existence and added
detail to the understanding of their nature. Most importantly, the phenomena
of situated behaviour and voluntary adoption were substantially different,
requiring different design considerations for each setting. As such, this gives
rise to an important question that Community Display designers must ask
themselves:

G5: General Design Suggestion

Characterise the target setting: more on-going or more one-shot?
The nature of the setting determines the design considerations and will
have a big effect on the resultant system. If the setting is used only one
time and for a short duration (e.g. a conference or exhibition), such as a
few hours or days, and the community is loose-knit (i.e. members don’t
know many of each other), this puts it more into the “one-shot” setting
category. If it is used regularly by an established community over a period
of months or years (e.g. a common room, or workplace relaxation area),
and the community is tight-knit, (i.e. members know each other), this puts
it more into the “on-going” setting category.

As stated in Chapter 2, the two setting characterizations are not intended to

be a mutually exclusive dichotomy, but should be regarded as landmarks in
a multi-dimensional landscape of types of communal space. The implication
of this is that a system designer should take particular care in not over-
interpreting the characterization of their target setting, and that they may
vary in their “one-shot-ness” or “on-going-ness”, as well as on various other
dimensions.

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For example, the culture of the community and the practices normally
carried out the space are also likely to have a big impact (cf. Orlikowski,
1992). Further limitations of the one-shot and on-going characterizations are
discussed in detail in Section 9.2 of Chapter 9.

8.3 Understanding Adoption in one-shot settings

Moving onto voluntary adoption in one-shot settings, this section will
address the relevant research questions (2a, 2b and 2c) specified in Section
8.1.

2a. How do people progress from complete naivety of a Community

Display to participation in related social activities and direct
interaction with it?
2b. How does usage spread through the community?
2c. What are the implications for design to improve adoption?

To begin with the most obvious and most important characteristic of one-
shot settings, as implicit from the definition, people will see the Community
Display system for first time, and may never be exposed to it again. This has
important implications for design, as the following design suggestion states:

OS1: Design Suggestion for one shot settings (1)

Cater for “one-off” interactions
Having never seen the Community Display before, the user needs to
discover, decide to use and interact with the system during their visit to the
venue, otherwise when they leave, they may never see it again, and the
system has effectively failed. Therefore the designer’s attention needs to
focus on encouraging this one-off interaction.

The community members in a one-shot setting have a number of defining

characteristics that need to be catered for in the design of a Community
Display. To summarize, in addition to never having seen the Community
Display before and having no idea if its function, they will be will be pre-
occupied with other activities such as meeting people, socializing, or
engaging in other entertainments in the venue. The “disposable time” they
are likely to be willing to spare in learning about and interacting with the

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Community Display is likely to be limited, and may even be as short as a
few minutes (as seen in the Opinionizer field studies, Chapter 4). Finally,
when considering using the Community Display, they are likely to be
apprehensive of being evaluated by on-lookers, and be concerned about the
possibility of social awkwardness or embarrassment (cf. Section 4.6).

The model of interaction put forward in the one-shot setting case study
(Chapter 4) describes the steps a user takes in deciding to interact. This is
summarized in Figure 8.1. The first step in this process is achievement of
initial visibility, i.e. the individual becoming aware of the Community
Display’s existence. Therefore it is highly important that people in the
communal space are likely to actually see it. A strategy to achieve this is to
position the Community Display in a way that offers line of sight to the
main points of flow which community members pass through, e.g. the
entrance to the space. Furthermore, if these are places where users spend
time queuing (e.g. at a bar or food buffet), it is desirable that there is also
line of sight from this location, since this is “dead time” in which people
will have the energy and attention to look at other things in the environment
(Underhill, 2000). Gehl (1987) makes a similar point in specifying design
recommendations for plazas in urban spaces:

"If people do not see a space, they will not use it. […] Unless
there is compelling reason, an open space should never be
sunk [...] sunken plazas are dead spaces." (Gehl, 1987; p.99)

This leads directly onto the following design suggestion:

OS2: Design Suggestion for one shot settings

Ensure the Community Display gets seen by the community
The first step in a user’s decision to interact with the system is them
becoming aware of its existence. To address this, ensure a good line of
sight from the major points of flow. As suggested in Chapter 4, it is also
important to account for the bodily occlusion that will occur when the
venue is full. Positioning above head height can address this problem.

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Figure 8.1: The interaction model derived for one-shot settings. Key
thresholds (decision points) shown in yellow.

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Following the achievement of initial visibility (the first decision point
shown in Figure 8.1), the community member then needs to be stimulated to
take a closer look and find out more about what the Community Display
does. This decision point is defined as the “threshold to attention”, and is
depicted in yellow in Figure 8.1 (a re-representation of the interaction model
put forward in Chapter 4). Encouraging a community member to cross this
threshold entails a number of design considerations, since the display must
entice the user forward, as described in the following design suggestion:

OS3: Design Suggestion for one shot settings

Use aesthetic wow factor to capture attention
Studies of the Opinionizer system in Chapter 4 indicated that colourful,
aesthetically pleasing graphic design seemed to be effective in getting
users attention. However, there is clearly a balance here in that users
should be made aware of a Community Display’s existence without posing
an annoying visual distraction (e.g. the use of bright flashing lights or
images).

If the person does decide to find out more and move closer to the
Community Display, this is the first stage of success, since they are now
likely to have moved to within the immediate vicinity of the Community
Display. This opens the door to possible social interactions in the vicinity.
In other words, an observer may enter into conversation with other people in
the vicinity, using the media displayed on the Community Display to “boot
strap” the conversation. This “non-direct” form of interaction in relation to
the Community Display is a legitimate form of interaction since it clearly
fulfils the intended function of supporting informal social interaction.
However, this alone is only part of the success, since some users need to
decide to actually come forward, interact with the system and furnish it with
topical content. This is the second decision point depicted in yellow in
Figure 8.1.

In making this decision, the observer evaluates the activity of using the
system. They ask themselves questions such as “How long will it take?”,
“Does it look easy or will it be awkward?”, “Will it be fun?” and so on.
They need to conclude that the benefits of interacting will outweigh the

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costs, e.g. the time and the effort. The system designer needs to facilitate
this decision-making process by communicating the key information about
the system to the observer in a clear and concise manner, as detailed in the
following design suggestion:

OS4: Design Suggestion for one shot settings

Communicate nature and function clearly and concisely
The designers need to communicate the general functionality and
interaction style of the system to the user quickly and clearly, so they can
acquire this information through low-engagement, low-investment glances
at the system while going about other things. In the case of Opinionizer,
the system provided one simple function – enabling users to write one
sentence opinions on a topical theme displayed – a function that could be
comprehended by briefly observing others using it.

The Opinionizer studies showed that a key factor on which a participant is

likely to negatively evaluate a Community Display system and decide not to
use it is the factor of “social awkwardness” (Brignull and Rogers, 2003),
also known as “evaluation apprehension” (Nunamaker et al., 1991). This is
the perception that the audience of on-lookers will judge the user negatively
if they make mistakes while using the system, which may make them feel
awkward or embarrassed.

OS5: Design Suggestion for one shot settings

Minimise causes of social awkwardness
Simple, uncomplicated activities are likely to stimulate low evaluation
apprehension from the end users. For example, in the case of Opinionizer
studies (Chapter 4), many users did not report social awkwardness, since
the system only required users to type a single sentence on a simple
“trivial” topic. However, some users and observers reported that they
found the prospect of thinking of an appropriately humourous remark to be
daunting. One possibility could be to allow multiple simultaneous users to
reduce the feeling of being the only one on stage, which seemed to be
effective in the Dynamo system (though not tested in a one-shot setting).

If the individual then decides to interact with the system, the system has
succeeded in its goals with that particular user – in fostering social
interaction around the Community Display and encouraging direct usage. In
the case of the Opinionizer studies, this observable usage progressed into a
self sustaining honey-pot effect, which was highly important since, as stated

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earlier, a major attractor of people is other people. Therefore design
suggestions G1 to G4 are important here.

Reflecting on this model of interaction, it is interesting to consider how

useful it is as an analytical tool in interpreting other study findings and
making suggestions for re-design. Two examples will be used here.

Firstly, in Carter et al.’s (2002) study of their “Iconic” Community Display

in a one shot setting, they found that voluntary adoption of the system was
low and that people tended to ignore it. The thresholds put forward in the
interaction model appear to offer much to improve their problem. Firstly,
looking at the threshold to attention, the question arises, did the observers
tend to even notice the Community Display? If not, this could account for
the adoption problem, and the designers would have benefited from
rethinking the installation, e.g. the screen size, its visibility from within the
space, and the attractiveness of the displayed information.

On the other hand, if people were tending to look at the system, but not
interacting with it or talking about it between themselves, the problem
would then seem to lie at the threshold to interaction, i.e. the point at which
they evaluate the system. Since Carter et al.’s (2002) system used abstract,
unlabelled icons to represent information, it can be postulated that this
confused observers. Unable to make an informed evaluation of the system,
they may have been left in doubt as to whether it was worth an investment
of effort. The Opinionizer study findings indicate that when observers see a
Community Display for the first time, they may tend towards a negative
evaluation (“There was a whole kind of fear because it was something
new”) , and that they tend towards a fear of social awkwardness. Carter et
al’s system may have failed to achieve adoption because the system was not
designed to dispel these suspicions and encourage the observers to interact.

Moving onto another example, McCarthy et al.’s (2004) “Proactive

displays” system was reported to have been successful in that 40% of 201
community members registered to use the system. However, it can be
postulated that the members were not made aware enough of the

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Community Display. McCarthy et al. took the step of making the
community members aware of the existence of the system in advance, in an
email sent out 4 days prior to the event, in which a link was provided to an
explanatory web-site (McCarthy et al., 2004; McCarthy, Personal
Communication March 9, 2005). This served to temporally extend the
stages of interaction. Referring back to Figure 8.1, this served to enable
users to pass through the thresholds of “attention” and “interaction”. A keen
user therefore could decide to buy-in to the system having read about it, and
the only remaining step would be for them to locate the displays in the
venue.

However, McCarthy does not report a great deal of success with this
approach. In fact, he observed that people were most motivated to become
users after having seen others using the system – the order which the
interaction model (depicted in Figure 8.1) proposes. It seems that witnessing
usage of the system first hand is a potent motivator to adoption. To quote
McCarthy:

“…as people became aware of- and experienced- the different

applications […], this provided incentive for others to sign on.
[…] the biggest burst of registration activity occurred after the
first session with AutoSpeakerID.” (McCarthy, Personal
Communication March 9, 2005)

Thus, a large proportion (specific number not reported) attempted to register

for usage of the system on site. However, registration took a long time,
since the form was lengthy and the web-spider software that was used to
harvest information from registrants’ websites tended to involve a long wait.
McCarthy observed that at one point, there was a queue of 20 people at one
of the registration booths, and the long wait may have deterred potential
users. Two registration booths were provided at the conference, while users
were also able to register via any web-capable device. McCarthy reflects
that to facilitate registration for more users, more booths should have been
made available, and that the ability to register from any web-capable device
should have been advertised much more. This is a redesign that the

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interaction model would concur, since this would entice more users to pass
through the threshold to interaction.

Furthermore, the interaction model also suggests that in evaluating whether

or not to cross the threshold to interaction and use the system, people will
weigh up the cost of the amount of time and effort required to interact,
against the benefit of the interaction (e.g. social interaction, enjoyment or
entertainment; cf. Chapter 4; Brignull & Rogers, 2003). Registration to use
the Proactive Displays was a 3 step process, to quote McCarthy et al.:

“First, an attendee needed to create a proactive display

database profile. […] Second, at the conference, the attendee
had to get an RFID tag and activate it […] at one of the two
activation kiosks available on-site. Finally, an attendee needed
to actually wear the activated RFID tag” (McCarthy et al.,
2004; p. 42).

Had this process been streamlined, this 3 stage process could possibly have
been made a single, brief step. For example, the web spider software could
have been used to harvest registration information in advance from personal
web-sites, rather than making the users wait while it did it for them on the
spot (cf. Stasko & Zhao, 2002; Carter et al., 2002). Then, if a user wanted to
be involved, they could simply just collect the RFID tag that had been pre-
made for them.

If reliable face recognition technology was available (cf. Sawhney et al.,

2001), this would improve the possibility of uptake even further since the
user would not even need to go to the effort to pick up their RFID tag, they
could simply opt in via a dialogue with the Community Display. According
to the interaction model for one-shot settings, reducing the perceived level
of effort in this way and enabling users to make the decision to be involved
“on the spot” would encourage users to cross the threshold to interaction,
and thus increase number of participants even further.

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8.3 Understanding Adoption in on-going settings
This section will address research questions 3a, 3b, 3c and 3d:

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?

A key characteristic of on-going settings is that they are established settings.

People use them as part of their daily lives: they have activities they
normally carry out, practices they normally engage in, and. accepted rules
(“norms”) which they adhere to. A Community Display for an on-going
setting should aim to either support these activities and practices or become
integrated into new ones. In other words it should aim to become familiar
and regularly used by community members. The name for this kind of
adoption is “appropriation” (discussed in Section 5.1 of Chapter 5), and is
defined as follows:

“Once an artifact is available in a certain setting, it may be

used according to the purposes for which it is suited. Users
discover and make the possibilities of the artefact available to
themselves for their specific purposes, resulting in an artifact-
mediated practice specific for the artifact and for their setting,
situation and practices. This process and outcome has been
referred to as ‘appropriation’ (Leont’ev, 1978; Leontyev,
1981)” (Torpel et al., 2003; p. 384)

Designing for appropriation is not a straightforward thing, since essentially,

it involves designing for a range of styles of use. Care should be taken by a
designer attempting to interpret this as a design suggestion: it does not mean
that a Community Display should be given a very wide range of functions,
since this could have the detrimental effect of bewildering users with a
complex interface. Instead, the system functions should offer flexibility,
allowing a wide number of ways in which they can be used. As detailed in
Section 5.3.1 of Chapter 5, examples of functions with flexibility include

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freeform text entry, drawing, media display, arrangement, and sharing. Such
functions can be exploited in a range of different activities, e.g. formal
meetings, brainstorming activities, noticeboard display, socializing, and so
forth. This leads into the following design suggestion:

OG1: Design Suggestion for on-going settings

Design for appropriation
Rather than designing with a single activity in mind (as would be
appropriate for a one-shot setting), the Community Display needs to offer
functions that offer flexibility, which the community may appropriate and
use to develop practices that suit them. For example, in the AV team case
study (Chapter 3), members appropriated the flexible function of spatial
arrangement and sizing to communicate the urgency of items to each
other. They did this by making urgent items larger and positioning them to
the side of the main display. On the Dynamo system, the facility of carving
was appropriated in various ways. For example, as well as being used as
an access-control mechanism for prepared content, it was also used in
playful games and friendly teasing, which users were observed to enjoy.
(cf. Chapter 7, Section 7.3.2). On a broader scale, the Dynamo system as
a whole offered flexible facilities for display, sharing and arrangement.
This was appropriated to be a surface for giving performances to groups,
for enticing social interaction with friends, and for furnishing group
conversations with content, among other things (cf. Chapter 7, Section
7.4.1). Thus, instead of designing with one activity or “path” through the
system in mind, it is important to design for a range of activities and
scenarios, and provide features that can be put together by users in novel
ways, according to their needs.

In developing these Community Display systems for on-going settings, it is

important not to exclude any potential sub-groups of users. For example,
rather than designing the system to be compatible with one very new kind of
personal technology, (e.g. just a certain kind of Smartphone), it is important
to support the cheaper and older legacy technologies that the majority of the
target user group are likely to own. One way of ascertaining this would be
to take a survey of the target user group, as was carried out in Chapter 6
(Section 6.2.4; and Appendix 2).

This is contrary to the logic used by many UbiComp researchers, who tend
to try to develop systems which use only the newest and most cutting edge
technology to investigate the possibilities of systems that will be used one
day in the future in real world environments (cf. Abowd and Mynatt, 2000;
Ndiwalana et al. 2003). For Community Displays to be evaluated, they need

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to be deployed – and adopted – in real world environments, which means
they need to be backwards compatible with legacy technology. Borovoy
(2001) makes a similar point, and states that when users took the “Thinking
Tag” devices home with them (away from the “Community Mirror”
Community Display system), they were not compatible with normal PCs or
any other devices, rendering them useless. He refers to this as the “lost
horizons” problem, after Capra’s 1938 film (Borovoy, 2001; p.44).

OG2: Design Suggestion for on-going settings

Be inclusive to potential users by supporting a range of legacy
technologies
In order to facilitate critical mass, many different types of users and their
personal technologies need to be catered for. A survey of the user group
can reveal their use of legacy technologies and inform the design of the
system. In other words, don’t forget about the “less exciting” users who
use dated equipment – they are crucial users because they contribute to
the critical mass and thus can determine whether a system is successfully
adopted by a community.

As with one-shot settings, vicarious learning is still a key mechanism by

which adoption occurs in on-going settings. However, here, as opposed to
needing to see and decide to use the system all in one short space of time,
community members are exposed to the system over a long period, e.g.
weeks or months. During this time they may be actually engaging in other
everyday activities (e.g. having lunch or coffee breaks, having informal
meetings, etc), but owing to the system’s public availability, they can learn
about it incidentally, without any intention or plan to do so. Incidental
learning is defined as “unintentional or unplanned learning that results from
other activities… it is situated, contextual, and social” (Kerka, 2000, p.1),
and it is widely recognized as playing an important role in educational
settings (e.g. Rogers, 1997; Baskett, 1993; Cahoon, 1995). In on-going
communal spaces, it is an important way in which community members are
exposed to and vicariously learn about Community Displays. Therefore, as
in one-shot settings, it is suggested that the Community Display should be
visible from all key locations in the communal space (see design
suggestions G2 and OS3). Here, though, the key locations include the points

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in which people spend time – such as seating areas, rather than just the focal
points of flow as is the case in one-shot settings.

Another differentiating quality of on-going settings is that users are more

likely to have a sense of ownership of the content they put on the
Community Display than compared to one-shot settings. For example,
rather than relating to a game-like ice-breaker activity, the content may be
work-related, or the user may have spent time and effort preparing the item
to share with the community. As such, users require the ability to prevent
others from stealing or accidentally manipulating their content; as shown in
the user studies reported in Chapter 5, sections 5.4.1 and 5.4.2.

OG3: Design Suggestion for on-going settings

Provide access control for owned content
In on-going usage settings, content is likely to be owned by users, and is
typically less trivial than that used on Community Displays in one-shot
settings. This creates a requirement for access control features.
Specifically, if users are able to connect their own devices or file stores,
they are likely to require private access to them since the material
contained may be sensitive. Also they may invest time and effort in
creating items for the display, which they may wish to remain unspoiled,
so access control of items on the display surface is also desirable. (cf.
Dynamo’s “Carving” feature). However, access control features can
complicate interaction and could deter first time users, so care must be
taken in implementing them effectively.

Overleaf, an interaction model for on-going settings is proposed in Figure

8.2, summing up the findings made from the Dynamo field study reported in
Chapter 7. A particular point of note here is that although it may resemble
the same flowchart-like representation used in the interaction model for one-
shot settings (Figure 8.1), it is not intended to be a flowchart of steps
through which a user must move. It is instead, a more abstract
representation. On the left hand side, in green, is a longitudinal
representation of gradual buy-in and vicarious learning, showing how
individuals typically move from being low buy-in users who generally
interact infrequently with Dynamo and in a low engagement manner, to
becoming high buy-in users, who generally interact more frequently and in a
higher engagement manner. This is intended as a descriptive pattern which a

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number of users tend to pass through, not as a prescriptive progression –
users move through this at their own discretion.

Within the pale orange box on the right hand side is a representation of
usage of the display. A user can engage in an interaction at any level of
engagement that suits them, and through any available entry point. The
main difference compared to one-shot settings is that members here use the
space regularly in their daily lives, and thus are exposed to it while doing
their everyday activities. It may be the case that upon their very first
exposure to the Community Display, the one-shot interaction model (Figure
8.1) applies to an extent, but this first time exposure makes up a very small
proportion of their use of the space thereafter.

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Figure 8.2: Interaction model for on-going settings

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Overseeing and peripheral involvement was observed to occur slightly
differently in the on-going setting as compared to the one-shot setting.
There was a diversity of other activities that people carried out
simultaneously in the communal space. For example, people would study
quietly, read books, work in groups, socialize, drink coffee together, eat
lunch or snacks, or have meetings at the same time, creating “multifocused
gatherings” (Goffman, 1963) which occurred on a regular basis. While
being involved in these other activities, community members would often
be involved with the Community Display interactions at various different
levels of engagement (shown in orange in Figure 8.2, and detailed in Section
7.4.2 of Chapter 7). For example, low levels of engagement included bodily
reactions such as turning to face the display when something interesting was
being shown, or “bobbing” appreciatively in time with music being played.
Higher levels of engagement included brief, low effort vocalizations such as
“ahh”, “ohh” and “wow”, which were termed “chirping”; and at a slightly
higher level of engagement was “shout outs” where users shouted
instructions to the people interacting with Dynamo, such as “turn it up”
(referring to music they enjoyed). High levels of engagement included
conversations with people interacting with Dynamo, and direct interaction
using a mouse and keyboard. Thus low levels of engagement enabled people
to be involved with interactions but while maintaining low effort and low
commitment, allowing them to carry on with what they were doing. The
significance of this was that it enabled “gradual buy-in”, in that many users
tended to move from typically low engagement or occasional use of
Dynamo, to progressively higher levels, and in doing so, their expertise of
Dynamo increased. In other words, people learned about the system in a
piecemeal fashion, and, most importantly, they were able to do so at a pace
that suited them. This is shown in green in Figure 8.2.

From this, the question arises, what was it about Dynamo that facilitated this
gradual buy-in? Analysis of the study findings show that it was partially due
to the wide array of different ways a user could interact with Dynamo, i.e.
its many “entry points” that enabled this. For example, a user could be

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registered, or not registered; they could initiate an interaction with any kind
of compatible personal device, or with no personal device at all; they could
enter an interaction with a group and gain a range of different kinds support
from people using the other interaction points, or they could interact alone
and independently. These entry points allowed a user to engage in an
interaction with Dynamo that suited their level of expertise and the level of
engagement that they sought. It also allowed spontaneous usage, since it
enabled a wide range of usage scenarios, rather than requiring users to plan
an interaction around a limited set of entry points. For example, if every
user needed to be registered to interact, achieving a group interaction would
require planful-ness and effort to arrive at the entry point in which each user
is registered, which could deter usage. This leads on to the following design
suggestion:

OG5: Design Suggestion for on-going settings

Support gradual buy-in by offering a wide array of entry points.
Gradual buy-in is a key process by which many users learn about and
adopt a Community Display in on-going settings. Many begin to learn
about the system through a series of spontaneous low engagement, low
commitment activities. A wide array of entry points allow them to enter
these activities without requiring effortful work-arounds and without
blocking them from entering the interaction. When designing and
evaluating a Community Display system, look for closed entry points and
aim to open them in iterative re-designs.

Reflecting on these findings and design suggestions, it is interesting to

evaluate their usefulness as an analytical tool in interpreting other study
findings and making suggestions for re-design. A study carried by Houde et
al. (1998) presents itself as a suitable candidate since adoption problems
were experienced and reported clearly. Their Community Display system,
the Apple NewsLens, is described as follows:

“… [It] provides a web-based presentation of news in a classic

newspaper format. Community members contribute stories by
simply sending email to an address dedicated to the
newspaper. …the frontpage of the Newspaper is projected on
a wall in a communal lounge area which can be viewed
conveniently by all community members who pass through
the area during the course of their workday, as well as during

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 tea time, a daily scheduled time when people gather in the
lounge area.” (p. 1)

Houde et al. carried out a field study on themselves and the other people
they shared a building with, by deploying the NewsLens in the shared
kitchen area. They reported a number of positive findings. For example,
community members expressed that it was fun to read, they liked the fact
that they didn’t need to go to a special place, either physically or “virtually”
(on the intranet) in order to discover news, and they also preferred it to
receiving group emails. However, the field study also revealed adoption
problems. After an initial wave of enthusiasm, usage dropped off a great
deal: “Not many stories were posted… approximately two stories per day”
(p. 3). They were left unsure as to the exact cause of this, postulating that
the system may have simply have been too time consuming for the
community to fit into their busy working days.

If the system is critiqued on the basis of the interaction model and design
suggestions put forward in this section, its shortcomings seem to relate to
the problem of appropriation. Put simply, perhaps the community were not
motivated to use the system in the prescribed way. If the system had offered
the flexibility for other uses, this may have allowed them to devise their
own uses and practices that suited their needs more effectively.

Firstly, items that were submitted for display were required to be news
items – they were even formatted in the appearance of a newspaper’s front
page. This may have communicated the implicit prescription that items
posted should be newsworthy journalism – an activity that users may have
evaluated as both time consuming and as a source of evaluation
apprehension. Reflecting on their study findings, this is something that
Houde et al. concur: “Writing short, informative stories for the Newspaper
is a skill that does not come naturally to most users.” (Houde et al. 1998;
p.3).

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Also, the submission to the display had to be done via email. Given the
early year of this research (1998), it is not surprising that they did not offer
additional facilities for technology interconnection, Indeed, devices such as
PDAs, digital cameras and wireless laptops were not even in popular use at
that time. Nonetheless, this limitation had a certain impact on the adoption
of the system, since users were required to return to their workstations and
write the news item from there. This meant that users needed to leave the
communal space and return to their workstations in order to add an item to
the Community Display. The effort involved may effectively have closed an
entry point for many of the users who, upon seeing the information
displayed or upon having an interesting conversation in the communal
space, might “there and then” wish to post up an item onto the display, with
their colleagues immediately available to help and give feedback.

Having to return to a personal workstation with a relatively small screen

would also would have hindered the social and cooperative aspect of item
creation. In the Dynamo study, users employed the multi-user interface to
browse and create content in a wide array of different arrangements (e.g.
pairs, trios, cooperative and back seat tutoring, etc.; see Section 7.4.4). This
offered a number of open entry points which with NewLens were simply not
available. A simple way of opening more entry points would to have
provided a mouse and keyboard to allow this editing work to take place on
the Community Display itself.

Finally, the items submitted had to be text only. This ruled out the use of
pre-made content, such as existing web-pages, documents, photos, video
clips, and so forth. This contrasts with more recent research systems, such
as Dynamo (Brignull et al., 2004), Plasma Poster (Churchill et al., 2003)
and Community Wall (Grasso, 2003), which all offer the ability to display a
range of media types.

In all, if NewLens had offered the scope for more flexible kinds of usage,
the community may have evolved their use of it into a tool for a different
kind of purpose. For example, it may have become less of a tool for

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dissemination of journalistic news stories, and more for more for informal
and low effort media sharing. This analysis has shown that the concepts and
interaction model put forward for on-going settings can be useful in making
sense of study findings and suggesting improvements for iterative redesign.

This chapter has discussed the contributions of this thesis in depth, first
looking at the general phenomena of situated social behaviour around
Community Displays, and then looking consecutively the specific voluntary
adoption issues relating to one-shot and on-going settings. The following
chapter will provide suggestions for future work and the final conclusions of
the thesis.

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Chapter 9

Conclusions and Future Work

9.1 Introduction 220

9.2 Reflection 220
9.3 Future work 222
9.3.1 Beyond the one-shot / on-going setting characterisation 222
9.3.2 Future avenues of Community Display adoption research 225
9.4 Final Conclusions 228

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9.1 Introduction
This chapter will begin by reflecting on the work as a whole, recounting the
research narrative, and making suggestions for different ways it could have
been carried out, given the benefit of hindsight. Secondly, this chapter
discusses some important avenues for future research in this area. Thirdly
and finally, this chapter will draw the final conclusions, summarizing the
main contributions of the thesis to field of Community Display research.

9.2 Reflection
The outset of this research began with the general motivation to understand
Community Display systems and the sociotechnical issues relating to their
usage. From this, the problem of voluntary adoption revealed itself to be an
important concern – contemporary researchers in the area were producing a
range of technically impressive Community Display systems, yet many
systems suffered from voluntary adoption issues (e.g. Carter et al., 2002;
Agostini et al., 2002; Houde et al., 1998; Churchill et al., 2003; Greenberg
& Rounding, 2001). Without adoption, all the time and effort put into the
development of these systems could render them into mere ornaments,
regardless of their potential usefulness. As such, this was chosen as the
central motivating research issue for this thesis. In other words, why were
these adoption problems happening? What was the nature of the adoption
problems? And would looking closely at the situated social behaviour
people engaged around these systems reveal a better understanding of the
problems?

Prior to the outset of the practical research, a detailed analysis was carried
out on user-studies reported in the Community Display literature by
comparing the studies on a number of different dimensions. Given the
degree to which these studies varied in their social settings, an emphasis
was placed on the social aspects of the communities and the communal
spaces in which the studies were carried out. From this, a marked clustering
was found, giving rise to the characterization of two distinct types of social

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setting: “one shot”, which were temporary settings used by loose-knit
communities; and “on-going”, which were permanent settings used by tight-
knit communities.

Drawing upon this characterization, a research approach was drawn up,

which entailed a series of three case-studies. The first case-study was
intended to ground the research by looking at a large display used by a team
of conference technicians. Although they did not use an actual Community
Display system, this case-study enabled the investigation of the social
properties of a physically large display used by an established community.
This proved to be a fruitful endeavor, since analysis of the field study
observations gave rise to an understanding of the spatial distribution of
interaction, flow, overseeing, and the honey-pot effect. From an analysis of
the field study, the Wall-loader prototype was developed. During
development on a desktop computer, this prototype seemed to be an
effective design. However, when it was deployed in the target communal
space, the intended user group was critical of it (cf. Section 3.3.2). Although
very disappointing at the time, this emphasized the point that large displays
in communal spaces were used in a very different way to desktop
computers, and users had different requirements.

In hindsight, more initial testing of the system during development (e.g. low
fidelity prototyping and brief field evaluations) could have brought this to
light sooner, and resulted in a system that was more suited to the setting,
perhaps even to the extent that the team could have used it to support their
work during a conference. However, this is a minor criticism since the
findings made were still valuable.

The second and third case studies consecutively looked at one-shot settings,
and on-going settings. Two systems were developed: Opinionizer for one-
shot settings, and Dynamo (as part of a collaborative project) for on-going
settings. These were studied in their target settings. In reflection, it would
also have been revealing to have observed the adoption of the Opinionizer
and Dynamo Community Display systems outside of their target

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deployment settings. Thus Opinionizer could have been deployed in an
ongoing communal space, and observed over a period of weeks; while
Dynamo could have been deployed at a one-shot event such a conference.
These additional studies could have provided an even better understanding
of the interplay between design, functions, voluntary adoption and types of
setting. However, given that this would require substantially more work, it
is more a case for future work.

The following section will go into more detail on some of these issues,
discussing the limitations of the research reported in this thesis and
proposing a number of avenues for future research in this area.

9.3 Future work

9.3.1 Beyond the one-shot / on-going setting characterisation

The characterization of “one shot” and “on going” settings has shown itself
to be fruitful, since the two types have been found to vary considerably in
their nature and in the type of situated voluntary adoption that occurs in
them. However, this characterization only aims to represent the first steps of
research in this area, and is by no means intended as universally applicable
to any kind of setting. This section will hypothesize some of the ways in
which communal spaces vary outside of the aspects investigated in this
thesis, and will discuss other issues that arise.

First, the dimension of community interconnectedness will be considered. In

the Opinionizer studies, the community was loose-knit and many people
met each other for the first time at the event. Here, the Community Display
was used to initiate first time meetings, and fulfilled this role successfully.
However, had the Opinionizer study been carried out in a setting in which
the community was tight-knit, such as a local conference for co-workers at a
company, the community members would have known each other very well.
This setting lies somewhere between being a one-shot and an on-going
setting. The physical location is likely to be foreign and unfamiliar to them,

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like a one-shot setting. However, the community are familiar with each
other, and with all the established social norms, activities and practices that
are carried out in their normal setting This produces a different blend of
requirements for the Community Display. For example, it may be beneficial
to offer some of the characteristics of a Community Display for on-going
settings, allowing users to engage in freeform activities with each other,
rather than encouraging them to engage in a simple pre-packaged activity to
encourage them to associate with each other. However, it is also important
for them to discover and learn how to use the Community Display within
the time available to them, which is a characteristic found in one-shot
settings. This would no doubt present a number of dilemmas to the system
designers, and is a valuable avenue for future work.

Another complexity not considered in this thesis is that the people present in
a communal space may be from a number of different communities and sub-
communities. For example, in the common room observed in the Dynamo
study, the community as a whole was composed of two parts: students and
teaching staff. For the students, the permanence of the common room would
have been 1-2 years in total from joining to leaving the college. For the
teaching staff, this permanence may have been much longer. Similarly, at
the social events observed in the Opinionizer studies, the service staff would
have used the space regularly as part of their daily working life while for the
visitors it was their first and probably only visit. Oldenburg (1998) describes
the phenomenon of how some people are not loyal to a particular location,
but to their social group, basing this on observations of groups of university
students who rotated the bars and other venues they visited around a city.
He refers to the venues used solely in this way as “bring your own friends
venues” (p. 171), and describes them as containing a number of separate
cliques that socialize mainly within themselves.

This concept of mixed settings, in which there are multiple communities and
sub-communities, means that a Community Display system designer may
need to design for the different needs of the different communities within a
single Community Display system, which is a new challenge. Study of the

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area of community social network structure and interconnection (e.g.
Wellman and Berkowitz, 1988; Wasserman and Faust, 1994) presents itself
as an interesting avenue for this future work, providing an alternative way
which to look at settings, design issues, and the effects a Community
Display may have on a community.

In the Dynamo study in an on-going setting, the findings of both the

preliminary and main field study show that the community members were
comfortable acting very extrovertly and socializing openly with anyone who
cared to engage with them. This can be attributed partly due to the fact that
the community was close-knit and there was much trust between the
members. Had Dynamo been deployed in an on-going setting where the
community was loose-knit, such as a café with no regular clientele, where
there was less familiarity and trust between people, members may not have
been so comfortable behaving so openly and doing things on a large display
that any stranger could watch and listen in to. Here the public availability of
the large display plays as a weakness rather than a strength. This is closely
related to the issue of social awkwardness (Brignull & Rogers, 2003) and
evaluation apprehension that was observed in the Opinionizer case study,
where there was also a lack of familiarity between the performer and the
people around them.

However, Community Displays are not intended to be the only technology

available in a space. As Dynamo demonstrated there are many benefits from
allowing users to interconnect a range of technologies. A ubiquitous
computing future can be predicted in the vein of Streitz et al.’s (1999) i-
Land or Black et al.’s (2002, 2003) Speakeasy, whereby a wide variety of
different types of technology are available to users, such as wearables,
handhelds, tablets, laptops, embedded tabletop displays and large wall
displays. This would mean that users would be able to choose the
technology that lends itself to the activity they are engaging in.

Thus, for example, a group of friends in an unfamiliar coffee shop might be

more comfortable using an embedded tabletop display, or their tablet PCs to

224
engage in a private interaction, but if they were at a social event at the same
venue at another time, they might be happy using the large wall display and
might welcome open interaction from the people around them. In such a
scenario, the displays in the environment might offer a generic display
service, which users could appropriate and run Community Display
applications on if they wished to, as proposed by Black et al. (2002, 2003).
This presents itself as an interesting avenue for future work, i.e. looking at
how Community Displays would exist in a wider world of Ubiquitous
Computing devices, and the implications this would have for their design,
usage and voluntary adoption.

9.3.2 Future avenues of Community Display adoption research

- The need for longitudinal studies in investigating on-going

settings
In the research area of appropriation and “evolving use of groupware” (e.g.
Andriessen et al. 2003; Huysman et al., 2003; Törpel et al., 2003) the
duration of longitudinal studies often range over much longer spans than
that currently carried out within Community Display research. For example,
Huysman et al. (2003) ran a three year long study of ten teams of designers,
and Törpel et al. (2003) ran a four year study of groupware adoption.

This contrasts with Community Display research. For example, studies

which can be considered fairly long in this area include Agostini et al.’s
(2002) Campiello study, which was run for a duration of two months, and
Churchill et al.’s Plasma Poster study, which was run for a duration of ten
months (albeit within the same department it was developed). The Dynamo
study was run for just ten days. However, it should be noted that shorter
studies do have their benefits: for example this study consisted of ten
consecutive days of fine grained detail of situated behaviour, giving a clear
picture of the important initial days of adoption and appropriation.
However, longer term studies are clearly needed to look at the longitudinal
adoption of Community Displays, to investigate the possibilities of novelty

225
effects, and the long term processes of appropriation. In such studies, a
different observational methodology would be used in comparison to the
Dynamo field study. Instead of a 10 day intense study in which video is
recorded continuously, a spread out method of sampling would be more
suitable, in which occasional video or observational sessions are carried out,
(e.g. twice a month spread over a year), and system logs are used to provide
the day-to-day detail.

These longer term studies will be an important addition to the mix of studies
being carried out on Community Display systems. Indeed, as Andriessen et
al. (2003) state below, maintaining a healthily mix of different styles of
studies, theories and methodologies is important to the development of a
well rounded understanding of the phenomena of adoption:

“According to our viewpoint, diversity is the mother of

knowledge. Theoretical and methodical comparison of the
results of various approaches should reveal the richness of the
phenomena under consideration. Only this way, we believe,
can the research agenda in the field be met.” (p. 377)

- The future possibility of Community Displays becoming

widespread
In the field studies reported in this thesis, all of the Community Displays
began by being new and foreign to the target community. However, one day
in the future, these systems may become a familiar part of society as a
whole, and a few standardized types may be developed, for example by
Microsoft, Apple, and so on. In such a scenario, people would know exactly
what to expect when they identify a Community Display, and will be able to
transfer the skills, activities, practices and norms that they have acquired
about them through prior use in other settings. Thus if a standardized
Community Display for one shot settings came into popular use, this would
necessitate the development of a new model of interaction for one-shot
settings, since the current model is entirely contingent on community
members never having seen one before. Similarly, for on-going settings, the
process of appropriation would span a far wider duration of time. Given that

226
the field of Community Display research is nascent, this possibility is still a
long way off.

- The need to report adoption problems.

As noted the literature review in Chapter 2, details of the adoption problems

reported in many Community Display research publications tend to be
sparse, often with a greater emphasis on positive findings. It is hard to judge
whether this is in part due to a desire for the report to cast the innovation in
a good light. This bias can take the form of “observer bias”, when the
researchers unwittingly perceive the observational data as supporting their
hypotheses (Reber & Reber, 2001), and as “publication bias” when
publication reviewers give preference to a certain kind of finding (cf.
Eysenbach, 2004).

In the field of adoption and appropriation research, there is a marked

emphasis on reporting and analysing adoption problems, in the vein of
Grudin’s paper on “Why CSCW applications fail” (Grudin, 1988; cf.
Orlikowski, 1992; Rogers, 1962). As the research reported in this thesis
demonstrates, there is a great need for this style of reporting to be applied in
future publications in the field of Community Display research.

- Unifying the research on adoption and Community Displays

This thesis has focused on the situated voluntary adoption of Community

Displays. However, as detailed in Section 2.2, there are a number of other
areas of research which provide different perspectives on adoption, for
example:

• Adoption within Organisations

Concerned with the diffusion of innovation through the formal
structure of an innovation, and the facilitation of this (e.g. Grudin,
1988. Orlikowski, 1992; Bannon & Kutti, 1996).

227
 • Marketing and Consumer Psychology
Concerned with facilitating the uptake of commercial products with
a view to commercial success (e.g. Kotler & Armstrong, 2004;
Moore, 1991; Underhill, 2002).

• Technology life-cycles and Usability

Concerned with the manner a technology’s user groups progress
from “early adopters” through to “laggards” and the targeting of
features and achievement of usability for the different needs of these
groups (e.g. Norman, 1998; Rogers, 1968; Moore, 1991).

• The diffusion of innovation

Concerned with the way in which innovative ideas spread through
communities and cultures, e.g. agricultural, medial, technological or
any other domain (e.g. Rogers, 1968; Arnould, 1989; Fleck, 2000)

Each of these different perspectives of adoption research have a much to

offer in advancing an understanding of the voluntary adoption of
Community Display systems. As such, a broad, overarching goal for this
field would be to attempt to consolidate and unify this research with respect
to Community Displays.

9.4 Final Conclusions

To briefly recount the nature of the system in question, Community
Displays are a type of large interactive wall display for use by communities
in shared, communal spaces such as common rooms, conference centres and
workplace foyer areas. Community Displays serve the purpose of
supporting informal social interaction in the communal space, by providing
a visual surface that serves functions of a shared point of reference,
information dissemination, serendipity and awareness for the local
community.

This thesis has focused on the problem of achieving the voluntary adoption
of Community Display systems, has contributed to a better understanding

228
this problem, and has proposed suggestions for minimizing it through
attention to the social setting and the system design. Overarching conceptual
contributions which were found to apply across all the setting studies were
the concepts of “user flow” and “the honey-pot effect”. As people moved
through the space and engaged in other activities (“flow”), they would
oversee usage of the Community Display, owing to its large size and
prominent positioning, which often would serve to spontaneously entice
them into a social interaction with those people (“the honey-pot effect”).
This served to foster spontaneous group congregations in which informal
social interaction would take place. Overseeing also played a very
important role in enabling vicarious learning, a process by which
community members would learn about the Community Display by
watching others using it.

Another key contribution of this thesis was the characterisation of two kinds
of communal space setting: “one-shot” and “on-going”. One-shot usage
settings include one-off social events (Opinionizer, Chapter 4), conferences
(McCarthy, 2003;) and festivals (Agamanolis, 2003). Such settings are used
briefly, for a few hours or days, and may not be re-visited by members of
the user community. On-going settings, on the other hand, include common
rooms (Dynamo, Chapter 8; Houde et al., 1998), cafés (Churchill et al.,
2003), and relaxation areas (Grasso, 2003), and are used regularly by an
established community over a period of months or years. The differences
between these settings have been shown to have substantial effects on
situated user behaviour and voluntary adoption; and as such they demand
different kinds of Community Display system to cater for this.

To elaborate, voluntary adoption problems in one-shot settings are found to

relate to whether potential users can discover and use a new and foreign
Community Display within the small window of time they have available.
Analysis of study findings gave rise to a model of interaction flow, which
describes the progression of interaction in terms of two thresholds which a
user needs to cross: the first threshold, the “threshold to attention”
involves them deciding to give the Community Display their focal attention

229
to learn more about it, and the second, the “threshold to interaction”
involves them deciding to interact with it directly. These thresholds are key
points at which a user may decide whether or not to interact, and are posed
as a key focus of attention for designers of any Community Displays for
one-shot settings. However, this model is particular to one-shot settings,
owing to the short window of time a user has available to discover,
understand and choose to use a Community Display. The design suggestions
put forward relate to encouraging users to cross these two different
thresholds, and achieving the all-important first time usage of the system.

Voluntary adoption problems in on-going settings are found to relate to the

achievement of repeat usage over an extended period of time, and the
appropriation of the system into community practices. Owing to the fact that
these spaces are used for a variety of other daily activities, community
members tend to learn about the system incidentally, while going about
these other activities. This also has a major element of vicarious learning,
but the crucial difference here is the prolonged exposure, which enables
“gradual buy-in”, i.e. users adopting the system in gradually, at a pace that
suits them. In this setting, interaction with the Community Display was
observed to take place at different “levels of engagement”, from peripheral
attention activities such as occasional glances while going about other
things, to focal attention activities, such as detailed conversations in
reference to the display, or direct interaction with it.

In the on-going setting studied, adoption was often (though not exclusively)
observed to progress gradually from low to higher engagement over a
period of days, described as a user’s “buy-in progression”. Also, usage
situations were observed to vary in a number of different ways, such as
spontaneous or planned, brief or lengthy, and independent or supported.
These various potential contingencies were defined as an array “entry
points”, and it is suggested that these should be wide-ranging, to cater for
the different possibilities of interaction a user may attempt to engage in. The
design suggestions put forward relate to supporting the full range of
potential users and usage situations, enabling “gradual buy-in” by not

230
requiring any unnecessary jumps in investment in the system as they learn,
and also and offering flexibility of the system functions to cater for
community appropriation, enabling them to use the system for the activities
that they prefer.

To conclude, the interaction models and concepts put forward in this thesis
provide the beginnings of a framework or lingua franca 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.

231
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259
Appendix 1

Interview questions used in

Opinionizer Study 2

260
A1.1 Semi-structured interview
A1.1.1 Background

The interview technique used was semi-structured. As such, the questions

listed below were used to guide the interview, but the interviewer also had
scope to pursue questioning on issues of interest. Responses were written
down by the interviewer, since the ambient noise in the environment was
too loud for audio recording devices.

A1.2 Interview Questions

A1.2.1 Participant briefing

Instruction to interviewer: express that the interview is only ten quick

questions and will only take 2 minutes of their time. Also, state that as a
reward you will pay them with chocolate.

A1.2.2 Personal Details:

Name:

Gender:

Age

Alone | in group (delete as appropriate)

Approximate group size:

Used Opinionizer | Did not use it (delete as appropriate)

A1.2.2 Interview Questions:

1) What did you think of Opinionizer?

2) What did you know about Opinionizer before you had a go on it? How
did you learn about it?

261
3) Did you watch others using it first before having a go yourself? Did it
look easy or complicated to use?

4) Did you begin a conversation with anyone while standing near

Opinionizer? Did you know them before hand? If so, did you know them
well, vaguely or by sight?

5) (For non-users) Why didn’t you try Opinionizer? Were you aware of its
existence? Did you know what it was? Did you watch others using it and
then feel it was not for you?

6) Did you find relaxing to use Opinionizer or was there an element of

anxiety? How did you feel about other people watching you while you were
using it?

7) What encouraged you to have a go on Opinionizer? Why?

8) What, in your opinion, was the one best and the one worst aspect of
Opinionizer?

262
Appendix 2

Materials used in Dynamo Study

A2.1 Participant Consent Forms & Disclaimer _______________ 264

A2.1.1 In Loco Parentis Consent form ____________________________ 264
A2.1.2 Participant Consent form ________________________________ 267
A2.1.3 Disclaimer Form _______________________________________ 270
A2.2 Preliminary Survey _________________________________ 272
A2.3 Post Hoc Survey ___________________________________ 278
A 2.4 Instruction leaflet __________________________________ 283

263
A2.1 Participant Consent Forms & Disclaimer

A2.1.1 In Loco Parentis Consent form

The form on the following page is the ‘in loco parentis’ consent form. This
was for the head teacher to sign, as a legal guardian of the students while at
the school.

264
IN LOCO PARENTIS – DYNAMO STUDY CONSENT FORM

By signing below you are indicating that you are an ‘in loco parentis’ guardian
of the students at Blatchington Mill Sixth Form college, and that you
understand and agree with the following terms and conditions:

[1] The Dynamo researchers will be recording video in the 6th form common
room of students using or carrying out activities near the Dynamo system.

[2] Images or segments form these videos could be used by the researchers in
the reporting of the study to the academic community. This might be in the
form of academic papers, conference presentations and project website content.

[3] Pseudonyms will be used to identify individuals in any publications and

materials beyond initial data collection. Their real named identities will not be
revealed. If you desire for the school to remain anonymous please this indicate
to us and we will not identify the school in any publications or materials
beyond initial data collection.

I would like for the school to remain anonymous: YES / NO (delete as

appropriate)

[4] The researchers will not use content from this video in any other public
non-academic forum unless the explicit consent of the people involved has first
been obtained.

[5] The researchers undertake to store the video in appropriate locked facilities
where access will be limited to those within the project.

[6] The students and teachers can choose to withdraw from this study at any
time without penalty.

[7] The users of the Dynamo system will each sign a disclaimer form, which
states that they take full personal responsibility for any actions when using the
Dynamo system. It also states that any information or files displayed or shared
through Dynamo is the responsibility of the individual participants themselves,
and disclaims the universities of Sussex and Nottingham from responsibility.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact Harry Brignull
[01273 877221, harrybr@sussex.ac.uk]. If you have any other concerns about
the study or the way it is being run, please contact Dr. Geraldine Fitzpatrick:
01273 678982, geraldin@sussex.ac.uk

I consent to the conduct of the Dynamo according to the above terms on behalf
of the senior college students and teachers.

NAME & POSITION (Printed):

SIGNATURE:

265
DATE:

266
A2.1.2 Participant Consent form

The following form explained to potential participants the nature of the

study, that participation was voluntary, the data collected was confidential,
they could ask any questions they liked, and they were free to leave and
change their participation agreement at any time without needing to give a
reason. It also explained that their names would not be published, and
instead pseudonyms would be used.

267
 Blatchington Mill Informed Consent Form
By signing below, I confirm hereby that I am participating voluntarily in
this technology field study, and that I understand the following terms &
conditions:

(1) I may be video taped while using or nearby the Dynamo system.

(2) These images could be used by the researchers when they report on this
study to the academic community, e.g., in academic papers and on the
project web page. My real name will not be used in any reporting of this
work.
(3) These images will not be used in any other public non-academic forum
without your explicit consent.
(4) I can choose to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty.

(5) I have read and signed a copy of the Dynamo Disclaimer document,
which states that I take full personal responsibility for any actions I carry
out when using the Dynamo system.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact Harry Brignull
[01273 877221, harrybr@sussex.ac.uk]. If you have any other concerns about
the study or the way it is being run, please contact Dr. Geraldine Fitzpatrick:
01273 678982, geraldin@sussex.ac.uk

print name sign date email

268
269
A2.1.3 Disclaimer Form

The form on the following page is the legal disclaimer, which details how
that when signed, the participants take full responsibility for their actions
while using Dynamo, such as the sharing of copyrighted materials and the
posting of anti-social or obscene materials on Dynamo.

270
 DYNAMO LEGAL DISCLAIMER
Please sign at the bottom to indicate that you have read this document and understand it.
The Universities of Sussex and Nottingham do not condone activities and actions that
breach the rights of copyright owners. It is your responsibility to obey all laws governing
copyright materials and property. The Universities of Sussex and Nottingham respect
copyright and other laws.
Be warned in the event a user of Dynamo fails to comply with laws governing copyrighted
property such user may be exposed to criminal or civil liability which may include possible
fines or imprisonment.

DO NOT VIEW OR DOWNLOAD COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS WITHOUT THE

OWNER'S PERMISSION.

DO NOT VIEW OR DOWNLOAD FILES THAT ARE BE ILLEGAL OR

CONTRAVENE THE RULES OF BLATCHINGTON MILL 6TH FORM COLLEGE.
THIS INCLUDES OBSCENE AND OFFENSIVE MATERIAL.

By signing this disclaimer you are indicating that you take full personal responsibility for
your actions when using or acting in relation to the Dynamo system. You are also agreeing
to indemnify and hold the Universities of Sussex and Nottingham and its agents and
employees harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable solicitors fees made
by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the Dynamo system.
The files, information and opinions displayed on the Dynamo system are the product of the
participants, each of whom has signed this document, taking full personal responsibility for
their actions. The Universities of Sussex and Nottingham disclaim all responsibility for any
files, information and opinions displayed on the Dynamo system.
By signing this disclaimer, you are indicating that you understand that it is your own
responsibility to protect yourself from computer viruses or other malware. The Universities
of Sussex and Nottingham disclaim all responsibility for any damages or losses (including,
without limitation, financial loss, damages for loss in business projects, loss of profits or
other consequential losses) arising in contract, tort or otherwise from the use of or inability
to use the Dynamo system or any material appearing on the Dynamo system, or from any
action or decision taken as a result of using the Dynamo system or any such material. The
Dynamo system contains hyperlinks to external websites. The Universities of Sussex and
Nottingham is not responsible for and has no control over the content of such sites.
Information on the Dynamo system, or available via hypertext link from the Dynamo
system, is made available without responsibility on the part of The Universities of Sussex
and Nottingham. The Universities of Sussex and Nottingham disclaim all responsibility and
liability (including for negligence) in relation to information on or accessible from the
Dynamo system.

Name (Printed): ……..………..………..

Signature: ……..………..………..

Date: ……..………..………..

271
A2.2 Preliminary Survey
The preliminary survey was given out during the preliminary observational
study carried out prior to the deployment of Dynamo. It is shown on the
following pages.

272
 Quick Questionnaire

Thanks for agreeing to do our quick questionnaire -

We really appreciate your support!

This should take you less than 5 minutes to

complete.

273
On average, how long do you use computers for
each day?
0-1hrs 2-3hrs 3-4hrs 4-5hrs 5-6hrs 6-7hrs

How would you rate your computer expertise?

Excellent Above Average Below Extremely
average Average Poor

274
Please state whether you regularly do each of
the following activities.

Activity YES NO

Mobile Phone Voice Calls

SMS messages

MMS messages
(containing images, video, sounds or ringtones)
Bluetooth-based file exchange using mobile
phones
(e.g. images, video, sound or ringtones)

Text emails

Email attachments

Photo-Sharing websites
(e.g. shutterfy.com, photobox.co.uk)
Instant messaging
(e.g. MSN messenger)
Shared drives or FTP servers
(e.g. Yahoo Briefcase, Apple iDisk)

Web Discussion boards

If you use any other communiction or file sharing tools, then list them
here (e.g. Blogs, Wikis, etc)

275
Please state whether you regularly use
each of the following devices while at
college.

Device YES NO

Non MMS capable Mobile Phone

MMS capable mobile phone

Laptop

PDA (eg Palm, Ipaq)

Digital Still Camera

MP3 Walkman

Digital Video Camera

USB pendrive

Floppy disk

Zip disk

Recordable CD

Finally, what mobile phone do you have (brand & Model)?

276
Your Personal Details

Please note: this information is kept completely confidential

Your Name

Gender

Age

Email
(Optional - used only to send you occasional messages about
Dynamo over the next 2 weeks or so)

Courses studied

277
A2.3 Post Hoc Survey
The post hoc survey was given out at the end of the study in order to
ascertain details of participant use and opinion. It is shown on the following
pages.

278
 Second Quick Questionnaire

Thanks for agreeing to do our second quick

questionnaire - We really appreciate your support!

This should take you less than 5 minutes to

complete.

279
When did you first use Dynamo?
Friday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
5th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

15th 16th 17th 18th

Did you register a pen drive (or any other

device) with Dynamo?
Yes No

If yes, When?
Friday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
5th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

15th 16th 17th 18th

How often did you use Dynamo?

Very Very
Frequently Occasionally Rarely Never
Frequently Rarely

280
Could you give a reason for why you used
Dynamo the amount you did?

Please rate your current familiarity with

Dynamo:
Excellent Above Average Below Extremely
average Average Poor

Based on your own experience, please list two

good and two bad points about Dynamo:

281
Could say in two sentences how you think
Dynamo effected life in the common room?

Your Personal Details

Please note: this information is kept completely confidential

Your Name

Gender

Age

Email
(Optional - used only to send you occasional messages about
Dynamo over the next 2 weeks or so)

282
A2.4 Instruction leaflet
The leaflet shown on the following two pages was made available in a
prominent leaflet dispenser next to the Dynamo installation. Please note that
it has been scaled down to fit on this page.

283
284
285
286