Inventing the Digital Life

The following are the live-blogging notes on today’s SOI Colloquium at the Informatics building. I’ll try to clean this up later.

Inventing the digital life
* identity: personal computers to computing as a personal experience
* ecology: system of choices … integration and fluidity … history, remediation and interpretation
* persuasion: sociality … simulation … virtual space
* Doing cultural ???: The story of the Sony Walkman (Paul du Gay et al) – good illustration of these ideas
* people and tech are changing rapidly together – co-invention

Questions/Comments:
* Columbia students messing with a voice system to make prank calls
* invention and remediation also leaving a record of activity, which can affect the employment and remain throughout history (i.e. searching facebook as part of the job process) … response: there will also be some changes in the other side, where recruiters can calibrate to become more forgiving … have confidence in human beings to adapt … people are going to go through some hard times as early adopters
* problems could be approached from a cultural or social setting, rather than a personal one … response: one of the tenants in our HCC is an awareness of the socio-technical system … we wanted to take a stance that we are something new, not HCI
* what is identity of GVU? … response: most of time was spent getting ready to make a big jump … our new mission is unlocking human potential through technical innovation … what is it that is fundamentally interesting about what people bring to the table? unlock human potential through tech innovation … we have some research just about creativity, supporting creativity in workplace, school and arts … research around persuasion, wellness (how people want to manage their health), independence (instead of tech doing things for you, how do you have tech to help you do things for yourself), trust

Persuasion:
* Chronic disease – what are the vital signs? how to motivate healthy behavior?
* Mamykina “Fis’n ‘Steps: Ecncourating physical activity with an interactive computer game” (2006)
– daily exercise – combine pervasive monitoring (foot steps) with allegiance to a virtual fish
– each person gets a fish, it reflects health goals and activity
– team dynamics didn’t matter a bit, but people got extremely attached to the fish
* Nitsche “Claiming its space: Machinima” (2007)
– machinima is taking game engines and make films from virtual scenes and characters
– kids have machinima parties, with pizza and a 2-3a finished product
– showed P.A.N.I.C.S. – re-mediating the Fears game in a humanized, humorous commentary
– showed French Democracy – based on riots in Paris, two kids were electrocuted after being chased by police … about 15 minutes of social commentary on prejudice … cut from The Movies, a game about Hollywood studio (provides new set of tools)
– Second Life – virtual space available for all sorts of thing, including machinima
Emerging media:
– Two and a Half Men – superbowl commercial
– Persuasive Game: the expressive power of video games – book on persausive game by Ian Bogust
– Food Import Folly – Ian’s game about being a food czar … Ian is on the NY Times editorial board, but instead of writing he releases a game with social commentary as interaction

Ecology:
* MER (Mars Exploratory Rover missions) – bit wall interface to track robot rovers … designers were the ones who thought it was a failure; engineers thought it was a big success …
* Huang “Displays in the wild: Understanding the dynamics and evolution of a display ecology” (Pervasive 2006)
– what was success of MER board in context of this ecology
– use MER board to collaborate on figuring out the 27-hour task for the rover … eventually, people stopped using it … at first, the collaboration was helpful to build the knowledge and relationship, but it later migrated to otehr parts of the ecology (i.e. it became routine to say “go 500 feet and dig”)
– Mars clock – show earth time vs. mars time sychronized … $3K clock … designers hated it … people didn’t feel they could take the clock down off the board, because they don’t know who might need it … social inertia … languished on the display
* McKeon “The inSpace Table: Weaving social space dynamics into the design of augmente converence rooms” (Ubicomb 2006 workshop)
– project with Steelcase
– co-design physical and digital workspaces for fluid collaboration … how to integrate physical and digital
– laptop recognized by RFID on a table … use and connectivity visualized through table lighting
* Shehan and Edwards (2007) “home networking and HCI: What hath God wrought?”
– 25% of all wireless routers returned due to installation complexity
– householder have limited knowledge, motivation
– tech complexity (setup, maintenance) is key impediment to “netowrked home”
– networking tech is the most returned item at “big box” electronics stores
– people tend to buy more printers rather than deal with configuring network to share
* home networking … internet-style tech was developed for gov’t, military and research … what happens when this enters the home … Challenges, statefulness, complexity, invisibility, devices don’t play nicely
* study to draw your home network – showed example of a Silicon Valley tech compared with the same description offered by the spouse … visible: machine, desk/furniture, wireless squiggles, “main network dealy (maybe several dealies) … illustrates the challenge of trying to translate Internet tech to home users
* experiment in mixed-reality ward: Pit experiment – person wears a head-mounted display, knows that what is really on a wooden board and green screen, but since screen shows a “pit” the eyes fool the mind … to understand what kinds of other emotional responses people bring into environment … similar study: put people in the middle of a quarrelling couple (on screen)
* voida “The digital photograph in computer-mediated communication” (ECSCW 2005 doctoral consortium) – interpretation ecology
– family members had different interpretations of what the camera phone is all about
– determine image quality is horrible and wouldn’t use it again
– others, it was about ubiquity … “I now have it all the time” … take pictures of completely weird things because they have it available, wouldn’t necessarily share it
– one participant thought of it entirely as a communications device … had never been a camera person, so now history … wife sends a picture of a flower to cheer up husband, husband has no idea why he’s receiving a digital flower and interprets it as a cue that she likes flowers

Identity:
* Voida ‘Listening in: practices surrounding iTunes music sharing” (CHI 2005) … “listening in” is the mechanism by which users access other users’ music in iTunes … identity management through visibility of music libraries
– shared quote about a iTunes music sharer, who was concerned about people seeing that he has a Justin Timberlake song in his library
– people use the visibility to shape identity (i.e. adding classical music selections to look more sophisticated)
* Klegg “Promoting learning in informal learning environments. (ICLS 2006) – identity and learning
* identity and health – not a case of good message design, food we consume in a community is deeply related to our culture … If someone doesn’t identify as a diabetic, then technology won’t necessarily help
* identity and communication – sign language recognition system, children in deaf schools … deaf community has a very strong sense of culture and identity
* identity and home robotics – how will people integrate robots into the home and other spaces … entire industry of clothing for iRobot … people name their robots … real integration, with substantial roles (like keeping track of a toddler), the robot now has a social role in the family … people manage that process by doing things like dressing them up

Consumers:
* Model-T: “you can have it in any color, as long as it’s black.” … highly-optimized, cheap as possible
* Computers: we sometimes believe we have gone beyond that into customization, but it is still limited
* huge explosion of taste, preferences and how identity is embedded in the things we buy

rapid transition in the relationship between people and computing
* not owned by programmers, now shared with users
* creating social structure of what digital life is about
* Bruce ???: people aren’t changing too much, but technology is changing rapidly … invention occurs at edge of change -> people are changing tremendously because tech is changing, and thus our interactions are, too
* Shift in perspective: human-computer interaction (HCI) shift to human-centered computing (HCC)
– user -> Consumer
– standardized -> individualized
– Cognitive & perceptive capabilities -> past experiences
– single system -> many choices
– Usability -> production
* ecology of devices and interactions
* cycle of consumption and production, echoing back into much longer conversation

Associate professor Beth Mynatt (Georgia Tech) is one of the two main PI’s in the Aware Home project
* director of GVU Center (interdisciplinary research center, working on large problems … center by affiliation … about 60 faculty pulled from around campus).
* emphasized health care and ubiquitous computing
* previously scheduled for April
* exploratory talk

Other relevant links:
Michael Clarke examines Generation C as a digital generation

Abstract:
Alan Kay famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” The past four decades are witness to tremendous invention in the technical capabilities, commercial offerings, and popular expectations at the intersection of people and computers. Nevertheless we are on the cusp of a more encompassing revolution driven by new expectations of increasingly personal computing experiences. In our research and educational programs at Georgia Tech, we are underscoring this shift as a transition from human-computer interaction (HCI) to human-centered computing (HCC). In this talk I will illustrate this nascent relationship between people and computation in four areas: consumer behavior, expressions of identity, computing ecologies, and interaction as persuasion. Fundamentally this revolution is driven by the emergence of people as equally, and interchangeably, consumers and producers of the computing experience.

Biography:
Elizabeth Mynatt is associate professor in the College of Computing and director of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center (GVU) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The center hosts fifty-five faculty drawn from computer science, psychology, liberal arts, new media design, history of science and technology, engineering, architecture, management, and music. Mynatt played a pivotal role in creating the College of Computing Ph.D. program in Human-Centered Computing, integrating studies in human-computer interaction, learning sciences and technology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics, software engineering, and information security. In the last decade, Mynatt has directed a research program in ubiquitous computing and technologies adapted to everyday life. With work that began at Xerox PARC and has grown to fruition at Georgia Tech, she examines the pervasive presence of computation in everyday life. Mynatt earned her Bachelor of Science summa cum laude in computer science from North Carolina State University and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech.