Advancing Ambiguity

Kirsten Boehner, Jeffrey T. Hancock, Cornell University, USA

Ludic Design - Encourages play (e.g., drift table - put weights on a coffee table to play with the birds eye view and navigation on the table).

The always on and always with you use of mobile phones gives you the idea that constant connection gives more information.

However if Jeff has your number and you don't want to talk to him ever - Jeff wonders why he always gets your voice mail.

So you create a "lease" with a person that gives them a certain amount of time, lack of use, or minutes about how long they are allowed to have your phone number for a specific time.

But why a lease?

Design challenges stems from designs that increase infomration and awareness reduce ambiguity, e.g., the space for stories

If people do not respond to you, then you do not know their attentions (are they not there or do they not want to speak with you)

Ambiguity emerges from multiple interpretations of evidence that shape the story space.

Where does this leave us?

Design for:
- opportunities
- salience
- something else - (e.g., Emoto System - provides emotional information to go along with text message. Use an emotion sensitive pen.)
- extremes
- over-interpretation - (e.g., when there is a pause between your IM conversation something exciting can happen on your screen like cherryblossoms blooming)

Gaver and Woodroof quoted often about abiguity.

Think about the role of evidence in helping with ambiguity.

Questions

1. [Intuit] Have you given any thought to guiding that flow of interpretation of info?

We have thought about looking at interpretation develops overtime within a community. We will look at interpretation at instances.

2. Your work is in social psychology. We know that people do make attribution errors
in a systematic way to find biases. Does the sort of work you describe help eliminate biases and make us better social judges?

That is a real interesting idea. Our goal has not bee in improving judging, but improving attributions. The most salient attribution of an ambiguous event. Designing ways to open up that space to help reduce biases.

3. [Northeastern] Space for stories is a euphimism is a space for lying. How is this being seen as a part of design affecting assumptions when people adopt certain products. I ask "Why" have cherryblossoms bloom when we pause IMing? If these actions help make stories, I wonder how I can trust the story?

That is very difficult. We could not figure out how we would use the lease other than to terminate the relationship you had with the person. It is hard to design for the space and stories. The cherry blossom idea is just because it is interesting - like a screen saver. You wouldn't have to use it as an example or as a story. But I take your point - that is the challenge we run into.

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Girls, Technology, and Privacy: Is My Mother Listening?

Wendy March, Intel USA and Constance Fleuriot, Featherhouse, UK
(Wendy presenting)

What are your US daughters doing in their large walk-in closets?

This came up very early in some interviews.

Interviews/Ethnographic Studies

Girls draw pictures of their houses to help understand how things work.

Study in 2005
24 girls in late teens
Still living at home
Really want privacy (dealing with "While you are under my room, you have to do X)

Asked how they would communicate important information. The girls said they would not text message it - they would go in their closet.

They used shared blogs and interviews.

It is hard to go home with teenage girls because their homes are not their homes.

Girls were given a question a day for two weeks. Each girl got a digital camera (kept as a thank you) and reported on what they did during their day with text and pictures.

Photo journals - pasting in information. See what happens when they arrive back. It would sometimes be disappointing (What was their compliance rate with paper prototypes?)

Blogs are very nice because giving them a digital camera, they reveal more about their life because they are live.

We went with friendship groups of 2 or 3. The photos were usually of them and their friends. They knew we were looking, but were primarily just communicating with each other.

A blog per person is not recommended because it was really boring and overhead was a lot to review data.

Password protection used to help with privacy. Not quite as private as one would hope though. The things they were thinking about became more about privacy and less about private things.

One girl had her blog found by her parents.

Technical Problems

Some girls post thousands of words and lots of pictures and some just put a sentence.

Texting is private, but you cannot have a conversation (e.g., He said this and then I did that.)

Text not seen as private or secret.

Mobility and the cordless phone (used a pay as you go)

In US mostly evening calls because mobile companies have free minutes at night.

British girls used the family cordless phone into some place they cannot hear.

Their home is not their space. They hang out in the living room with their parents. But it is really not private because of acoustics.

They'd go into their room and listen for foot steps to see if they were alone.

Computers were the same - it depended on privacy. Computers were usually in a shared environment. So they were not thought of as private. (But private machines are usually in boys rooms. Women are more likely to use technology in a public space.)

Only those who could take the computers somewhere private used it for private communication.

Mobile phones let girls go out, but it also means that parents can track you and call you.

Girls would be ambiguous, "I'm going out with my friend." And parents didn't exactly want blow by blow detail. By a matter of principle, did not want to tell parents everything.

In U.S. girls drank a lot.

Despite SMS and IM being very private by being quiet, they were not seeing it as private as we thought they would.

Mobility of device showed privacy - if they could bring it somewhere else away from others they would use it. But they needed enough minutes.

Questions

1. You mentioned about parents. What did you have to do on the ethics side. How did the parents have to sign off.

They were 17 to 18 years old. If they were 17 years old, parents had to sign off.

[Did the parents have to sign off completely so they had no right to see? Or did you have to give them that?]

No we did not have to give them that. We talked about that issue in another paper. Privacy and do you have all those ethical issues.

As it was, no one came up and talked about something we thought we would have to say something.

Some of them did talk about things that had happened at an earlier age and things they didn't want their parents to know about - but that was all things that happened in the past. If we talked to younger girls, we would have had to pondered us.

[What is your guesses if a university ethics board would allow you to do this since you are corporate?]

I have no idea.

They had passwords and they could share it with friends and family...and some did share and show it.

[Maybe that is why you are in the private sector]

Yes it is.

2. Phone conversations are emphemeral - no record of them. Now these technologies allow evidence of he said she said. Did it come up as a reason not to use text?

Yes that is one of the reason why they would not use text. It was definitely seen as a copyable thing. Since it was savable and forwardable, they girls didn't see it as private.

3. Ubiquity - to what extent did you see parents seeing if you were okay but not caring exactly where their child was?

Yes, most of those conversations were about cerfew and calling in to say, "I'm okay; I'm going home; I'll be half an hour late; etc." But that is one of the things we started asking about. Asking about knowign about location.

There was less push about where you are and more about are you okay and "will you be home for dinner?" (main question).

[Symbolic meaning of seeing the closet as protection. Underlying symbology]

I do not know.

Me: In emergency situations - kids are mostly found in the closet...not safe.