Socially translucent systems: social proxies, persistent conversation, and the design of “babble”

ABSTRACT

We take as our premise that it is possible and desirable to design systems that support social processes. We describe Loops, a project which takes this approach to supporting computer-mediated communication (CMC) through structural and intemctive properties such as persistence and a minimalist graphical representation of users and their activities that we call a social proxy. We discuss a prototype called Babble that has been used by our group for over a year, and has been deployed to six other groups at the Watson labs for about two months. We describe usage experiences, lessons learned, and next steps.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.3 Organizational Impacts
          Subjects: Computer-supported collaborative work

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES

General Terms:
Design, Documentation

Keywords:
CMC, CSCW, IRC, awareness, chat, computer-medicated communication, conversation, design, discourse, social activity, social computing, visualization