The effect of personality on collaborative task performance and interaction

Collocated, multi-user technologies, which support group-work are becoming increasingly popular. Examples include MERL's Diamondtouch and Microsoft's Surface, both of which have evolved from research prototypes to commercial products. Many applications have been developed for such technologies which support the work and entertainment needs of small groups of people. None of these applications however, have been studied in terms of the interactions and performances of their users with regards to their personality. In this paper, we address this research gap by conducting a series of user studies involving dyads working on a number of multi-user applications on the DiamondTouch tabletop device

Metacommunication patterns in online communities

This paper discusses about contemporary literature on computer-mediated metacommunication and observes the phenomenon in two online communities. The results contribute by identifying six general-level patterns of how metacommunication refers to primary communication in online communities. A task-oriented, user-administrated, community (Wikipedia in Finnish) involved a remarkable number of specialized metacommunication genres. In a centrally moderated discussion-oriented community (Patientslikeme), metacommunication was intertwined more with primary ad hoc communication. We suggest that a focus on specialized metacommunication genres may appear useful in online communities. However, room for ad hoc (meta)communication is needed as well, as it provides a basis for user-initiated community development

Towards adaptive recruitment and engagement mechanisms in social systems

Although successful online communities have engaged thousands of users, designers still struggle to recruit newcomers and increase current contribution rates. Related work on encouraging contributions has drawn from Social Psychology, Sociology and Economics theories. Engagement mechanisms embed the principles of these theories, and experimental studies evaluate the impact of different mechanisms on the contribution rates. Significant differences among alternative engagement mechanisms have been found, however, the results are sometimes contradictory for different groups of users. Our hypothesis is that the effectiveness of engagement mechanisms may depend on users' characteristics, and not solely on the mechanism itself. To start exploring this hypothesis, we performed a study to evaluate the impact of recruitment and engagement messages on different users' cohorts. Levels of current participation rates and demographic data were analyzed in order to explain differences in the impact of these engagement strategies. © 2012 Springer-Verlag