CHRONEMIC ASPECTS OF CHAT, AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO TRUST IN A VIRTUAL TEAM

How does user personality impact pauses in online synchronous chat, and how do these pauses correlate with the development of trust in online teams? An analysis of hundreds of short chat sessions which took place between 62 pairs of participants in the DayTrader social dilemma game reveals a link between chronemic (time-related) variables and personality traits. The three chronemic variables that were analyzed, interpost pause, switching pause, and personal rhythm, were shorter in players who rated higher on extraversion, and longer in players who rated higher on agreeableness. The relationship between extraversion and shorter pauses is comparable to similar findings in spoken communication, while the relationship with agreeableness is novel. Furthermore, an analysis of the relationships between the three chronemic variables and the establishment of trust in the virtual teams confirms the hypothesis that longer pauses are associated with decreased trust. Three non mutually exclusive explanations are offered for this association: 1) longer pauses cause the decrease in trust; 2) longer pauses are the result of increased cognitive load associated with deception creation; and, 3) longer pauses are the result of increased efforts related to the suspicion that deception is taking place

Simplifying Cyber Foraging for Mobile Devices

Cyber foraging is the transient and opportunistic use of compute servers by mobile devices. The short market life of such devices makes rapid modification of applications for remote execution an important problem. We describe a solution that combines a “little language ” for cyber foraging with an adaptive runtime system. We report results from a user study showing that even novice developers are able to successfully modify large, unfamiliar applications in just a few hours. We also show that the quality of novice-modified and expert-modified applications are comparable in most cases. Categories and Subject Descriptor

Detecting Linguistic HCI Markers in an Online Aphasia Support Group

ABSTRACT Aphasia is an acquired language disorder resulting from trauma or injury to language areas of the brain. Despite extensive research on the impact of aphasia on traditional forms of communication, little is known about the impact of aphasia on computer-mediated communication (CMC). In this study we asked whether the welldocumented language deficits associated with aphasia can be detected in online writing of people with aphasia. We analyzed 150 messages (14,754 words) posted to an online aphasia support forum, by six people with aphasia and by four controls. Significant linguistic differences between people with aphasia and controls were detected, suggesting five putative linguistic HCI markers for aphasia. These findings suggest that interdisciplinary research on communication disorders and CMC has both applied and theoretical implications

Physically Large Displays Improve Path Integration

ABSTRACT Previous results have shown that users perform better on spatial orientation tasks involving static 2D scenes when working on physically large displays as compared to small ones. This was found to be true even when the displays presented the same images at equivalent visual angles. Further investigation has suggested that large displays may provide a greater sense of presence, which biases users into adopting more efficient strategies to perform tasks. In this work, we extend those findings, demonstrating that users are more effective at performing 3D virtual navigation tasks on large displays. We also show that even though interacting with the environment affects performance, effects induced by interactivity are independent of those induced by physical display size. Together, these findings allow us to derive guidelines for the design and presentation of interactive 3D environments on physically large displays

Minimizing Collaborative Effort with Visual Information

When collaborators work on a physical task, seeing a common workspace transforms their language use and reduces their overall collaborative effort. This article shows how visual information can make communication more efficient. In an experiment, dyads collaborated on building a puzzle. They communicated without a shared visual space, using a shared space featuring immediately updated visual information, and using a shared space featuring delayed visual updating. Having the shared visual space helps collaborators understand the current state of their task and enables them to ground their conversations efficiently, as seen in the ways in which participants adapted their discourse processes to their level of shared visual information. These processes are associated with faster and better task performance. Delaying the visual update reduces benefits and degrades performance. The shared visual space is more useful when tasks are visually complex or when participants have no simple vocabulary for describing their environments. Consider an architect and client working together side by side to discuss architectural plans for a new corporate headquarters. Communication among them does not merely consist of the words they exchange, produced independently and presented for others to hear. Rather, speakers and addressees integrate and take into account what one another can see (Schober, 1993; Schober & Clark, 1989). They notice where the other's attention is focused (Argyle & Cook, 1976; Boyle, Anderson & Newlands, 1994; Fussell, Setlock & Parker, 2003), point to objects and use deictic references like "that one" and "there" (Barnard, May & Salber, 1996), demonstrate and manipulate objects (Clark & Krych, 2004), make hand gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and reference pr..

A methodological pilot for gathering data through text-messaging to study question-asking in everyday life

How do people find answers to questions they encounter in everyday life? While extensive research has examined how people go about finding answers to questions online, there has been little work investigating the issue from a more holistic, in situ perspective that covers the various devices, resources, and contextual factors that influence everyday question-asking experiences. To address this, we developed a text-messaging-based data-collection framework. This paper details our approach including reflections on both the benefits and challenges of the methodology for researchers seeking to apply similar approaches to social science research. In doing so, we demonstrate how our methodology helps establish a contextually rich understanding of information-seeking processes. We also demonstrate our approach to analyzing data from a small but diverse group of adults across the United States about their everyday question-asking experiences

The Design of Banking Websites: Lessons from Iterative Design

Iterative design is usually considered in the context of prototyping, evaluating, and improving a single product. We had the interesting opportunity to work on three distinct products which had strong similarities, enabling us to carry many lessons over from one project to the next. This paper reveals our design experiences and discusses various design tradeoffs involved in the sequential development of the three banking websites. We discuss our design rationale, the elaboration of our design process, and the results of our evaluations. Our approach with these websites and others has been to try using new usability techniques with each project, and to incorporate successful techniques in every subsequent project. With this general approach, we improve the design of our websites, develop additional website design guidelines, and improve our design process. Through our experience with banking websites, we've developed guidelines for interactive graphic elements, navigation, and embedded multimedia. Our design process has also benefited primarily through: 1. providing usability training for our salespeople, 2. incorporating more effective mechanisms for customer feedback, and 3. conducting user testing