Social Networking Through Physical-Digital Media

Why "social" computing?

• a focus on people and the social context of use in designing, evaluating and reviewing  technologies, drawing insights from micro and macro social theory and methods
   
• designing technologies that support social processes in work and in recreation, including social networking systems and collaboration coordination and communication tools, such as phones, SMS, email, collaborative virtual environments, digital workspaces and shared tangible interfaces

AWF2005 Talk

The Presentation
giggling, gossiping, and gifting: essentials for social connection

Some videos shown during the presentation

• An old concept video
• PP_BrowsingReading.mpg
• PP_NavigatingAnnotating.mpg
• Yeti_UIST_3min.mpg
• Yeti_passersby.mpg
• Yeti_privacy.mpg
• Yeti_reading.mpg
• Yeti_showing.mpg
• Yeti_talk.mpg
• Yeti_tocamera.mpg
• AttractiveWindows.mpg

Example projects and demos

• The Plasma Poster Network and related installations

  Our most recent Plasma Poster Network publication:

  • Sharing Multimedia Content with Interactive Displays: A Case Study
    Elizabeth Churchill, Les Nelson, Laurent Denoue, Jonathan Helfman, Paul Murphy
    Presented at DIS 2004, Cambridge, MA, August 1-4, 2004.

  YeTI, a successor of the Plasma Poster Network, won Best Utility and Honorable Mention in the Professional category in the DIS2004 International Design Award competition, held in Cambridge, MA, August 1-4, 2004.

  

  • A concept video for YeTI (A rather large QuickTime movie optimized for streaming over the Web)

  A related work on YeTI, in which video capture capability has been added to the system,  will be presented at UIST2004:

  • Who Cares? Reflecting Who is Reading What on Distributed Community Bulletin Boards
    Toshiya Yamada, Jun Shingu (Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd), Elizabeth Churchill, Les Nelson, Jonathan Helfman, and Paul Murphy (FX Palo Alto Laboratory), to be presented at UIST 2004, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 24–27, 2004

  An old concept video illustrates our initial ideas for the Plasma Posters:

  • An old concept video

  • Other publications

   

• Sticky Chats: Desktop collaboration, inspired by field work on text-based virtual environments and instant messenger
   
  • Anchored Conversations. Chatting in the Context of a Document.
    Elizabeth Churchill, Jonathan Trevor, Sara Bly, Les Nelson, and Davor Cubranic
    In CHI 2000 Conference Proceedings, ACM Press, pp. 454-461, 2000., April 1, 2000
    [Abstract, PDF (369 KB)]
  • Virtual Environments at Work: ongoing use of MUDs in the Workplace.
    Elizabeth Churchill, and Sara Bly
    In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Work Activities Coordination and Collaboration, pp. 99-108, 1999., February 22, 1999
    [PDF (71 KB)]
  • It's all in the words: Supporting work activities with lightweight tools.
    Elizabeth Churchill, and Sara Bly
    In Proceedings of GROUP '99 (Phoenix, AZ), ACM Press, 1999., November 14, 1999
    [Abstract, PDF (72 KB)]

   

• AttrActive Windows: Designing for digital public bulletin boards, inspired by field work on community corkboards and public bulletin boards
   
  • AttrActive Windows: Dynamic Windows for Digital Bulletin Boards
    Laurent Denoue, Les Nelson, and Elizabeth Churchill
    CHI 2003, April 7, 2003
    [Abstract, PDF (69 KB)]
     
• The Palette: Tangible interface for giving presentations and sharing digital content
   
  • Palette: A Paper Interface for Giving Presentations.
    Les Nelson, Satoshi Ichimura, Elin Pedersen, and Lia Adams
    In Proceeding of the CHI 99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, pp. 354-361, 1999., May 18, 1999
    [Abstract, PDF (312 KB)]
  • Expanding a Tangible User Interface
    Elin Pedersen, Tomas Sokoler, and Les Nelson
    In proceedings of DIS'2000, ACM Press, August 2000., August 1, 2000
  • Tangibly Simple, Architecturally Complex: Evaluating a Tangible Presentation Aid
    Elizabeth Churchill, and Les Nelson
    CHI2002, April 22, 2002
    [Abstract, PDF (186 KB)]
    
     

Plasma Poster Network

Plasma Posters are a new form of social technology that allows people to share digital content using large screen, interactive, digital posterboards. They are designed for public places, allowing people to share content, advertise events and offer commentaries for others to read as they go about their daily business.

People can post pictures, text, Web pages and digital movies as email attachments to the Plasma Posters. Unlike digital advertising boards, Plasma Poster interfaces are custom designed to allow people to scroll, read, follow hyperlinks and print posted content. It is also possible to send comments to content authors and forward content to others by pressing a few buttons on the interface.

The software running underlying the Plasma Posters, the Plasma Poster Network, hosts, distributes and publishes multi-media content to a network of displays.

We have conducted a long term trial of Plasma Poster within a workplace (FXPAL). The three Plasma Posters at FXPAL can be seen in Figure 1, and our most recent interface, tailored for use by members of the research lab, are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Three Plasma Posters are running at FXPAL

The Plasma Poster Network has been installed also in Fuji Xerox's T-cube office complex in Roppongi, Tokyo and in a design division in Yokohama.