Amy Voida

Listening in: practices surrounding iTunes music sharing

This paper presents a descriptive account of the social practices surrounding the iTunes music sharing of 13 participants in one organizational setting. Specifically, we characterize adoption, critical mass, and privacy; impression management and access control; the musical impressions of others that are created as a result of music sharing; the ways in which participants attempted to make sense of the dynamic system; and implications of the overlaid technical, musical, and corporate topologies. We interleave design implications throughout our results and relate those results to broader themes in a music sharing design space.

Wii all play: the console game as a computational meeting place

In this paper, we present results from a qualitative study of collocated group console gaming. We focus on motivations for, perceptions of, and practices surrounding the shared use of console games by a variety of established groups of gamers. These groups include both intragenerational groups of youth, adults, and elders as well as intergenerational families. Our analysis highlights the numerous ways that console games serve as a computational meeting place for a diverse population of gamers.

When conventions collide: the tensions of instant messaging attributed

We discuss findings from observation, interviews, and textual analysis of instant messaging use in a university research lab setting. We propose a method for characterizing the tensions that permeate instant messaging texts and that expose the collision between conventions of verbal and written communication. Given this method, we suggest a design space for exploring potential design choices in instant messaging clients. Finally, we recommend an analysis of communicative conventions as a fruitful lens through which designers might anticipate or circumvent design tensions in emergent computer-mediated communication technologies

Mobiphos: a collocated-synchronous mobile photo sharing application

People use photographs for numerous reasons with one of the most common uses of both analog and digital photographs is as an artifact to share and discuss with others. While the practice of photo sharing has been thoroughly examined in the HCI community, there is currently very little research on easily capturing and sharing content within groups of collocated mobile users. In this paper we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a mobile photo sharing application, Mobiphos, that gives a group of collocated users the ability to capture and simultaneously share photos in real-time with each other.

Six themes of the communicative appropriation of photographic images

In this paper, we explore the use of digital photographs in computer-mediated communication. We present Lascaux, an instant messaging client that serves as a research platform for studying visual communication with digital photographs. Through a combined analysis of the uses of images in Lascaux as well as the uses of images in other communicative contexts, we arrived at six themes of appropriation: the image as amplification, the image as narrative, the image as awareness, the image as local expression, the image as invitation, and the image as object/instrument. For each theme, we explore the ways in which a medium may be designed to support that class of appropriation. Finally, we reflect on the relationship between literacy, mastery, and appropriation.

Charitable technologies: opportunities for collaborative computing in nonprofit fundraising

This paper presents research analyzing the role of computational technology in the domain of nonprofit fundraising. Nonprofits are a cornerstone of many societies and are especially prominent in the United States, where

Asymmetry in media spaces

295 billion, or slightly more than 2% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (i.e. total national revenue), was directed toward charitable causes in 2006. Nonprofits afford many worthwhile endeavors, including crisis relief, basic services to those in need, public education and the arts, and preservation of the natural environment. In this paper, we identify six roles that computational technology plays in support of nonprofit fundraising and present two models characterizing technology use in this domain: (1) a cycle of technology-assisted fundraising and (2) a model of relationships among stakeholders in technology-assisted fundraising. Finally, we identify challenges and research opportunities for collaborative computing in the unique and exciting nonprofit fundraising domain.

Interviewing over instant messaging

In any collaborative system, there are both symmetries and asymmetries present in the design of the technology and in the ways that technology is appropriated. Yet media space research tends to focus more on supporting and fostering the symmetries than the asymmetries. Throughout more than 20 years of media space research, the pursuit of increased symmetry, whether achieved through technical or social means, has been a recurrent theme. The research literature on the use of contemporary awareness systems, in contrast, displays little if any of this emphasis on symmetrical use; indeed, this body of research occasionally highlights the perceived value of asymmetry. In this paper, we unpack the different forms of asymmetry present in both media spaces and contemporary awareness systems. We argue that just as asymmetry has been demonstrated to have value in contemporary awareness systems, so might asymmetry have value in media spaces and in other CSCW systems, more generally. To illustrate, we present a media space that emphasizes and embodies multiple forms of asymmetry and does so in response to the needs of a particular work context.

Console gaming across generations: exploring intergenerational interactions in collocated console gaming

Interviews often serve as the cornerstone of human-computer interaction research. As a research method, they can both be deeply valuable and distinctly challenging. Pragmatic challenges of interviews include the travel that may be required to meet face-to-face with a respondent or the time necessary to transcribe the exchange. As a tool for conducting interviews, instant messaging presents some compelling potential benefits to mitigate challenges such as these. And yet, over the medium of instant messaging, the genre of the interview takes on a different character. Drawing from our experiences conducting interviews over instant messaging, we reflect on the implications of using this new medium for conducting interviews.

The individual and the group in console gaming

In this paper, we examine the intergenerational gaming practices of four generations of console gamers, from ages 3 to 83 and, in particular, the roles that gamers of different generations take on when playing together in groups. Our data highlight the extent to which existing gaming technologies support interactions within collocated intergenerational groups, and our analysis reveals a more generationally flexible suite of roles in these computer-mediated interactions than have been documented by previous studies of more traditional collocated, intergenerational interactions. Finally, we offer implications for game designers who wish to make console games more accessible to intergenerational groups.