Jim Christensen

I'd be overwhelmed, but it's just one more thing to do: availability and interruption in research management

Many CSCW projects dealing with individual availability and interruption filtering achieve only limited success. Perhaps this is because designers of such systems have limited evidence to draw upon; most data on interruption management is at least a decade old. This study uses an empirical sampling method and qualitative interviews to examine attitudes toward availability and interruption. Specifically, we analyze how corporate research managers spend their time and look at how their attitudes toward interruption relate to their various activities. Attitudes toward interruption are marked by a complex tension between wanting to avoid interruption and appreciating its usefulness. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for design, suggesting that the notion of socially translucent systems may be a fruitful approach

Presence versus availability: the design and evaluation of a context-aware communication client

Although electronic communication plays an important role in the modern workplace, the interruptions created by poorly-timed attempts to communicate are disruptive. Prior work suggests that sharing an indication that a person is currently busy might help to prevent such interruptions, because people could wait for a person to become available before attempting to initiate communication. We present a context-aware communication client that uses the built-in microphones of laptop computers to sense nearby speech. Combining this speech detection sensor data with location, computer, and calendar information, our system models availability for communication, a concept that is distinct from the notion of presence found in widely-used systems. In a 4 week study of the system with 26 people, we examined the use of this additional context. To our knowledge, this is the first-field study to quantitatively examine how people use automatically sensed context and availability information to make decisions about when and how to communicate with colleagues. Participants appear to have used the provided context to as an indication of presence, rather than considering availability. Our results raise the interesting question of whether sharing an indication that a person is currently unavailable will actually reduce inappropriate interruptions.

An approach to providing a seamless end-user experience for location-aware applications

With an increasing number of businesses considering the possibility of launching location-aware, mobile commerce applications, the quality of the end-user experience will become more and more critical. We propose dynamic bookmarks and location domains as mechanisms to give consumers simple and straightforward access to a dynamically changing set of location-based services. Dynamic bookmarks are descriptions of services, which are bound to actual, registered, services as a users location changes. Location domains provide meaningful location context for location-aware services. We discuss the motivation and background of our work in progress, describe the key concepts involved, and present a system architecture we have adopted.

Publics in practice: ubiquitous computing at a shelter for homeless mothers

Today, commodity technologies like mobile phones - once symbols of status and wealth - have become deeply woven into social and economic participation in Western society. Despite the pervasiveness of these technologies, there remain groups who may not have extensive access to them but who are nonetheless deeply affected by their presence in everyday life. In light of this, we designed, built, and deployed a ubiquitous computing system for one such overlooked group: the staff and residents at a shelter for homeless mothers. Our system connects mobile phones, a shared display, and a Web application to help staff and residents stay connected. We report on the adoption and use of this system over the course of a 30 week deployment, discussing the substantial impact our system had on shelter life and the broader implications for such socio-technical systems that sit at the juncture of social action and organizational coordination.

Enabling location-based applications

We identify a number of factors that may hinder the commercial success of location-based applications: the concern of privacy, the need to consider context beyond location, the presence of voluminous resources, and the constrained interfaces available on mobile devices. We describe an end-to-end system architecture with integrated support to address these issues. In particular, the architecture includes a Secure Context Service that provides broad context information to applications and allows people to flexibly control the release of their private information, an Intelligent Service Discovery Service that allows for personalized selection of physical and virtual services, and a multi-modal interaction mechanism that enables users to exploit multiple synchronized access channels to interact with an application and to switch among channels at any time. Our goals are to improve user experience, to reduce user distraction and to facilitate awareness of the physical world.

A tale of two publics: democratizing design at the margins

The design and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has now evolved beyond its workplace origins to the wider public, expanding to people who live at the margins of contemporary society. Through field work and participatory co-design with homeless shelter residents and care providers we have explored design at the common boundary of these two publics. We describe the design of the Community Resource Messenger (CRM), an ICT that supports both those in need and those attempting to provide care in a challenging environment. The CRM consists of three components: 1) a message center that pools messages to and from mobile users into a shared, persistent forum; 2) a text and voice messaging gateway linking the mobile phones of the homeless with the web-enabled computer facilities of the care providers; 3) a shared message display accessible from mobile texting, voice, e-mail, and the web, helping the two groups communicate and coordinate for mutual good. By democratizing design and use of technology at the margins of society, we aim to engage an entire urban network, enabling shared awareness and collective action in each public.

Leveraging digital backchannels to enhance user experience in electronically mediated communication

Rendezvous is a conference call solution that leverages Voice over IP, enterprise calendaring, instant messaging, and rich client functionality to enhance the user experience and effectiveness of distributed meetings. We describe the service, and two of its user experience innovations -- the conference call proxy and iHelp -- which function as digital backchannels. We present results from a preliminary user evaluation, and discuss our notion of digital backchannels with respect to the social translucence framework.

Too Much Information

As mobile computing devices and a variety of sensors become ubiquitous, new resources for applications and services - often collectively referred to under the rubric of context-aware computing - are becoming available to designers and developers. In this article, we consider the potential benefits and issues that arise from leveraging context awareness in new communication services that include the convergence of VoIP (voice over IP) and traditional information technology.

People in Our Software

People are not well represented in today’s software. With the exception of IM (instant messaging) clients, today’s applications offer few clues that people are actually living beings. Static string...People are not well represented in today’s software. With the exception of IM (instant messaging) clients, today’s applications offer few clues that people are actually living beings. Static strings depict things associated with people like e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and home-page URLs. Applications also tend to show the same information about a person, no matter who is viewing it.

Voice-enabled IT transformation: the new voice technologies

Voice technologies can enrich the ways in which people communicate and enable novel modes of collaboration, such as integrated voice- and text-based communication services, social and business networking facilities, and the evolving Internet technologies (collectively known as the Web 2.0 technologies). These new technologies can alleviate many problems in interpersonal communications, including those affecting person-to-person, online meeting, contact center, and business-process scenarios. In this paper, we identify some of the new challenges enterprise employees face and discuss the potential of voice technologies to help with these challenges. We also examine the new business environment, the communication services it demands, and the challenges enterprises face in delivering these services.