Mark Handel

What is chat doing in the workplace

We report an empirical study of a synchronous messaging application with group-oriented functionality designed to support teams in the workplace. In particular, the tool supports group chat windows that allow members of a group to communicate with text that persists for about a day. We describe the experience of 6 globally-distributed work groups who used the tool over a period of 17 months. An analysis of use shows that the group functionality was used primarily for bursts of synchronous conversations and occasional asynchronous exchanges. The content was primarily focused on work tasks, and negotiating availability, with a smattering of non-work topics and humor. Nearly all groups were remarkably similar in the content of their group chat, although the research group chatted far more frequently than the others. We conclude with suggestions for future research, and a discussion of the place of team-oriented synchronous messaging tools in the workplace.

Identity, identification and identifiability: the language of self-presentation on a location-based mobile dating app

Location-aware mobile applications have become extremely common, with a recent wave of mobile dating applications that provide relatively sparse profiles to connect nearby individuals who may not know each other for immediate social or sexual encounters. These applications have become particularly popular among men who have sex with men (MSM) and raise a range of questions about self-presentation, visibility to others, and impression formation, as traditional geographic boundaries and social circles are crossed. In this paper we address two key questions around how people manage potentially stigmatized identities in using these apps and what types of information they use to self-present in the absence of a detailed profile or rich social cues. To do so, we draw on profile data observed in twelve locations on Grindr, a location-aware social application for MSM. Results suggest clear use of language to manage stigma associated with casual sex, and that users draw regularly on location information and other descriptive language to present concisely to others nearby.

Working around official applications: experiences from a large engineering project

We describe facets of specialized software applications developed to support a large collaborative engineering program. Although many of the applications were bespoke efforts, designed to the requirements of users, virtually all major applications have an unofficial spreadsheet or database backing up the official application. These tools invariably play a critical but unofficial role in the day-to-day work, acting as more than just as a work-around, while the official applications are used primarily for mandated record keeping and auditing purposes. Surprisingly, there is often management approval for these unofficial applications, but at the same time, desire to elimination these applications and only use the official applications. We discuss the implications of this finding for future collaborative applications and long-term record keeping.

Disclosure, ambiguity and risk reduction in real-time dating sites

While social network capabilities are proliferating on many online services, research has focused on just a few popular social network sites. In this note, we consider a different kind of social network site, explicitly designed to support particular types of risky sexual activity among men who have sex with men (MSM). We consider the role of ambiguity built into the interface in how users manage self-disclosure and its association with articulating more friends-only or sexual connections on the site. Despite the sites explicit orientation toward risky sexual practices, we find indications that users mitigate potential public health issues through the practice of sero-sorting. We discuss how design considerations that may allow for easier entrance into a community can cause problems for long-term users, or generate potential public health issues.

Let's Talk About Sex (Apps), CSCW

Location-based social network apps for dating have grown significantly over the past few years. Although they have many possible uses, casual and sexual encounters remain an important part of their draw. For CSCW, these apps are interesting to study: they offer a context to explore issues of identity and self-presentation, geography and locality, privacy and security, as well as motivation and usage habits. In this one-day workshop, we invite researchers, students, and practitioners from a diverse range of backgrounds, including CSCW, computer science, sociology, and public health, to discuss these issues and more, as well as to explore the difficulties and challenges inherent in this research. In addition to exploring the issues around apps for sex and dating, participants will also help to bring some of these sensitive, yet important topics into the mainstream of CSCW research.

Data-intensive collaboration in science and engineering

Science and engineering are facing huge increases in data volumes. This data deluge presents challenges for conducting collaborative data-intensive knowledge work and opportunities to provide better computational and organizational support for that work. This workshop will address three themes: infrastructures for big data, interoperability and standards, and data-intensive collaboration.

Facebooking in "Face": Complex Identities Meet Simple Databases

Online systems often struggle to account for the complicated self-presentation and disclosure needs of those with complex identities or specialized anonymity. Using the lenses of gender, recovery, and performance, our proposed panel explores the tensions that emerge when the richness and complexity of individual personalities and subjectivities run up against design norms that imagine identity as simplistic or one-dimensional. These models of identity not only limit the ways individuals can express their own identities, but also establish norms for other users about what to expect, causing further issues when the inevitable dislocations do occur. We discuss the challenges in translating identity into these systems, and how this is further marred by technical requirements and normative logics that structure cultures and practices of databases, algorithms and computer programming.

Grindr-ing Down the Walls between Physical and Virtual: Location-Based Social Enablers

Usage of location-based applications and websites has recently exploded. These tools leverage users’ location information, social connections and mobility; and combine anonymity with voluntarily disclosed spatio-temporal location information to generate opportunities for geographic exploration and social interaction. The most popular of these systems designed to enable exploration of the physical environment, best exemplified by systems like Yelp or Foursquare. However, there has been both commercial and research efforts to create systems that also enable social exploration, that is finding potential new friends within a geo-located framework. Although this is a fairly complex problem domain, there have been several successful applications enabling social interaction, including Scruff, Grindr, and Mister. Interestingly, all of these apps target a single community: gay men; apps targeting a wider audience, such as Blendr or Tinder have been less successful. These apps are at an unique intersection of areas of great interest to researchers: mobile apps, location-based services, and social networking. However, they also involve areas of emerging work, particularly for the iConference community. The first of these are questions around the initiation of new social ties, ones initiated in the virtual rather than physical world. Second, these applications are often geared towards dating or even just sexual interaction, and in particular, for the gay/MSM community. Are these applications taking advantage of distinct aspects of the MSM community? Or can some of the design space be re-purposed for the larger heterosexual (and/or non-dating) community? Ideal participants in this session will have experience in studying or using these systems, and be interesting in furthering the research and design of these systems. The format of the session will be geared towards identifying key themes in proposed or on-going research; examining the literature to date; defining a research agenda and design space; and discussion of methods and ethics on how to do research, especially around sensitive matters like sexuality, dating. We hope to come out of this highly interactive session with a draft of a research space, an initial outline of the literature identifying core background ideas as well as gaps for research, and finally, the start of a community of researchers who would be interested in attending future events, as well as potential collaborators in this emerging area of research.

Presence awareness: multiple sources, multiple roles

Intelligent, networked devices are increasingly common, and most of these devices are capable of reporting presence information about users or sets of users. One serious limitation is that most existing presence awareness systems are unable handle multiple presence sources at once, nor are they able to handle the situation where a user is also enacting multiple roles. This work looks at some of the possible problems with multiple sources, such as when a single device could report about multiple people, or devices have conflicting data.