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Novices Developing Familiarity with Desktop Videoconferencing

Project Status

Project Results

Project Summary

Abstract

This project provides long-distance couples with webcams, headsets and desktop videoconferencing software to use with their home computers for two months. Interactions are recorded remotely and interviews are conducted before, during, and after the trial. The two primary goals are to explore the rich details of how novices understand and deal with the affordances of desktop videoconferencing in context and over time, and how they use their experiences to decide whether they will continue to use it or not. A secondary goal, emerging out of data collection challenges, is to comment on remote usability testing methodology.

Introduction

Despite lower costs, better performance, and improved usability than prior incarnations of videoconferencing [7], desktop videoconferencing (DVC) still presents users three domains of practical challenges: 1) setting up the equipment,  2) coordinating the users’ schedules, and 3) interactional challenges.

1) Before users even start DVC, there are issues of setting up the equipment. Users expect setup to be easy and that the DVC equipment will not interfere with their other computing requirements. Rather than standalone equipment in an optimized environment, DVC equipment and software must work with existing personal computers wherever they are used. 2) DVC is expected to be usable on demand in accordance with users’ lifestyles, but the need to be in a suitable time and place challenges users to coordinate their schedules. 3) Interactional challenges stem from frustration of expectations that DVC’s live simultaneous video and audio provide the next best thing to co-present interaction. Previously found constraints on co-present interactional expectations include camera and image separation distorting mutual gaze [1], field-of-view constraining peripheral visual cues [5], and audio delay altering the produced versus perceived timing of utterances [6]. These constraints can play havoc with the subtle turn-taking mechanisms of interaction.

Over the last two decades, field studies of DVC users have found that there is an important longitudinal component to meeting these challenges. Dourish et al. [2] found that over a period of months users changed practice for dealing with the distortion of mutual gaze: after an initial two months users found themselves looking directly into the camera to provide explicit eye contact, but some time after that they abandoned the practice, having developed enough “gaze awareness” to understand each other’s interactional focus. Even more creatively, Dykstra-Erickson et al. [3] found users developing a “local visual language” over ten weeks of using a multimedia desktop conferencing system. It is the details of these kinds of familiarity development processes that this project seeks to explore.

Theoretical Approach

Ethnomethodology, which names both a research program and its subject of inquiry, is a qualitative approach to sociology that prioritizes the local production of practical understandings through embodied practices [8]. From an ethnomethodological standpoint, developing familiarity with DVC involves a process that involves changes over time in how the participants understand and use the technology’s affordances. Affordances, in Gibson’s [4] terms, are the actionable properties of objects which enable or constrain physical, and hence social, actions. Gaining familiarity, then, is the process of how affordances are explicitly or implicitly used, accommodated, circumvented, or capitalized upon by novices as part of accomplishing their desired social activities. The sequential nature of interactions (both singly and in series), the physical environment, the social relationship of the interactants, and DVC’s place in a constellation of communication resources will all form part of the ecology in which users will understand and deal with the affordances of DVC.

Goals

Two goals drive the project. The first is to detail the longitudinal processes of developing familiarity in terms of novices’ growing understandings of its affordances and the practices used to deal with those affordances (both overcoming difficulties and creatively making use of them). The second goal is to identify the factors which promote ongoing use, especially in terms of how novices’ emerging understandings of DVC’s affordances are linked to their decisions about continued use.

Data

Two types of data are being collected: recordings of the behaviors of the participants during DVC and reports of the participants’ experiences and assessments as provided in interviews.

12 pairs of novices, primarily long-distance couples, are being recruited to participate. Each pair is asked to have a minimum of eight conversations over a two month trial period. To approximate a real-world trial experience, the pairs are supplied with cameras, headsets, and Wave Three Inc.’s Session DVC software, which they set up in their own homes. The pairs may then do anything they want during their DVC sessions. Rather than installing additional recording equipment, the multi-party bridge capability of Session enables a remote computer and VCR setup to automatically record the video and audio of every interaction. The recordings will provide rich, direct evidence of user behavior. In addition to the recordings, all participants are interviewed before, during and after the trial. The interviews will provide reports and perceptions about issues that are not recordable, such as setup and coordination issues, as well as direct evaluations and estimations of likelihood of future DVC use.

Analysis

The behavioral data are being analyzed to find users’ practices for dealing with DVC’s affordances. The recordings of each pair’s interactions-in-series, especially the first few videoconferences as the pairs go from zero to some experience with DVC, allow the development of a corpus of emergent and changing user practices. The interview responses are being analyzed to determine the users’ changing understandings of DVC’s affordances over the trial period and their judgments concerning ongoing use. As each pair completes their trial, their behaviors during DVC are compared to and contrasted with their reported experiences and evaluations. This provides a glimpse into the consciousness (or otherwise) of behaviors, decisions, and their linkages.

Preliminary Findings

Of eight pairs run so far, two have completed their trial period while six have failed to complete due to a combination of social and technical problems that they were unable to overcome. The data that have been collected from the failed pairs are very useful for demonstrating setup, coordination, and interactional challenges, as well as usability analysis of the Session interface and service. Some methodological changes have been instituted to improve trial completion rates.

Data from the two completed pairs also show that setup and coordination challenges are critical. Both pairs found it difficult to talk more than once a week. Although they reported enjoying DVC, they felt that spontaneity was reduced by the need to coordinate their schedules enough to sit down at their computer and prepare for videoconferencing, and subsequently to have enough time in private to make the coordination and preparation worthwhile. Both pairs were very reluctant to set any form of schedule, either the same time each day or week, or even to set up a next meeting during a current meeting.

In terms of meeting interactional challenges, over time one pair developed orderly ways of using the field of view of the webcam. After just a few conferences they demonstrated clear concern for what was within and outside the webcam's field of view. Further, they started integrating the webcam's field of view into the communication process itself. Hiding things outside the field of view, gradually revealing things, panning, tilting and zooming were incorporated into social actions such as teasing, complaining, and joking.

Contributions

For researchers and developers alike, understanding the processes of developing familiarity with the affordances of DVC is fundamental. It provides both theoretical and practical detail on how people understand and deal with the affordances of technology. Further, the challenge of collecting data which approximates real-world development of familiarity provides insights into remote field usability research methodology. A rich understanding of familiarity development may be used to determine how much and what kinds of ease-of-use must be materially designed into a system to overcome problems encountered immediately, and what kinds of levels and timing of training are required for features that are not obvious. Positive appreciation for the processes, timing, and creativity of developing familiarity may also help with the development of new products and context-tailored roll-outs. Finally, understanding developing familiarity provides a nuanced appreciation of the factors involved with the ongoing use of computer-mediated communication systems such as DVC.

References

[1] Chen, M. 2002. Leveraging the asymmetric sensitivity of eye contact for videoconferencing. In Proc. CHI2002, ACM Press (2002), 49-56.

[2] Dourish, P., Adler, A., Bellotti, V. and Henderson, A. Your place or mine? Learning from long-term use of audio-video communication. Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 5, 1 (1996), 33-62.

[3] Dykstra-Erickson, E., Rudman, C., Marshall, C., Hertz, R., Mithal, K., and Schmidt, J. 1995. Supporting Adaptation to Multimedia Desktop Conferencing. In Proc. International Conference on Human Factors in Telecommunications, Melbourne, Australian, March.

[4] Gibson, J.J. The ecological approach to visual perception. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, USA, 1979.

[5] Heath, C. and Luff, P. Disembodied conduct: Communication through video in a multi-media office environment. In Proc. CHI1991, ACM Press, (1991), 99-103.

[6] Ruhleder, K. and Jordan, B. Co-constructing non-mutual realities: Delay-generated trouble in distributed interaction. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 10, 1 (2001), 113-138.

[7] Schnaars, S. and Wymbs, C. On the Persistence of Lackluster demand: The History of The Video Phone. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 71, 3 (2004), 197-216.

[8] Suchman, L.A. Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1987.