RE: The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The Gap Between Social Requirements and Technical Feasibility

Summary

This paper argues that there is an inherent social-technical gap at the heart of the CSCW applications. It posits that CSCW, like HCI, has, over time, demonstrated multiple intellectual problems. According to the paper, CSCW shares problems of generalizability from small groups to a general population (as do all of the social sciences), prediction of affordances (as does HCI), and the applicability of new technological possibilities (as does the rest of computer science). This usually manifests as a fundamental discord between what is required socially and what is applicable on a technical level.

Opinion

Human activity is mostly predictable and contextualized. Nevertheless, it lacks the technical mechanisms to fully support the social world uncovered by the social findings of CSCW. This social-technical gap is unlikely to go away, although it certainly can be better understood and perhaps approached.

It is generally agreed that the dichotomy is also CSCW's signature creation. Because CSCW exists intellectually at the seemingly borderless interface between of technology and social settings, its merit depends mostly on the working knowledge of both disciplines.

While debate continues about the core issues in the emergent field of CSCW, it creates a new window of opportunity – the possibility of branching out, or viewing the CSCW from an interdisciplinary perspective. It is another indication as to innovative opportunities that can be tapped from the fundamental discordant nature of CSCW – one that can improve with a deeper intellectual appreciation of the context of use of a shared system and the tasks users wish to perform.

Summary Response Week 4: CSCW Problems

CPSC 601.25 Week 4 Response

Papers

In this response I will discuss two papers related to the failures of groupware and collaborative work systems and what causes these failures.

Great Potential

In the late 1980's the prevalence of decent network connections and the huge success of simple 'single user' applications seemed to set the stage for an explosion of groupware systems. Every aspect of work would be linked together by computers and work tasks would become mediated by company wide systems. These dreams were cut short by the realization that collaborative systems had a host of problems that single user systems did not. Problems emerged not from technical issues but social ones. Over time the CSCW research community absorbed these lessons, largely from other domains such as psychology and human-factors research.

Great Potential

But still good collaborative work systems still did not come into existence. A paper written by Ackerman suggests that such systems might never be possible, that the social issues involve collaborative work systems are just insurmountable. He details the difficulty which such systems as stemming from a couple of root causes, a lack of flexibility, nuance and ambiguity. That systems cannot be built to handle these causes because of the huge increase in complexity, cost and other factors. Faced which this Ackerman considers what reasonable raison d'etre still exists for CSCW research. While his assertion might be somewhat correct the paper soon gets lost of in the dizzying terminology of philosophy where Ackerman discusses "a science" rather then science itself. Rather then a deeper exploration about how to create systems which do better and better at dealing with fuzzy social issues, the paper gets lost in a discussion about 'a science of the artificial'. A better approach, away from the quagmires of fuzzy language would be to generalize further about these social difficulties are lay out the basic steps a future technology must meet to handle them.

Concrete Problems

A better approach to understanding groupware problems it the paper by Grundin. He explains some of the common ways that groupware fails and provides several clear examples of how and why these systems fail. The best example was the disparity between incentives with these systems. Unless the employer is willing to hire and fire (and provide incentives the old fashioned way) then designers must be prepared to offer some utility to all the people that use software. Unlike the earlier paper this suggests a clear task for the developers of this system, add more value for each user in a system. A common theme is that automatic decisions are often difficult to get right, and we can clearly recommend to designers to use them sparingly.

2012 Groupware

Since many of these papers are over 20 years old, we can look on them with years of experience. The suggestion that groupware was impossible because of a 'social-technology' barrier seems ... premature. Large companies have built voluntary organic systems that should qualify as groupware ... such a Facebook and Gmail and have made huge successes out of them. It should be clear that groupware is a challenging field but it should remain a field that attempts to solve problems for people, not a seperate 'science'.

Response: Beyond Total Capture: A Constructive Critique of Lifelogging

This article was able to target some of the issues that we discussed this week. 

The most important work was the categorization of memory recall:

Reminiscence, Retrieval, Reflection, Reflection, and Remembering. 

The paper suggests that projects should be specifically targeting one. 

The paper also puts focus on what to design --

• Target weaknesses of the human memory . 
• The problem of capturing everything vs capturing situation-specific information. 
• Not capturing the experience rather a cue, that can help in remembering the experience. 
• Target not the replacement of the human brain but as an assistant

Comments on Beyond Total Capture: A Constructive Critique of Lifelogging

Summary

This 2010 article, by Sellen and Whittaker, responds to some of the concerns raised by the concept of Total Capture Lifelogging particularly as practiced by Bell and Gemmell as seen in the MyLifeBits paper we discussed earlier in the week. They note that in many of the papers in the field the reasons or benefits to the user are not explained clearly and tend to be lumped together into five "R"s, Recollecting, Reminiscing, Retrieving, Reflecting and Remembering intentions. They propose some design principles to focus the creation of lifelogging systems onto something that is beneficial, including "targeting weaknesses of human memory" to focus the types of data collected towards actually needed data, "designing effective retrieval cues" focusing on how to make use of autobiographical memories, "support for the Five Rs" focusing on the use the system is actually intended for as opposed to be a general purpose external memory for the person and "Offloading and metamemory"focusing on how to balance efficiency compared to accuracy of the information as well as managing the integration with organic memory.

In general the authors suggest less aggressive systems for lifelogging and ensuring that the applications are actually useful for the users of the system.

Thoughs

As some of the in class discussion went, I found that the concept of total capture was discomforting and not useful. In particular the way in which these systems are designed, as technical exercises rather than as solutions to a given problem, is problematic. I think that the critiques and suggestions that Sellen and Whittaker provide are a good starting point for planning more useful lifelogging systems.

Further I think that these systems need to be based in need, or at least in finding answers to interesting questions. When looking at MyLifeBits, it is never clear what use the users get out of the system at the end of the day. Even if the questions are not of critical life importance (an overview of twitter statistics, for example) having any goal in the system will make the design of these systems more reasonable.

I also think that the total capture is somewhat misguided in terms of the amount of work that needs to be done. While there is something to be said for holding all of your data in a place you own and control, the fact remains that the majority of data we create/encounter each day continues to exist in whatever format and location and can be retreived at our leisure. Over long periods of time data does disappear and some things (like the number of cups of coffee I had to drink today) are more ephemeral, but on average it seems more important to allow a system to "travel back in time" to find what data can be useful rather than trying to gather everything ahead of time.

RE: SenseCam: A Retrospective Memory Aid

Summary

The study conducted by Hodges et al., demonstrated that through the use of SenseCam – a small digital camera that is designed to take photographs automatically, without user intervention, whilst it is being worn – a markedly amnesic patient was consistently able to remember aspects of several events. After presenting an interesting review of memory-loss problems and their associated impacts on the lives of the sufferers, the paper went on to describe the ideas behind the conception and design of the Sensecam.

The field research of the latest prototype model relied mainly on evidence obtained from test trials conducted on one patient – Mrs B. According to the paper, recall was maintained almost a year after some of the events took place, and without any review of those events for up to three months. The research also demonstrated the near-accurate recall of a number of different events which occurred over a three month period; and emphasized the point that there was minimal ‘contamination’ and inconsistencies between the recalls of different events, which the paper identifies as an ‘important’ step. Further anecdotal evidence reported by Mr and Mrs B during the period of the trial indicated that Mrs B sense of awareness improved aesthetically; and the quality of recall, from her own memory, alluded to a clear description of her feelings at the time.

Commentary

I thought the design and build of the prototype model was carried out with great attention to detail; there was an emphasis on precision and ease of use. A number of issues – some from the earlier prototype versions – were considered, namely: issues with battery life, storage capacity, and the form and shape of the camera were considered. Accordingly, adaptive measures were incorporated in the current prototype (version 2.3).

Nevertheless, I have identified a number of issues that were not taken into account in the research:

1. Outside temperature considerations: Because the intended users may have limited awareness of their immediate environment, the outside temperature conditions could become a significant factor in the sustainable operation of the camera. The paper indicated that the Sensecam was designed to be used for an extended period of operation – 8 to 12 hours. Given the varied nature of outside temperatures, which can rise or drop to very low or high levels depending on the location, it is possible that the smooth operation of the Sensecam may be impeded following an extended usage, and exposure of the camera to outside weather conditions. This is an area that further research should consider.

2. Legal implications: There might be legal implications that could affect future users of Sensecam. It is one thing to record personal events; it is another matter to record events which involve other people – mostly without their consent. There is also a social side to it: how would people react when they find that someone around them is wearing a camera, and consistently keeping a visual record of events? Since one of the laudable objectives of the research was to maintain an individual’s ability to function in the society, despite their debilitating illness, it becomes pertinent to maintain their integration in the society. Again, this is an area that further research should investigate.

3. Personal Application: The playback and review options, especially in the case of Mrs B, were, seemingly, not moderated to suit the usage and application of one person – albeit with limited cognitive abilities. If it were to apply in the case of an elderly person – assuming that such a person is suffering from the early stages of a debilitating memory loss disease like Alzeihmer, and happens to be living alone, as is often the case – can they operate and manipulate the playback and recall systems on their own? In the study conducted on Mrs B, her husband – Mr B played a crucial supervisory role to review the date-marked and location-marked images on the Sensecam. What if he was not there? Future research should seek to highlight this aspect of the work.

4. Another shortcoming of the study, in my view, was the limited field of clinical tests carried for this prototype version. Instead of concentrating on Mrs B alone, other patients with similar and varying memory-recall attributes should have been included in the study.

Opinion

Having worked in a Nursing Home in the UK, I have experience first-hand, the effects of memory-loss diseases, like Alzeheimer, on the elderly. I have always wondered why the rooms and personal quarters were decorated with a plethora of pictures. I have also worked with individuals with Downs Syndrome and other forms of learning disabilities, who possess limited cognitive and recall abilities. From this perspective, I believe that the Sensecam applications could potentially make an important contribution to the field of medical science, and possibly aid crime-fighting, if the shortcomings – some of them already identified by the researchers – are addressed by future work.

MyLifeBits and SenseCam

Goals: understanding the effort to digitize a lifetime of legacy content and to eliminate paper as a permanent storage medium. Collecting images throughout the day to help those who need memory aid.

Problem : amounts of personal data one collects per day can occupy large amounts of space, so how can one improve the ability to organize, search, annotate and use content; and how can one obtain a unified database with personal information.

Approach:

MyLifeBits: they created and organized a large database with all potential information and looked at ways to organize it. They created small interfaces to look at how that data could be put together and made accessible to people. The ideas behind this are based on Bush’s memex.

There is the belief that if you can capture as much data as possible, one can gain more insight about certain dates. This is particularly important because one regrets missing data, not the excess of it. This data has to be taken automatically.

Some Thoughts:

I think this is far enough from my research area to take elements from it, however, I do think it gave me a deeper understanding of what personal informatics is trying to do. On one hand I can see why it’s interesting to look at data from the past and learning something out of it, it might be cool to see what temperature it was outside while I was at a party or how the weather can influence our daily activities. I find it particularly interesting how one can look at the sensecam for example, to save and share memorable moments, hence why I proposed a project based on this before: I sometimes want to be able to relive moments, and feel the way I felt at a certain time, but I only want to take the relevant ones and also be able to share them, and see others’ experiences.

However, it seems like personal informatics has more of a focus on things where one can learn look back and learn from, particularly aspects like health and fitness. This is probably what I don’t like about PI in a personal level (oddly enough, I’m putting this up in a response log). Although I love working out and I miss doing things such as dancing (ever since I got injured), I know my SED only allows me to eat less than 10 different things… and it’s definitely not something I want to see. There’s also data that I think might be too random, such as my phone bill. But I do find interesting to look at data such as my phone calls, or people I talked to throughout the day (the social part). I think this is why I’m at a split as to what I like vs. don’t like about personal informatics.

Response:MyLifeBits and SenseCam-A Retrospective Memory Aid

MyLifeBits: This paper focuses on how to capture important information from various electronic devices and applications a person uses on daily basis. The only advantage they have outlined is an easy access to this data whenever required later. However, i feel that there are more advantages to giving attention to detail to what we do each day. Such as where professional data is concerned we can extract important workflow information. Define processes from looking at personal data of a department etc. At personal level we can look at how we need to do things differently to achieve something. Learn from our past mistakes, and so on. Moreover, if someone living or dead whats to share there lifebits, we can benefit even more. For example, a Manager leaves, the new Manager can be trained from the data collected from the previous one. Therefore, i am wondering why something like this isn't widely accepted as yet.
SenseCam: This paper describes a practical example of MyLifeBits. MyLifeBits focused on how to maintain detail level information of our day to day activities. Whereas, in this example, the study is focused on how pictures help retain memory of major events. Therefore, another study needs to look into how SenseCam can be useful in helping memory loss patients in there day-to-day lives. Moreover, the person being used in this study is aided by her husband, therefore the motivation to use SenseCam should be tested without aid from another person.

Comments on MyLifeBits: A Personal Database for Everything

Summary


In MyLifeBits: A Personal Database for Everything, Gemmell, Bell and Lueder introduce the use of an SQL database to supplement and organize the collected data in their wide-ranging Personal Informatics project. In their project the authors seek to amalgamate and access data from the entirety of a person's life, ranging from their location to their work production to their internet usage.

The author visualize their system as a "Memex" which was a conceptual device that stored, indexed and retrieved different types of information (largely as microfilm) and acted as a type of extended personal memory, allowing the user to store a huge amount of information in a structured an indexed environment.

In the original use of the system the users organized the majority of their data and information using the directory structure of the underlaying file system. However this limited the searchability and retrievability of their data and made it difficult both to organize the information and to link together connected pieces of information.

To resolve this problem they introduced an sql database at the heart of their system that is responsible for tracking both the information they collected and the meta-data about the information. Using this approach they were able to achieve full text search over all textual information they collected and all meta-data for non textual information and they were able to tie together different pieces of information with special links in the database. In cases of location and time they were able to automate the process of storing and organizing this information.

Thoughts

Technically, I'm struck that this system lacks flexibility. In particular adding new types of information to the system seem to require manually adding not only the meta-data to the database but possibly even the meta-data and types. In addition while the database reduces some of the work necessary to organize the collected data there still seems to be a fair amount of manual (or at least scripted) work required to organize the data as it comes into the system.

While the authors are using this system to investigate personal informatics, I can't help but feel that the system is not of particular benefit to the users. Tracking all possible information a person experiences seems as though it would be both quite invasive at the point of collection and very difficult to organize.

Clearly in the years since the paper has been published changes in technology have made it easier to implement many of the things they would like to use their Memex, ideally even phasing out the concept of one location physical for all the given Memex into the cloud. Additionally, the flexibility of a no-sql database might also prove to be beneficial for their implementation as it allows different schemes to access information than either filesystems or the plain sql implementation. It seems that the amount of data which can be recorded will continue to increase for the foreseeable future, and in order for this type of system to be useful for people, the interface for it will need to be much more carefully considered.