Colistening for Local & Remote Collaborators Michael Stewart
Abstract
Third Lab at Virginia Tech
Technology changes our relationship to others. Many technologies create isolated audio environments. There are many benefits to these; however, there are also drawbacks. We report the design and implementation of a system to support the reconceptualization of the solitary audio environment of listeners wearing headphones as a shared one. This reconceptualization does not recreate the old shared environment of the home or coffee house, which depended solely on physical proximity, but allows sharing the music listening experience by allowing people to listen at the same time, regardless of proximity. Colisten is currently built on top of the music streaming service, Spotify. Colisten allows users to seek low-level, nonintrusive audio connection with others, reconceptualizing the headphone as a shared place with at least some of the richness of experience of collocated audio space. We call this the zone of proximal connectedness, and we believe that this form of interaction facilitates interpersonal interactions that can benefit various socio-technical environments; especially the workplace.
2202 Kraft Dr. Blacksburg, VA
[email protected] Deborah Tatar Third Lab at Virginia Tech 2202 Kraft Dr. Blacksburg, VA
[email protected] Steve Harrison Third Lab at Virginia Tech 2202 Kraft Dr. Blacksburg, VA
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Interest & Experiences I am interested in people, especially in their interpersonal relationships, and how technologies can
support us in being “the selves we wish we were” (Tatar). In industrial research internships, I have explored tools for building real-time collaborative web applications (IBM Project Blue Spruce), and usage of large displays in device ecologies to promote sustainable commuting (Xerox Research Centre Europe). I have previously explored how the interface transparency of real-time collaborative applications affects collocated-users’ contribution to a group brainstorming task, while working from separate laptops (Virginia Tech). Currently I am working on a prototype to explore new ways for people to “feel connected” with each other in various real contexts, such as collocated and remote co-working.
Open Research Issues As technology changes, HCI and CSCW have discovered (and keep rediscovering) the human desire and need for connectedness to other people [3]. The need and desire for connectedness can be through direct contact; it can also be through shared experience, shared meaning, or even shared space. In a re-view of connectedness, Hassenzahl, et al. chose the term “relatedness” as the “label to subsume the diverse terms used throughout the literature, such as connectedness, intimacy, love, belonging, closeness, or togetherness” [2]. Whether there is one underlying psychological construct or many, they all share the idea that the search for connection is a driver of human behavior. Our shared experiences have begun to fray; it was not too many years ago that co-workers in the US would
discuss who was on the Tonight Show last night and repeat a joke from the show that they found funny; it would be a small social marker of community and would help sustain a feeling of modest kinship [6]. In contrast, today’s viral internet videos can be seen anytime on-demand and, at best, are more markers of relationship to sub-groups and cross-cutting communities rather than participation in a larger shared whole. Despite the diminishing of such opportunities for shared experience, people still seek connection. Texting each other, emailing, and other such forms of communication is a popular way for people to connect today. These messages appear to serve the purpose of maintaining relatedness. They appear to be meant to communicate to some emotional state that is difficult to put into words, and that users might not usually need to express when collocated. Strong and Gaver observed, “…sociality is often a more subtle and delicate thing” than “relatively explicit communicative acts” [7]. As Lottridge et al. found, sometimes people, “may not have anything explicit to communicate, they just wanted stimulation from the other to fill the void, a lightweight link to share the mood and feel the other’s presence” [4] p. 2332. FROM SHARED EXPERIENCE AND SPACE TO SHARED MEANING Let us now consider the situations of “connectedness” and “relatedness” and, the consequences of sharing as a more complex phenomena. We have highlighted a range of approaches to sharing which together suggest that the term “sharing” needs to be better specified. We suggest that the forms of sharing which contribute to connection are those which provide mechanisms for
the creation of personal meaning believed to be relevant to multiple people. Sharing possessions, sharing spaces, and sharing experiences are some of the obvious categories of sharing that most readily create conditions under which meaning to multiple parties can be created. In this short note, we will not elaborate on the creation and use of shared possessions. A shared space provides access to common contextual meaning. It also often implies a situated opportunity: recollection, reconstruction, and association of meaning. Yet not everything is shared. I may be reading Emily Dickenson and you Robert Frost, in the same shared space. When we listen to music with other people, we are in a shared audio space. Shared audio spaces have special properties. As McLuhan pointed out, acoustic space is particularly odd in that it is the realm of the “tribal” (his term), forcibly shared by whoever hears it [5]. Still, we live in different bodies; not everything is shared, even when audio is. A shared experience is a bit different from this. It puts participants in the position to jointly talk about that experience in the future. Arguably, listening to the same music asynchronously, as when we play tracks from a downloaded playlist, creates a shared experience but is not a shared space. The joint sharing of audio spaces and the sharing of experiences exists in a semantic tangle that may create a shared place [1]. It creates an opportunity for shared meaning and that shared meaning provides a
mechanism to assess feelings and associations – to become more (or less) part of the shared state with partners and friends. We argue that listening to the same music at the same time as others has the potential to create a meaningful experience of shared place. Conceptualizing Proposed Forms of Connection Lottridge, et al. studied what romantic couples wanted to share with each other when at a distance, and how these desires were unfulfilled by existing communication technologies [4]. They developed a concept piece, a technological probe that allowed asymmetrical sharing of either playlists and/or the ambient acoustic environment. They found that couples wanted to share via a simple interaction during “empty moments.” They observe that, "... one aspect of sharing one's life with another person is simply to 'be there' ..." [4] p. 2329. Strong and Gaver likewise reflect that, “mere togetherness may lead to a feeling of warm companionship” [7]. Feather, Scent, and Shaker, and other works which have come to be called “ambient awareness” technologies offer a simple, ludic interaction that do not attempt to communicate an explicit message, but instead to support that subtle feeling. Lottrige et al.’s “MissU” system has some similarities to Colisten, but their methodology turns the focus to “empty moments” and then to the ways in which the technology eases partners into and out of shared activities and direct communication [4]. This makes for more of a media-space like application – more of a bringing together – rather than a being together.
We are, of course, working in the same space as these ideas. Yet Colisten purposely un-focuses attention on sharing in order to foster connectedness. In fact, we might call the connection a zone of proximal connectedness, with apologies to Vygotsky. Vygotsky noted that children were able to perform better in the mere presence of adults even when the adult does not actually do anything [8]. By analogy, we might say that the knowledge that friends or co-workers are sharing the audio space enables the person to experience connectedness better. In particular, we think that the knowledge that a specific person or set of people is listening to the same music at the same time that you are, creates a shared place that contextualizes relatedness as part of the on-going activities of work and life. It creates a feeling of being with the other as a background. This zone lies between ambient awareness (Feather, Scent and Shaker) and semi-engaged shared spaces (MissU). RECONCEPTUALIZING HEADPHONES Often when someone is listening to headphones in some location, they aren’t entirely “there.” We could say that while they are listening to their music (and not to the sounds of their environment), they are in a somewhat solitary “ephemeral place” [1] created by their headphones and their music. Colisten makes this other place shared. This sharing may act as a conduit for other kinds of interaction, such as better, more appropriate direct communication.
Workshop Goals I hope to gauge the community’s reception to this line of research, and argue for its importance with respect to facilitating richer interpersonal relationships in sociotechnical environments.
I aim to receive criticism that I can address in my further studies, and discussion of related work to consider.
Bio Michael Stewart is a PhD student in the Third Lab in the department of Computer Science in the Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI) at Virginia Tech. Michael’s work, and the CHCI in general, are closely affiliated the Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology. He is advised by Prof. Deborah Tatar. He earned his Master’s in C.S. from the same department. Michael completed his B.S. in C.S. from the University of North Carolina. He has worked in industry with companies IBM and Red Hat, and performed industrial research internships with IBM and Xerox.
References [1] Harrison, S. and Tatar, D. Places: People, Events, Loci – the Relation of Semantic Frames in the Construction of Place. Comput Supported Coop Work, 17, 2-3 (2008/04/01 2008), 97-133. [2] Hassenzahl, M., Heidecker, S., Eckoldt, K., Diefenbach, S. and Hillmann, U. All You Need is Love: Current Strategies of Mediating Intimate Relationships through Technology. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact., 19, 4 2012), 1-19. [3] Judge, T. K. and Neustaedter, C. Sharing conversation and sharing life: video conferencing in the home. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM (2010), 655-658. [4] Lottridge, D., Masson, N. and Mackay, W. Sharing empty moments: design for remote couples. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM (2009), 2329-2338.
[5] McLuhan, M. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 23-35, 63-7. New York, Signet, 1964.
[7] Strong, R. and Gaver, B. Feather, scent and shaker: supporting simple intimacy. City, 1996.
[6] Putnam, R. D. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, 2000.
[8] Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA1978).
