This is the way i spent my weekend, sometimes Alex just tell me that i’m just too Nerd, but then i see that he is playing Magic Online and that’s the end of the argument.
Today i want to share with you guys my first assignment for “Social Computing” part of Coursera’s “Interaction Design Specialization”
Instructions
Collaboration technologies have existed long before computers: bulletin boards, face-to-face communication, shared pointing and gestures. The online world has greatly expanded the gamut of what’s possible. In this assignment, you’ll examine the settings and activities of collaboration. You’ll observe collaboration patterns for a similar activity both online and in-person.
Assignment
For example, you might observe small talk in line at the grocery store. Who do people talk with or not? Why? What do they talk about? What function does this small talk serve, besides killing time? One affordance of being in a physical line with someone is that you can see what’s in their cart. This same information might feel invasive if provided online. By contrast, when the online world leaves a trace, it’s often searchable forever, whereas the grocery store encounter is ephemeral. In this scenario, you might select a Facebook or Twitter feed as a counterpart. Here the sphere of who you connect with is more curated rather than serendipitous. How does this change what people talk about?
IRL (In Real Life)
Spend at least half an hour observing a physical collaboration site. This can be anything you want: school tutoring, dance practice, boarding an airplane, socializing at a bar, standing in line, moving furniture, work meetings, etc. Take notes and photographs of coordination events: pointing to draw attention, counting out the beat, negotiating where people stand and sit, initiating a conversational turn, implicitly making space for others activities, using eye contact to coordinate timing and attention, the use of paper artifacts to set context, etc.
From your in-person observations, select three acts of coordination: one that you believe was fluent or successful, one that you believe was disfluent or unsuccessful, and one that you found creative or interesting. For each, submit a photograph and write one to two sentences describing it. Please do not include faces in your submission. Crop or black out photos if necessary. Peer reviewers will be advised to flag submissions that contain faces.
Online
Identify an online collaboration site that is the closest parallel you can think of to your physical site. For example, for school tutoring, it might be an online tutoring site or discussion forum. Other parallels may require more creativity: like what is the online equivalent of negotiating who gets the armrest in an airplane seat? Maybe it’s coordinating whose question gets answered on a Reddit forum. Again, take notes and screenshots of coordination events. What signals does the platform provide for coordination? How do people create their own cues, or adapt conventions from the offline world?
From your online observations, select three acts of coordination: one that you believe was fluent or successful, one that you believe was disfluent or unsuccessful, and one that you found creative or interesting. For each, submit a screenshot and write one to two sentences describing it. You will also write 2-3 sentences explaining how this online experience parallels your in person observation.
Inventing the Future
Based on your observations of these two settings, what is something in real life that you think would be difficult to replicate online? How can you creatively address the function of that goal even if the means is dramatically different. For example, if you observe a meeting, you might see that people raised their hand or lean in or make other physical gestures to request a turn to speak. If you were making a telepresence robot, or video conferencing system for remote attendees to be “co-present”, how might you support the function of conversational turn-taking? Or, you might think about providing an occasion online for people to serendipitously connect with folks in their neighborhood. What might this be? Would it be making visible when others in your neighborhood are on the same website? One solution might be that If you were both viewing the local newspaper, an icon would pop up indicating each others presence.
Your submission will include: the coordination function you identify and seek to reimagine online, a hand-drawn sketch of what that might look like (1 pg), and 2-3 sentences describing how the interface you’ve sketched would work.
In Real Life: In the textbox provided, enter 1-2 sentences describing the in-person setting you observed.
My submission
In Real Life: In the textbox provided, enter 1-2 sentences describing the in-person setting you observed.
I when to an ice cream shop located in a very popular mall in Caracas called “Fresh Berry”. Lights didn’t allow me to take good pictures, all seem green, i was not able to use flash to alert people around of my research because they might stop interacting with each other.
The people i was observing was:
- A father and son buying and having an ice cream.
- A couple with a small girl trying to buy an ice cream, but taking turns to take care of her.
- A group of 4 people wanting to sit down after ordering their ice cream.
Note: It was extremely difficult this observations in real life, one lady almost get mad at me because she notice i took her a picture. I discover i need more skills or tips to make this sort of assignments.
In Real Life: Upload a photograph of a successful act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
In Real Life: In the textbox provided, enter a 1-2 sentence description of the successful coordination act depicted in the photograph
A Mother and Father coordinate turns into the ice cream shop to take care of their small girl sitting in a table. As you can see the ice cream machine is self-operated, user select flavors and toppings, then they proceed to pay. It was a successful coordination; they both enjoy different ice creams (the way they like it) and took care of the infant child that is under 3 years old.
In Real Life: Upload a photograph of an unsuccessful act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
In Real Life: In the textbox provided, enter a 1-2 sentence description of the unsuccessful coordination act depicted in the photograph.
A group of 4 people coordinates to sit down inside the ice cream shop, but they didn’t notice chairs were not available. Chairs were being cleaned by one of the staff. After 2 minutes of eating standing in the same place, they decided to move… they couldn’t sit in the place they had chosen.
In Real Life: Upload a photograph of an interesting act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
In Real Life: In the textbox provided, enter a 2-3 sentence description of the interesting coordination act depicted in the photograph.
As you can see the ice cream machine is self operated, user select flavours and toppings, then they proceed to pay. In an unexpected way, father and son use the rotative table to switch ice cream flavors, in that way they can taste each ice cream combination they made.
Online: In the textbox provided, enter 1-2 sentences describing the online experience you observed and how it parallels your in-person observation.
In oniline world computer or devices should be “facilitators” of the part that they know how to do the best!. In our case devices took charge of creating a digital world or help us take care of characters we can interact with; but the social part in the game is still based on witch whom people want to interact with. Emulating social interaction in video games for example people choose who to play with: family or friends online.
Online experience was way easier than the Real Life i didn’t need to play spy, just went and search what i was looking for to observe. Meanwhile in the real life observation i lack of equipment to take good photos or even listen what people was saying without breaking the interaction that was taking place.
Online: Upload a screenshot of a successful act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
Pou is a game my son installed in my cellphone. He started taking care of the virtual pet, but i sometimes take care of him too (i don’t even know if is a him hehehe). We successfully take turns to feed him or play with him, put him to sleep and such, just like that couple that was doing other task meanwhile they took care of the little girl.
Online: Upload a screenshot of an unsuccessful act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
Online: In the textbox provided, enter a 1-2 sentence description of the unsuccessful coordination act depicted in the screenshot.
Inspired by the experience of the people that didn’t realize that the chairs in the ice cream shop were not available: In a game called Clash of Clans currently if a leader in a your “Clan” wants to coordinate a “war” against an enemy “Clan” they need to inform by chat in the game or off game (like whatsapp). For a regular player it is impossible to see in the map if the leader have assigned to you a target on the enemy clan, sometimes this end up in somebody attacking the wrong target or losing the opportunity.
Online: Upload a screenshot of an interesting act of coordination here. Please remember to crop or obscure any faces and identifying information.
Online: In the textbox provided, enter a 1-2 sentence description of the interesting coordination act depicted in the screenshot.
Since the real world experiment was “sharing ice cream flavours” i choose Super Mario Maker as an example. The user is able to create a new “LEVEL” with different components such scenarios, objects, enemies, sounds and more; the interesting part is that this level can be shared with another user, perhaps a friend if you like. The difficult part is that the sharing code is extremely long.
In the textbox provided, enter a 1-2 sentence description of the coordination function that you have identified and seek to imagine.
- Conversation: I will like to incorporate fast “chatting” or voice notes (fast communication, no typing)
- Explaining by drawing: Someone writing strategies in a board or paper, this will help to coordinate an activity such as an strategic plan.
Upload your sketch here.
New design idea for Clash of Clans
I can’t proceed without explaining the problem in the game first (sorry if i add more than 2 or 3 sentences)
In the game Clash of Clans if a leader wants to coordinate a “war” against an enemy “Clan” they need to settle strategies using other chat apps (like whatsapp) and do not use the chat created in the game. According to a friend is because the current chat does not allow image sharing and it’s pretty difficult to use, besides sometimes they have 2 chats: one for strategies and another one for assigning attacks. There is another issue: it is impossible to see in the map if the leader has assigned you a target; sometimes this end up in somebody attacking the wrong target or losing the opportunity to attack.
Adapted real life coordination function to the game
- A new chat will have the opportunity to add voice notes and make it faster, user currently complain about their chat feature: it’s difficult to type and the app will not allow vertical orientation. This will make the chat more like a regular “conversation”.
- Also, because we notice that the main problem was that in this chat, they try to coordinate attacks, i propose a way to assign the attack target in the war map. In this way each user that is going to the war will be able to see if the target is assigned and to whom. This will add visual aid (a signifier) to the current UI.
- Finally, another problem in communication strategies in the game is that it currently does not allow images in the chat, my proposal is to add images that will be easy to capture and edit inside the game itself. This feature will improve person to person communication to coordinate the attack strategy.
