Audio-only media space

MY NOTES

Hindus et al. (1996)

Hindus, D., Ackerman, M. S., Mainwaring, S., & Starr, B. (1996). Thunderwire: a field study of an audio-only media space, Proceedings of the CSCW 1996 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, (pp. 238-247). NY: ACM Press.

Literature suggests that "audio, especially good-quality audio, would have a sufficient communicative capability for an interesting and useful shared media system" (p. 239).

Thunderwire (p. 240):

• It was a purely audio medium. Except for an “on” light, it had no other visual interface or cues.
• The audio was high quality, such that users could easily distinguish one another’s voices as well as overhear background sounds. The sound quality made it possible to hear everything one might hear sitting in a person’s office, including private vocalizations, phone calls, bodily noises, and background noise.
• All messages were public on Thunderwire.
• System use was fluid. People could connect or disconnect themselves from Thunderwire any time ‘they wished, simply by flipping a switch.
• The act of connecting or disconnecting was indicated only by a barely audible click. In fact, there was no way to know exactly who was listening without asking.

Access Thunderwire:

• Group within same company
• Group was already cohesive, young temporary staff
• Group seated within 100 feet of each other
  

Problems with Thunderwire:

• Knowing who is present
• low disturbance audio
  
• automatically turning off mic when phone calls come in
• private conversations
  

Add modalities (e.g. visual cues to presence)
Keep to audio-only interface

• development of norms
• eg. Annoucing oneself, signing off so people know who is present
• eg. signing off before taking personal calls
• audio cock-tail parties

Somewire
(Signer et al, CHI1999)

Somewire=audio system underlying THunderwire
Researched 4 Somewire interfaces

• Fader: audio controls
• Vizwire: social presentation
• Thunderwire:one/off+volume
• ToonTown: tangible interface

Aoki, P. M., Romaine, M., Szymanski, M. H., Thornton, J. D., Wilson, D., & Woodruff, A. (2003). The mad hatter's cocktail party: a social mobile audio space supporting multiple simultaneous conversations. Proceedings of CHI 2003 (pp. 425-432). NY: ACM Press.

Rodenstein & Donath (CHI 2000)

Rodenstein, R. & Donath, J. S. (2000). Talking in circles: Designing a spatially-grounded audioconferencing environment. Proceedings of CHI 2000 (pp. 81-88). NY: ACM Press.

Talking in Circles:
The best one!!!
Audio as a way to overcome limitations to text-based chat (typing ability)
But audio chat has two major shortcomings

Small Group Discussions
Do we want to provide cues to facilitate audio-only communication
Or , do we

How do we evaluate the effectiveness of this system?

Cambience 【Video ->audio】
(Diaz-Marino & Greenberg, CSCW 2006)