Last update: Jan 2013 - latest revision was to In Brief.

Welcome to Leon Watts' Home Page

Picture of Leon Watts by the Lake at the University of Bath Claverton Campus

In Brief

I am a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath. My focus is on interactive communication systems. These are typically software technologies that are intended to support communication between people. They influence how we think about one another: they affect our ability to pay attention to what someone has said to us, and our feelings of confidence that we are being listened to and understood.

I research how interactions with such systems are constructed, to inform the design of new systems and to help people understand the implications for their personal and professional communications. We talk to one another ever more through mediating technologies, such as online forums and blogs, mobile phone conversations and webcam video. Our ability to act as we wish depends on how well we are able to engage with one another through these technologies.

Some technologies are more efficient than others in helping us to get information across to others, and by the same token, for them to convey their message back to us. Think about the difference between receiving written instructions by email compared to being told what to do on the phone. Through the representations and transformations of information their designers have defined, these systems change what we are able to do and how we are able to do it. They mediate our understanding of one another.

Besides clarity and precision, there are other things that matter to people when they talk to one another. Things like being able to tell if the other person is unhappy or if they know we care. Even more importantly, it isn't always obvious what needs to be said. In conversation, people work together to exchange relevant information and to work things out. 'Message passing' assumes that we all know in advance exactly what we want to say. Conversations are much more commonly about working things out than simply delivering prepackaged messages. Communication technologies have come to be important in social relationships too.

Computer mediation of our dealings with others is very powerful in our everyday lives. It affects our sense of belonging, capacity for reaching agreement, toleration of dispute, demonstration and recognition of concern, and mutual comprehension. A scientific approach to the study of mediation can show how different technologies can cause different problems for people, and offer different potential benefits in all of these ways. So knowledge about how features make a difference can then be used to design new kinds of communication technologies, or else to help people to get the most out of what has already been invented. Knowledge of this kind has implications for personal relationships, business efficiency and democratic participation in the functioning of society.

Research

My research is concerned with the relationship between people and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). These technologies are all-pervasive in the industrialized world and have a huge presence in developing nations, especially amongst activist groups. My work examines how the design of interactive communications media (such as video-mediated communciation, instant messaging, email, web communities) help or hinder us in our efforts to understand one another, to create and resolve conflicts, and to cement relations in social groups.

In addition to research of this kind, I am also concerned with the science base for research on people and ICTs. That means I conduct projects with a methodological focus (finding new ways to find out new things). I am equally interested in methods whether they are quantitative (using numbers to describe and compare) or qualitative (using other observational data, especially linguistic information).

Research Ethics

Until July 2011, I was the Research Ethics Officer for the Department of Computer Science. Some fields of CS research necessarily involve the participation of members of the public for testing and evaluation. It is this kind of research that must be scrutinised to ensure that ethical standards are met, as explained in a Times Higher Eduction article. In such instances, the research must be planned so that rights and safety of participants (and research officers) are properly respected, and the activities they are asked to perform are properly explained. Ethical considerations apply to a wide range of institutional activity within the University of Bath. As of the 1st of August 2012, the Computer Science Departmental Research Ethics Officer role passed from Dr Joanna Bryson to Professor Nicolai Vorobjov.

I was appointed as the first Research Ethics Officer for the Department of Computer Science at Bath in 2006. I devised guidance on ethical research practice for my colleagues and students at all levels of study.
I put together a self-checking scheme to help identify and manage ethical issues that may arise in CS research that involves public participation. If you are a current member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath who is preparing a proposal for funded research, you can find information about what you should do on the Departmental Intranet.

Teaching

My teaching is on the boundary between science and engineering and between computer science and psychology. In particular, it focuses on the connection between designing and evaluating ICTs through analytical processes that aim to understand ICT usage. Classes for 2011/12 will include software systems engineering and human-computer interaction for undergrads and collaborative systems for grad students.

The connection between my research and teaching is in understanding how to define and reason about systems which are made up of human and software components. Besides the 'headline work' of a particular human activity, for example defining a new taxation policy, people also have to do a lot of 'cooperation work' just to be able to understand, cooperate and integrate their separate viewpoints. Software can be designed to aid in both the headline and cooperation parts of the work of any group wants to do. In that way, the quality and nature of 'the group' changes from being purely about human action to being about an integrated human-computer action. It depends on combinations of human intelligence ('nondeterministic wetware') and computational intelligence ('deterministic software'), working as a unified sociotechnical system.

Technologically Mediated Conversations and Relationships

There are lots of ways to talk through computers but the most familiar of all is probably email. Our everyday experience of email is one of mixed feelings. Email and SMS can be great. The are fast, convenient, easy to refer to, accessible from just about anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, their use can also be awkward and unpleasant. They can be too fast (replies can be sent too quickly), inconvenient (casual remarks are brought back to haunt us as promises), and has an unpredictable rhythm (batteries fail on a laptop, wireless goes down, the message recipient doesn't reply when expected).

Converstations always take place for a reason. Sometimes we engage in them for several reasons and sometimes the original reason is lost, or rather superceded, as our conversations take new twists and turns. My research considers how groups of people collaborate with one another, the way they articulate their understanding and concerns to one another, especially their 'stories', and depends upon knowledge of the spaces they inhabit and how they maintain their identities.

Tone and Emotional Force

Possibly the hardest thing of all about email is to judge the 'tone' of messages, or statements within messages. It is hard to do this because we don't get to see, for example, the smiles or the frowns that accompany the harsh black-and-white of text-on-screen.
Three people in discussion across a table

Three people in discussion across a table

Certainly, the loss of non-verbal signals is a part of the problem - even with the benefit of smilies ;-> The interpretation of what is meant by any message relies on an understanding of the conversation and also the relationship within which the conversation takes place. The tone of the conversation gives us grounds for reading the tone of a message.

It is hard to work within an environment that relies on email conversations and still stay in touch with the broader context of which they are a part. To work through email is in some sense to be act in a world that is detatched. Famously, an internal email memo, no doubt sent in haste and without reflection, read: It's a good day to bury bad news.

This message was sent at a time when, outside of the rarefied atmosphere of that organisation, and the ultra-rarefied atmosphere of email-in-haste, was absorbed in the horror of the 'bad news' itself.

So what is this 'tone'? It is the emotional force of the message as it is read. How often have you thought, when you have received an email: How Rude!. Or had an overly terse reply to an email that you have sent, that makes you ask yourself: Was I so very rude in what or how I wrote to them? There seems to be more scope in text-based communication for emotionally significant misunderstanding than when we speak on the phone or meet for real. It's hard to manage, on occasion, the yawning spaces between words. These occasions are nearly always when we have to deal with contentious matters. People do this by searching among a set of possible interpretations (or simply jumping for the first meaning that comes to mind). One way of thinking about this is that every message tells a story and the interpretations we are able to place on messages therefore depends upon the number of narratives we are able to use to make sense of them.

Contention is hard to manage through computer media

My research is intented to understand what these matters involve, how to recognise them, and how to better design communications media that can cope with them. It builds on prior work on how groups of people work together by drawing on their social and working environment, and by shaping their appearance and behaviour for others.

Conflict, Conciliation and Mediating Technology

Mediation doesn't always mean that there are technologies standing between people and through which they therefore must communicate. There is a much longer history of 'medium' taking human form. Mediation is necessary to resolve disputes between people that have become so hostile or intractible that the parties can no longer communicate with one another effectively. This kind of mediation - the introduction of a third-party to act as a broker - can itself take many forms and is governed by a host of practice-based principles. Dr Matt Billings and I research these principles to better understand:

what makes conciliating mediation effective given that parties have real difficulty in communicating with one another?
how the effects of computer-mediated communication might be described through a conciliating model?
the limits and value of introducing digital media to human mediation?

Presence and Empathic Communciation Online

Despite all the pitfalls of using CMC technologies, most people find them to be useful - even invaluable - most of the time. More than this, some people are unable to find value in communication other than through technologies. For such people, often facing severe and disabling personal challenges, CMC technologies like discussion groups and bulletin boards are something of a life line. But why is this? Convenience is an important factor, particularly when mobility is limited, but the ability to share highly unusual experiences is probably a bigger factor. There are many unanswered questions about the quality and value of interpersonal support through specialist online communities.

Daniel Gooch is investigating social presence (the feeling of being emotionally close to another individual) and how to mediate this through communication technologies.

James Dove is investigating how people support one another, asking how people with particular problems are able to find benefit in communicating with one another online. He is considering:

what makes presence in online discussion groups seem so real, given that communication outside of these fora seems to be so hard?
are there dimensions of psychological vulnerability that render certain sorts of personal challenge more amenable to CMC support than others?
what might be understood from these very particular CMC interactions about highly empathic online interactions in general?

Reasoning about Identity and Design of CMC Systems

Dr Ahmad J Reeves and I worked together to define An Identity-based Design Framework for Computer-Mediated Communication Systems. This research brought together some insights from social psychological investigations to better understand:

how identity makes people think about CMC technologies in everyday settings
how the design of text-based CMC technologies might be improved to account for their practical concerns for managing their identity

The mission of The University of Bath

The Charter of the University of Bath was granted in 1966. It commits the University to: the advancement of knowledge, the dissemination and extension of sciences and arts, the provision of technological, liberal and professional education

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