Last update: November 2011

Publications and presentations

Papers

Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (to appear).
'Up Close and Personal: Social Presence in Mediated Personal Relationships' in the Proceedings of 'HCI2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness', 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
DOI: http://ewic.bcs.org/category/15375
Abstract: The likes of clarity and efﬁciency are good communication concepts for designers and evaluators of business communication tools. They make little sense, however, when the design context of an interactive system is the support of a personal relationship. What matters then is that people feel they are ‘there’ for one another. This paper describes a new way of understanding Social Presence in technologically mediated communication by relating it to a well-established psychological relationship construct: Closeness. We propose a model whereby an individual’s long-term feeling of Closeness to others is inﬂuenced by communication events that are invested with a sense of Social Presence, as a function of the background level of psychological Closeness. Thus each communicative act, and its associated feeling of Social Presence, has an impact on the feeling of Closeness. We report a three-week-long study during which 18 participants reported daily ratings of Closeness, and communication-event ratings of both Closeness and Social Presence. Our ﬁndings are consistent with the model we propose, suggesting that systems for intimate relationships require consideration of both Social Presence and Closeness. We further consider methodological and measurement issues in the realm of personal relationships, and the expanding remit of HCI design as an active contributor to the world of experience and feelings.

Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (to appear).
'A Design Framework for Mediated Personal Relationship Devices' in the Proceedings of 'HCI2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness', 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
DOI: http://ewic.bcs.org/category/15375
Abstract: Substantial numbers of people carry out intimate relationships at a distance. These people have to utilise a variety of communication technologies in order to maintain their relationship. Although a number of communication technologies have been developed to help maintain an emotional connection between remote couples, there has been no comprehensive consideration of the design space that these technologies are developed within. We present here a proposed design framework for intimate communication devices. The intention is to highlight the decisions designers have to make when coming up with new communication systems and provide a more formalised system for considering the issues involved.

Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (2011).
'The Magic Sock Drawer Project' in Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems ISBN: 978-1-4503-0268-5
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979613.
Abstract: We describe the design of a intimate communication system, the Magic Sock Drawer. The system allows close friends to send drawn or typed digital notes to one another which are then automatically printed at the other end. The system allows us to investigate a number of design decisions that will have an impact on how communication systems create feelings of closeness between remote partners. The four design concepts explored include 1-to-1 communication, personalization, tangibility and location. We present the results of a 6-week pilot study using the system and the impact it has had on the study participants’ relationship.

Dove, J.A.; Eubanks,D.L; Panteli,N.; Watts,L.A. & Joinson,A.N. (2011).
'Making an Entrance 2.0: The Linguistics of Introductory Success in Virtual Communities' In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 4-7, 2011, Computer Society Press. ISBN: 978-0-7695-4282-9.
DOI: doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2011.290
Abstract: Virtual communities depend on members, and more specifically new members, for their lifeblood. To become a member of a virtual community, one must introduce oneself to the group, and be accepted as a member. We present here a series of two linguistic studies investigating newcomer introductions in seven Web 2.0 online communities. In the first study, we successfully developed a logistic regression model that differentiates introductions from random messages with 82.5% accuracy using 12 linguistic markers. In the second study we correlated linguistic features of introductory messages with measures of their success. Increased usage of 1st person singular pronouns and past tense words in introductions was associated with greater success. Higher levels of first person plural and present tense words in introductions was associated with reduced success. Although these linguistic markers have effect across groups, there is evidence to suggest that some markers might vary between groups, depending on whether a dedicated introductions subforum is provided.

Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (2010).
'Communicating Social Presence Through Thermal Hugs' in the Proceedings of SISSI2010, First Workshop on Social Interaction in Spatially Separated Environments pp. 11-20, at UBICOMP'10
Abstract: Social Presence is the concept of 'being there', of emotional connectedness to another person. As relationships are increasingly formed by spatially disparate partners, supporting social presence has become more important. As many intimate acts involve touching, this paper investigates the impact that heat, one aspect of touch, has upon social presence. This is presented in the form of a thermal hug. Our findings indicate that there was a significant difference in terms of social presence between those that received thermal 'hugs' and those that did not.

Matt Billings & Leon Watts (2010).
' Understanding Dispute Resolution Online: Using Text to Reflect Personal and Substantive Issues in Conflict. ' In the Proceedings of ACM CHI2010, Atlanta, GA, USA. pp. 1447-1456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753542
Abstract: Conflict is a natural part of human communication with implications for the work and well-being of a community. It can cause projects to stall or fail. Alternatively new insights can be produced that are valuable to the community, and membership can be strengthened. We describe how Wikipedia mediators create and maintain a ‘safe space’. They help conflicting parties to express, recognize and respond positively to their personal and substantive differences. We show how the ‘mutability’ of wiki text can be used productively by mediators: to legitimize and restructure the personal and substantive issues under dispute; to actively and visibly differentiate personal from substantive elements in the dispute, and to maintain asynchronous engagement by adjusting expectations of timeliness. We argue that online conflicts could be effectively conciliated in other text-based web communities, provided power differences can be controlled, by policies and technical measures for maintaining special ‘safe’ conflict resolution spaces.

John Collomosse, Graham McNeill & Leon Watts (2008)
'Free-hand Sketch Grouping for Video Retrieval' ICPR2008 the 19th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Tampa, Florida. USA. December 2008. ISBN: 978-1-4244-2175-6
Abstract: We present an algorithm for extracting object descriptions from free-hand sketches of remembered scenes, drawn as video retrieval queries. Our sketches depict scene content, as well as indicators of motion. We report an exploratory study investigating how people sketch to depict recalled events. We incorporate several observations from this study into the design of a novel sketch parsing algorithm. We draw upon a temporal HMM classifier to recognise common pictograms, and graph-cut to identify more general objects.

Matt Billings & Leon Watts (2007).
' A safe space to vent: Conciliation and conflict in distributed teams. ' In Bannon et al. (eds.) ECSCW 2007 Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland, 24-28 September 2007. Springer Verlag. pp. 139-138. ISBN: 978-1-84800-030-8
Abstract: This paper considers the nature of conflict in relation to the environments within which distributed teams cooperate. Effective conflict management can bring great benefits to distributed teams, while inadequate conflict resolution strategies can incur significant personal and resource costs. The increased geographical, cognitive and emotional distances between members can stimulate and amplify conflict. Parties may display disinhibited behaviour (flaming) or may be reluctant to accept reconciliatory overtures (low trust). These factors can be attributed to the impact of communication technology on social structures that underlie interaction. Shifting to face-to-face meetings can be impractical or involve prohibitive cost, so it is important to establish how best to deal with conflict in technologically-mediated settings. Dispute resolution practitioners (conciliators) have evolved strategies and techniques to construct and regulate safe spaces; settings that are conducive to finding creative solutions to entrenched conflicts. Building on interviews with expert conciliators, we discuss the potential for learning from the structure and constraints of conciliation environments in order to improve conflict management through technologies.

Matt Billings & Leon Watts (2006)
The Model of Relational Communication: explaining difficulties encountered through the use of technology in alternative dispute resolution.
Presented at 8th Australian National Mediation Conference. Hobart, Tasmania 2nd - 5th May 2006.
Abstract: With the ‘bandwidth problem’ all but eliminated and the cost of hardware and software declining sharply, the time should be ripe for the use of computer technologies in alternative dispute resolution (ADR). However, many practitioners still appear reluctant to adopt this technology. Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) research has produced a body of evidence to suggest that the presence of technology has a distorting effect on the way that people create and maintain relationships. It is likely that this distortion restricts or skews practitioner’s skills, and is responsible for the reluctance to use computer technology in ADR. We distinguish between ‘active’ (human) mediation, in which the mediator reflexively alters communication between parties, through continual assessment of their impact on the existing relationship; and ‘passive’ (technological) mediation, which alters communication through the medium’s inherent properties, regardless of context. It is this paper’s contention that it is the interaction between these two forms of mediation that is responsible for the difficulties that practitioners encounter when attempting to mediate using computer technology.

Carljohan Orre & Leon Watts (2006)
A Practical Sense of Knowing: Exploring Awareness Strategies in a Mobile Workplace.
In P. Hassanaly , T. Herrmann, G. Kunau and M. Zacklad (Eds.)
Cooperative Systems Design: Seamless Integration of Artifacts and Conversations - Enhanced Concepts of Infrastructure for Communication
Volume 137 Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. Amsterdam: IOS Press. ISBN: 1-58603-604-1. pp239-254.
Abstract: This paper presents and discusses strategies used by homecare workers to establish and maintain awareness in a mobile workplace. It capitalizes on data derived from a longitudinal translocal ethnographic study of homecare and the utilization of mobile technology. The study exposes two distinct dimensions of the work context, denoted the Case and Base dimensions, which are used as vehicles to describe situations of collaborative practice that occur (1) in a coordination meeting, (2) on a homecare visit, and (3) in an on-the-fly ‘illicit’ use of mobile technology. We propose a new conception of collaborative awareness as a 'practical sense of knowing'. Findings from the ethnographic study are consistent with a well-worn distinction between “knowing that”, declarative knowledge, and “knowing how”, procedural knowledge. Conventional structures of organizational control, encoded both procedurally and as declarations of responsibility, are routinely broken and reformed. This happens as workers devise new strategies in order to maintain the keen sense of their collaborative situation required to sustain an orderly workplace>

Nicholas Ducheneaut & Leon Watts (2005)
In Search of Coherence: A Review of E-Mail Research.
Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 20, No. 1&2, Pages 11-48 LEA ISBN: 1-58603-363-8.
Abstract: E-mail research encompasses a vast and diverse body of work that accumulated over the past 30 years. In this article, we take a critical look at the research literature and ask two simple questions: What is e-mail research? Can it help us reinvent e-mail? Rather than defining an overarching framework, we survey the literature and identify three metaphors that have guided e-mail research up to this day: e-mail as a file cabinet extending human information processing capabilities, e-mail as a production line and locus of work coordination, and, finally, e-mail as a communication genre supporting social and organizational processes. We propose this taxonomy so that designers of future e-mail systems can forge their own direction of research, with knowledge of other directions that have been explored in the past. As an illustration of the possible future work we want to encourage with this review, we conclude with a description of several guidelines for the reinvention of e-mail inspired by our journey through the literature.>

Dearden, A.; Walker, S. & Watts, L. (2005)
' Choosing the right allies for critical computing', In Olav W. Bertelsen, Niels Olof Bouvin, Peter G. Krogh & Morten Kyng (eds.)
Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility, Aarhus, Denmark. August 2005.pp.133-136.ACM Press.
Leon Watts, Yanuar Nugroho & Martin Lea (2003)
Engaging in Email Discussion: Conversational Context and Social Identity in Computer-Mediated Communication.
In G.W.M. Rauterberg, M. Menozzi and J. Wesson (Eds.) Proceedings of INTERACT'03 Amsterdam: IOS Press ISBN: 1-58603-363-8. pp. 559-566.
Leon Watts & Emmanuel Dubois (2001)
Managing Visibility in Ubiquitous Multimedia Communication Environments People and Computers XV, Proceedings of the HCI'01 Conference, p.65-82.
Nicholas Graham, Leon Watts, Gaelle Calvary, Joelle Coutaz, Emmanuel Dubois & Laurence Nigay (2000) A Dimension Space for the Design of Interactive Systems Within their Physical Environments Proceedings of DIS'00: Designing Interactive Systems p.406-416.
Andrew Monk & Leon Watts (2000) Peripheral Participation in Video-Mediated Communication
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies v.52 n.5 p.933-958.

Presentations

Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (2011).
'Understanding Social Presence' in the Proceedings of ISPR2011 - the Annual Conference of the International Society for Presence Research Edinburgh, Scotland. October 26 – 28, 2011. ISPR Proceedings Archive
Daniel Gooch & Leon Watts (2011).
'YourGlove' Poster presentation at 'HCI2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness', 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Billings, M. & Watts, L. (2007): Expanding the toolbox: computer-mediated communication and mediation practice
Presented at The Fifth UN Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, University of Liverpool, Liverpool. 19 - 20 April 2007.
Billings, M. & Watts, L. (2007): How does computer-mediated communication change the way that we interact?
Presented at SET for Europe 2007, House of Commons, Westminster, London. 19 March 2007.
Watts, L.A. & Reeves, A.J. (2006) ' Identity, Understanding and Design of Communication Facilities in CSCW Systems.' presented at the workshop on Design and Computer Supported Cooperative Work at the ACM CSCW 2006 Conference, Banff, Alberta, Canada. November 2006.
Billings, M. & Watts, L. (2005): Conflict, conciliation and computers: how mediation may alter the perception of difference
Presented at Conflict Research Society Annual Conference, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield. 31 August - 2 September 2005
Ramondt, L. & Watts, L.A. (2005) 'Sustainability through engagement: Contribution- and Progress-Oriented Strategies as Incentives for Participation.' presented at Ellis, Halverson & Erickson's Workshop on Sustaining Community: The role and design of incentive mechanisms in online systems at the ACM GROUP2005 Conference, Florida, USA. November 2005.
Watts, L.A. & Reeves, A.J. (2004)
‘Managing Projections of Identity in Technological Milieu’, in Workshop on Representations of Digital Identity, ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW’04, Chicago, USA. November 2004.