The Corner Office: An Exploration of an Informal Teleconferencing Service

Transcription

1 The Corner Office: An Exploration of an Informal Teleconferencing Service D. R. Millen, A. E. Milewski, T. M. Smith, D. M. Weimer, & P. D. Wellner 1 AT&T Labs 100 Schulz Drive Red Bank, NJ (732) {drm,aem,tsmith,dmw}@research.att.com ABSTRACT The increasing number of geographically dispersed work teams present ever-increasing opportunities for new collaboration tools and services. Earlier this year, a geographically dispersed research team decided to prototype and informally evaluate an audio-only mediaspace, which was code-named The Corner Office. This prototype was built using an audio teleconferencing bridge augmented with web-based visual awareness information. A web browser was used to present a panel display that contained a small image of the desk and the doorway of each user. This allowed team members to determine when a colleague was at his or her desk, on the phone, alone, or with others. In addition, the desktop images were visually highlighted whenever someone was currently present in the shared audio space. The objectives of the field trial were twofold. First, to investigate the usability and usefulness of a lightweight audio-only media space. And second, to explore the benefits of augmenting an audio space with several types of social awareness information. The feedback from the trial users indicated that the social presence information was generally useful as a way to determine the conversation accessibility of another user. Conversely, communication inaccessibility was also clearly signaled through the Corner Office portals. During the field trial, the natural tension between social awareness and individual privacy surfaced. As a result, the trial members agreed to intentionally degrade the quality of the web camera images, which resulted in slightly blurred images with limited color. While it remained possible to determine when someone had a visitor, it became impossible to determine the visitor's identity. The images, therefore, provided useful but limited presence information, while at the same time providing an increased level of privacy for the trial users. The analyses of the usage logs for the Corner Office revealed considerable fluctuation in use from week to week, and generally lower than expected daily use. User feedback suggested that this might have been due to confusing interactions with the existing telephone equipment and call procedures. Social cues and norms to signal public versus private conversations were also slow to develop. In this paper, we will discuss the lessons learned from the Corner Office trial about the design of audio-only media spaces, the design of social awareness information, and the general implications for future collaborative communications services.

2 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years there has been considerable interest in developing new products and services to help dispersed work teams collaborate more effectively. Special purpose systems have been developed that include sophisticated support, calendar negotiation and tracking, document authoring and control, shared brainstorming tools, and video and audio media spaces. Some of these systems have met with commercial success while others have been useful as new service research environments. At the core of most these collaboration systems is the ability to promote and enhance communication between members of a work group. Many of these systems have focused on the use of video technology for both promoting greater social presence as well as providing video communications (see, for example, [1-3]). Much of this research is based on the premise that video-assisted communication will create a shared media space, which will share many of the positive collaborative characteristics of physical workspaces. 1.1 Social Awareness Many of the media spaces that have been studied were designed to specifically promote the social or peripheral awareness of the current activities of colleagues and the informal interactions that were taking place in public spaces (see, for example, [4,5]). Such awareness tools have been reported to promote community building, and improving access among community members. The benefits of increased social awareness, however, come at a cost to individual privacy. Recently, there has been some work to identify new user interface designs that support social awareness while assuaging user's concerns about loss of privacy. Hudson and Smith [6] have developed visual and audio shadowing techniques to mask the details of the awareness information, while Lee et al. [5] experimented with user control over the fidelity of the public (or shared) image. Others have experimented with non-video measures, such as keyboard activity, chair movement, and mailbox events [7, 8]. 1.2 Media Mix Most of the media spaces that have been evaluated have used mixed media to help promote better communication among members of the work group. Audio and video communication channels were important aspects of many of these systems (see, for example [1, 9]. There is little evidence or agreement, however, on the optimal mix of media for various work tasks [10]. The lack of strong beneficial effects of video on group collaboration has been somewhat surprising. For example, Olson et al. [10] observed only marginally better performance for a video/audio-supported work group over an audio-only group. In another series of experiments, few differences in the nature of the mediated communication were observed for video versus audio-only collaboration systems [11]. It should be noted, however, that in both studies, users stated a preference for the video-supported systems. Others have experimented with audio-only media spaces. For example, Ackerman, Hindus, Mainwaring, and Starr, [12] investigated a high quality, audio-only media space named Thunderwire. Users could join or leave the audio space with a simple toggle of a switch, and

3 a desktop microphone and headset was used for the audio input/output. The researchers concluded that audio alone can be sufficient for both a usable and social media space. 2. THE CORNER OFFICE The Corner Office prototype grew out of a practical interest in providing support for a small physically distributed work group. This work group was originally co-located but became physically distributed as a result of a laboratory relocation in which the research group was spilt between two research buildings about 60 miles apart. Historically, much of the group collaboration was a direct result of informal, spontaneous hallway conversation. In addition, the Corner Office project allowed us to investigate two media spaces research questions. First, we could explore the usability and usefulness of a lightweight audio-only media space. Second, we could explore the benefits of augmenting the audio space with several types of social presence information. 2.1 Awareness To support social awareness for members of the work group, a continuously updated color image of a user's workspace was presented to everyone. To provide a richer set of visual cues about the activity status of a Corner Office user, the camera was placed to capture the desktop (including the phone) as well as the door to each office. This provided enough presence information to know whether someone was in the office (location), on the phone or at his or her desk (activity), and/or with someone else (presence). While this is admittedly a subset of the activity indicators that have been studied by others (see, for example, [13]), we felt that it provided more than enough information to encourage informal communication. While the continuously updated image was the primary way to share presence information among the group, a second method was also supported. Users could replace their web camera image with a text box that announced their current location (e.g., working at home) or activity state (e.g., conference call). This capability was used frequently by one user who worked out of his home and did not have a camera set-up at that work place. The text box was also used exclusively by one member of the group who was unwilling to have a live camera in his room. While the web infrastructure and low-cost color web cameras allowed the development of a quick and inexpensive prototype, the awareness portals are similar to those studied in other systems [4, 5]. The corner office display presented two additional and important social presence cues. When a member of the corner office entered the shared audio space, their image frame was highlighted and an audio alert was issued to members of the Corner Office trial. Thus, there was information available to others to show who was available or already engaged in shared and informal conversation. 2.2 Audio-only Media Space At the core of the Corner Office was an audio teleconference bridge, which would support a shared conversation among all of the trial participants. To join the audio space, a user simply had to click on his or her personal image on the Corner Office visual display. This would initiate a call from the bridge to the user's phone, and the user would join the audio space upon answering. As mentioned above, the image frame was highlighted whenever someone joined the audio space. The image frame worked in a toggle fashion, which meant that pressing the image frame would drop a person from the audio space. Alternately, users could simply hang-up their telephone.

4 Figure 1. Example of Corner Office Screen The audio-only media space that was field tested here is somewhat similar to the Thunderwire system, which was evaluated by Ackerman et al., [13]. Both systems provided a lightweight user (i.e., a simple toggle) to enter or leave the shared space, and both provided good quality audio. The audio input/output, however, was handled in a different fashion. In Thunderwire used a computer microphone and headset while the Corner Office supported a standard business telephone. A major different between the two systems was in the treatment of social awareness. As mentioned above, there were several kinds of social presence available to users of the Corner Office. For those users with a camera image, it was easy to determine whether an individual was at his/her desk and the general activity state of each member of the group. Further, it was easy to determine who was in the audio space by glancing at the image borders. Ackerman et al. [13] provided no social awareness information to members of their audio space. A second difference was that user in the Corner Office could signal other user to join in the conversation. To accomplish this, an already active user would simply click on the image of another user. Two auditory alerting events followed: the invitee s phone would ring and an audible knock/knock sound would play over the PC speakers. The invited person simply answered his/her phone to join the conversation. 3. RESULTS and DISCUSSION 3.1 Privacy vs. Awareness Hudson and Smith [6] have reported that there is an inherent tension between providing awareness information to promote social interaction and protecting the privacy of individuals. The benefits of increased social awareness and difficulties over privacy were also experienced in our trial. The Corner Office portals were generally useful to informally determine the conversation accessibility of other users. The portals were used to determine when a colleague was in the

5 building but temporarily out of the office, using the position of the doorway and ambient light clues. The portals also indicated clearly when individuals were in the office and working at their desks. The organizational norm was that when someone was seen working at their desk with an open door, they were generally available for conversation. The Corner Office portals clearly revealed these situations. Corner Office users also reported an increasing awareness of casual doorway conversations, which happened with some frequency. On one occasion, a remote worker correctly inferred (from the portal images) that a small cluster of people was discussing a just finished employee broadcast and called from the audio space to join in the conversation. Awareness of colleagues conversing in the shared audio-space was also reported. Surprisingly, there were few instances of someone entering the audio space and joining an ongoing conversation without an explicit invitation from someone already in the space. One possible explanation is that the portal images did not provide as many social cues to determine the privacy level of an ongoing conversation, as do face-to-face encounters (positioning of conversants, level of voice, etc.). Communication inaccessibility was also clearly signaled. Since the office doors were visible in the camera images, it was possible to detect times when someone was in the office but had the door closed for some private time. It was also possible to detect a private closed-door conversation between small groups of people. Furthermore, the portal images made it easy to determine when someone was on the phone, and thus unavailable to join the Corner Office. An exception to this that led to occasional confusion was when a user was using his speakerphone for a non-corner-office conversation, and other Corner Office users could not detect that from the portal images. While the Corner Office portals offered increased group awareness of the availability of other group members for informal conversation, several events revealed concerns about privacy. In one example, a particularly lengthy closed-door conversation was observed taking place one day. Politely curious questions about the topic of the conversation naturally followed. As a result, it was decided to degrade the images projected though the Corner Office portals. This was very simply implemented by adjusted the quality of the JPEG image to the lowest quality setting. A similar approach is reported in Lee, Girgenson and Schlueter [5]. The resulting Corner Office display was visually interesting (see Figure 1). It remained easy to determine location information (i.e. in or out of the office), and a general sense of activity (i.e., on the phone or looking at a computer screen). Further, it was easy to determine whether an individual was alone or with others. The important change, however, was that it was no longer possible to identify the office visitor. User reaction was generally favorable to this new Corner Office display. This simply image degradation preserved the essential social awareness queues while increasing the degree of office privacy. Several other user actions reveal concern about privacy issues. In another case, a Corner Office user intercepted his web camera image and substituted an image of a wave crashing on a rocky coast. While this could simply have implied that he was off to the beach, it was intended to signify that he was momentarily off-camera. Other users reported that the utility of the Corner Office was seriously reduced when users were allowed to just "check out" whenever they felt like it. In another case, one of Corner Office users insisted that live cameras would never be allowed in his room. This person was allowed to use the text box feature, which allowed him to

6 indicate where he was and his current activity state. While this might have protected the privacy of this individual, other users noticed that the text message was often inaccurate. And finally, privacy issues may also have been contributors to the fact that two of the users had their cameras turned off a great deal of the time. These users reported that this was due primarily to configuration difficulties or simply forgetting to launch the application. 3.2 Informal Conversations The usage logs for the Corner Office revealed considerable fluctuation from week to week. Figure 2 shows the total weekly conversation time for two, three and four-user conversations, with no usage plotted for three holiday weeks. The combined usage averaged 7:42 hours per week, or 1:32 hours/day, for the 19 weeks in the trial. This is considerably lower usage than reported by Ackerman et al. [13]. Figure 2. Corner Office Usage Several reasons have been proposed for the surprisingly low usage. One reason is that the dispersed work group became less dispersed. The laboratory underwent reorganization during the trial and the offices for the work group were moved to a single location. The group remained somewhat dispersed, nonetheless, since several of the members maintain home offices and work some tine each week from home. The nature of the work within the group and the social norms of the group may offer a second reason for the low use of the audio media space. Members of the group typically work on several projects simultaneously with some projects shared by a subset of the group members. Much of the work is software development and often requires lengthy periods of deep concentration. The value of a shared audio-space for this type of work is not immediately obvious. There is also a long history of private offices within the organization, and public conversations are strongly signaled. For example, informal conversations abound in the hallways and shared eating spaces. Invitations for shared walks to the coffee machine are

7 common and follow-on doorway conversations often ensue. These kinds of informal interactions are strongly signaled with a number of both visual and verbal cues. As mentioned above, it was easy for users to determine when other group members were in the audio space. The highlighted portal frames provided compelling visual cues as to the current state of the audio space. This may have had an unintended consequence of inhibiting casual interaction. When two group members entered the media space, it may have been assumed that this was a somewhat private conversation being held in a public space. Conversely, the absence of presence cues in Thunderwire may have unintentionally promoted usage. It was easy to lurk unobtrusively or to wander into the space without any fear that a private discussion was underway in the public space. 4. GENERAL DISCUSSION The Corner Office project was undertaken to study the use of an audio-only media space that had simple user controls and was augmented with several forms of presence information. The results of the field study, taken together, suggest several things. First, the tension between sharing personal presence information and protecting individual desires for privacy are natural and unavoidable. Our study revealed that the degree to which individuals are willing to share presence information varies across a work group. For example, we observed the following degrees of openness: Always on (live camera on all the time) Sometimes on (live camera on with user ability to turn the camera off) Never on (refused to have a camera in the room) We received positive user feedback when we substituted degraded images for the high quality images. There was reportedly little loss of utility for the degraded image displays while some additional privacy was offered. Perhaps this is a good middle ground. The feedback from Corner Office users supports the requirement that social awareness information should be generated automatically. The lightweight interface to updating personal presence in the text box displays was problematic for some of the trial users. Once the information becomes habitually incorrect, the value of the service is dramatically reduced. Thus an effort to protect privacy (via a textual replacement to video) required the user to shoulder some additional overhead in manually updating availability information, rather than relying on the naturalistic availability information provided by the video. One surprising result was the elimination of one of the sources of a privacy problem reported by Ackerman et al. [13]. In the Thunderwire system a PC microphone served as the audio input, and a social norm developed in which users were expected to leave the shared audio space when they were on a phone call. Ackerman et al. [13] reported, however, that users often forgot to exit the audio space during a phone call. As a result, other Thunderwire users could clearly overhear one side of personal phone calls. The limited use of the Corner Office audio space suggests that there may be, in fact, significant resistance to placing a live microphone in an office. There was little evidence that users desired to enter the audio space and simply hang out. While Ackerman et al. concluded from their field test that the Thunderwire audio-only media space is usable, they are less clear about whether or not it was particularly useful. Perhaps the utility of an audio-only media space is generally limited.

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