May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
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| Ambiance | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Isabel Staicut | |
| Instructor: | Shirky, Clay | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://isabel.staicut.name | |
| Keywords: | flash, social navigation, user presence | |
| Ambiance is a real-time social navigation tool which allows website visitors to see other users\' activities within the same website. | ||
| Today’s websites do not have a way of showing their visitors who else is on the page at the same time, that is they do not show “ambient user activity” (a term coined by Colin Moock). Imagine going to a museum and being in one of the exhibit halls. Although you are visiting by yourself, you are inevitably influenced by other visitors’ actions: if there are five people gathered around the same exhibit, and no one looks at anything else in the room, you will no doubt be curious and take a look at the more popular exhibit first. I will attempt to build an environment which allows website visitors to have similar interactions in the virtual space with the help of direct social navigation – browsing the web in the company of the other visitors who are on the same site at the same time. | ||
| Personal Statement: | Although so many websites have a multitude of visitors on their pages per minute, each visitor experiences those pages detached from everyone else. She has no way of knowing how many people are on that page in the same time, what each of them is looking at, or is clicking on etc. In addition, there is no way of recording the users’ activities in such a way that it helps others. Of course, the website owner or developer records all kinds of statistical data about the visitor use, but that is almost always not available to users and it is especially not immediately visible when one first enters a site.
There is even a neurological explanation as to why we need to constantly learn from each other. A recently discovered system in the brain, the “mirror neurons” , may help explain why humans need to interact with other humans, in physical and virtual spaces. Mirror neurons are the part of the brain which is in charge of “mirroring” people around us – this is how we are able to learn from others. By watching someone perform a task, we already learn how to do it ourselves. In addition, mirror neurons are responsible for imitation, empathy, and language learning. Therefore, humans need to have others around them in order to learn from each other. Websites are not exempt from this principle. I predict that users will have a better experience when they are able to see what others do around them and will be able to incorporate previous actions into their own. In addition, on community websites such as blogger or flickr, the activity levels will increase when users feel closer to each other in the virtual space. I intend to develop a way through which, upon entering a website, visitors feel part of a community with a common interest – that website. Colin Moock divides ambient user activity into four categories: User Representation (user’s presence is represented in the content), User Transformation (users are able to change the content), User Contribution (users can add to the content), and User Interaction (users are able to communicate among themselves). In my project, I will attempt to visualize each of the four categories in a relevant way. In addition, showing some other information about each user might be helpful or interesting, such as geographical location, how long one has been on that page, how many times that person has visited the website, or what other pages she has been on within the same website. This way, visitors will feel more connected to others and have an idea about where to start and what to do, or even just have some more fun in the presence of others. | |