For our Social Facts class assignment two weeks ago, we were teamed up in groups, asked to observe how an online group made its decisions, and to present our observations to the class. My group of five decided to use the Skype conference chat format to come to a decision on what group we would observe; this, we thought, would allow us the bonus material of observing ourselves making a decision online. In the end, this observation of our own online decision-making process constituted the primary material that we analyzed. Aside from personality dynamics, there were two main factors that shaped our process. One was the question of how much we felt we had at stake in making our decision, and the other was the interface we used in communicating with each other. In relation to my own role in this process and how these factors influenced me, not only did I come in late to the live chat, but I also never engaged as fully with the decision-making process than I would have if this had been a face-to-face meeting or if I’d felt invested in the process or outcome.
From the outset it seemed clear that there was not that much at stake for each of us individually. We were not emotionally invested in each other and the group formation was externally imposed as an assignment. So any personal motivation to be a part of this group came from our respective interests in learning something about group dynamics through this exercise, and perhaps from a notion that we wanted to do well in this class. But by virtue of being a five-person group with no assigned leadership role or hierarchy, the responsibility for how our presentation turned out could be equally shared and easily shirked. In addition, unlike the exercise with picking which charity to donate to, there wasn’t much about the choices to get emotionally hooked on. In the absence of these types of incentives, the amount of satisfaction each member could get from the actual group interaction itself became all the more important in exciting that intrinsic motivation.
Unfortunately, the online chat medium we were using, Skype, was actively dissatisfying and did not facilitate group discussion, much less group decision-making, very well. First off, it is nearly impossible to be chatting with someone and not be doing something else at the same time. People are expected to be multi-tasking with these things and the threshold for not paying attention to the chat is very low. Secondly, the single-column design doesn’t take into account that people tend to write in an interrupted manner (i.e. delivering sentences in separate bits) and at the same time. Instead the column orders the disparate shards into an inaccurate linear logic whose fragments are confusing to decipher, especially with multiple people. Lastly, there’s a tension between the illusion of being “live” and failing to meet those expectations. Live, face-to-face presence encourages relatively high levels of attention commitment, and by contrast, language and emoticons are a poor substitute for real presence. This inability to reciprocate presence made the time investment in a dissatisfying “live” chat seem imprisoning.
The modes of expression were also incredibly limiting. We all discussed later the insufficient and yet necessary role that emoticons play in easing tensions, as well as how some of us interpreted things like typing speed as a sign of aggression or not paying attention. It was apparent that such limitations meant that we could not easily exchange the subtle cues that would allow us to feel satisfied with the legitimizing process—or with even feeling legitimately there. Notably, Barbra later said that she was feeling sheepish about being late and never felt fully acknowledged as being a legitimate contributor as a result. Head-nodding, brow furrowing, smiles, glazed eyes, etc. all offer a way for people to indicate levels of consensus and engagement which other people can respond to before anyone needs to explicitly state them. This pre-verbal acknowledgment cuts down on the time it takes to come to a consensus (we had all thought this would take around 20mins to complete, which I think is a reasonable expectation for a real, face-to-face meeting) and provides a way for more quiet or polite people to be heard.
In addressing some of these issues, one option for increasing the level of satisfactory interaction would be to change the Skype type-chat medium to the video format. Presumably, by increasing the amount of sensory data, the video chat would offer more immediacy and satisfying engagement. To begin with, unlike typing text, oral communication offers intimacy and flexibility. In actually speaking to each other, we could more easily modulate between casual chatting and a more directed discussion, thus facilitating both the need for building rapport and for meeting an objective. Even more obviously, the ability to see each other would mean that we could rely on non-verbal cues, and while eye contact would be tricky to negotiate, by reading each other’s facial expressions and body language, we could establish a level of rapport or syncing that need not be negotiated so abstractly or deliberately as in text chatting. On the spectrum of extrinsic to intrinsic motivation as laid out by Ryan and Deci, this rapport would yield more satisfaction to the participants in a way that would help foster an intrinsic desire to remain engaged with each other. In this respect, improving the opportunity for more immediate engagement would affect both the level and the type of motivation fueling the group’s behaviour.
Potentially, this intrinsic source of motivation would be coupled also with the extrinsic motivation derived from the knowledge that we might eventually show a video recording of ourselves to the class. That is, the prospect of having to present ourselves, and not just our words, for later scrutiny not only holds us more accountable for our behaviors (employing the effects of the shadow of the future), but in doing so, it introduces a performative element to our process. The specific consideration, then, is how that performative motivation might alter the behavior of each member in ways that either facilitate or debilitate rapport-building and decision-making. For example, would we still have had the socially bonding lemon ricotta discussion? (Probably). And would I have permitted the other last minute, face-to-face group meeting to occur at the same time? (Absolutely not. I would have attended the other meeting which was urgent but I wouldn’t have joined our group until the other meeting was over and I could give my undivided attention. Two key reasons: a) the immediacy of a video chat means that my distraction would be more distracting for the group, and b) more relevant to performative accountability, who wants to be that particular douchebag for everyone to see? and then to have to see everyone else seeing you as such….).
In any case, this video conference scenario seems to set up a potential for a self-consciousness that could either make people more reserved, more showman-like and attention-seeking, or more attentive to the objective of working well together and arriving at a decision. Whatever the influence may be, the performative aspect introduces a restraining checks-and-balance mechanism based on an awareness of behaviors that may result in feeling publicly shamed or praised. In our situation, I tentatively posit that overall there would be an increase in desire to perform well (that is, to stay engaged, be polite to each other, etc.) which would encourage us to pay more attention, stay on task, and be more professional, but that this would not necessarily help a genuine bonding experience that occurs more naturally when there are less extrinsic pressures.
With regards to the effects of self-consciousness on behavior, one interesting feature of the Skype video design (or at least interesting to someone who’s never used it before) is the dis/ability for people to see themselves during the chat. My first impression was, wow, this sucks––why would I want to see myself when I’m talking to someone else, it’s such a huge distraction from the conversation, maybe I should start holding a mirror next to people’s heads when I talk to them, etc. etc. ad nauseum. On the other hand, perhaps in competition with all the other distractions available to a computer user, having a video mirror is a great hooking device to keep the user engaged with the interface. Moreover, in the context of a video conference, and especially where everyone’s situated in a circular, round-table fashion, seeing one’s image in relationship to other people’s images helps tie the self to the group. To this end, an interesting element to play with in the video conference format is the matter of separate screen windows around each member––what would it be like to portray everyone within a single frame, as if on the same stage? or at least, how can we use the aesthetic language of borders and gaps between individual frames? These questions raise a series of design factors, as laid out by Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, not just having to do with the effects of gutters and boundaries, but also the advantages of portraying people more spaciously rather than simply presenting them in all the details of a realistic video medium.
Yet in exploring such elements as existing chat filters, animation styles, and aspects of traditional Chinese perspectivism, the most important conclusion I came to as far as my own deeper interests is that it is not really necessary to add more technology per se––in this case, switching mediums to video––but to improve the existing medium, viz. typing. It is funny to think that after ten years of being obsessed with James Joyce + Chinese calligraphy + ways for a small group of people to write together expressively, I might have found a good fit in re-imagining the conference chat interface. To go through some personal background: in 2001 I took Michael Seidel’s spring semester class on Joyce, became absolutely obsessed with everything about Ulysses, and upon encountering Chinese calligraphy later that summer, I began to consider the ways in which a visual embodiment of language could build on the type of reading and writing experience that both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake offer. After graduating, I moved to Taiwan to find a calligrapher in hopes of learning whether a) calligraphy could actually express the mood and personality of the writer, as if writing were a form of acting, and b) if you could get a group of writers together to create a visual play, or language theater on paper. Within a month and half of relocating to Taipei, I met an extraordinary calligraphy master who proceeded to fulfill and turn my expectations inside out. Not only did calligraphy express my level of skill, my personality, and my range of moods, but I couldn’t bloody escape it. Every week, my teacher would go through a foot high pile of my work and locate all the fluctuations of my emotional life. E.g.:
––Here, (circling a few characters w/ a bright orange inked brush), what were you afraid of when you were writing here?
––You have no motivation here, no life! Sometimes you can continue and work through that and still get something from it, but other times just let it go. Just go for a hike, watch a movie, get drunk with your friends….
––You keep waffling throughout these pages and this is tiring not only for you but for people looking at your work. Pick it up or put it down, don’t get stuck in the middle.
––Ah, see, this is where you relax. Your mind is moment by moment with your hand and your heart is still and expansive (waited two years for that one)….
––This is too controlling, you’re trying too hard to get it perfectly right. You’re too attached to copying the form, you’ve totally missed the energy of it. Don’t compete with a copy machine; show what a copy machine can’t show.
––See here? You’re trying to force this stroke against this one. Sometimes when you see someone throwing a tantrum (in this case, one of my characters), the strongest counter move to contain that is to give that character some space. Be soft and supple with the other characters around it, and then you can even showcase the beauty of the tantrum.
And so on. In this way, strengthening the characters on the page seemed to become a way to adjust one’s own character.
Apart from his diagnostic skills, what was also remarkable was that the solution to working out obstacles was not to think it out but to practice writing or to try something new. There was no absolute right or wrong, only what worked and didn’t work in specific contexts, and this sense couldn’t really be figured out beforehand or intellectually. The idea of not using my brain to problem-solve was a revolutionary concept for me and I became fascinated with other ways of knowing (perhaps characterized as apprehension via mimetic process and not just comprehension via reasoning). But to what extent could I attribute all this to the medium that I was using and not just to an insightful teacher steeped in an awfully old and coherent tradition? What is it about a tool that allows for expression and a learning process like that to occur? And what does all this have to do with computer typing and the chat forum?
Some cursory thoughts:
1) By my third year of training, I realized that I needed a way to translate the feeling and principles I’d been learning in Chinese calligraphy into an English-speaking environment. This was for the very practical reason that I wasn’t learning Chinese fast enough to create content well: the poems and dialogues I was writing were still all in English and I actually had little interest in writing them in Chinese. So to tackle this problem, I first started redesigning English words to mimic Chinese ideogrammatic units. Three months into that I realized that that, too, was taking too long. So I started looking at the main writing tool we use in English, the computer keyboard, and how that could be an expressive tool like the calligraphy brush. Having played piano growing up, and loved it despite it being the good little Asian thing to do, I began to wonder how we could turn typing into something like playing the piano, with the output being visual instead of aural. In fact, music and dance were key analogies my teacher used for helping us understand calligraphy, and this approach addresses something more fundamental and translatable than making English look Chinese.
2) With regards to the multi-user, type-chatting format, I’m curious as to how certain aesthetic principles in Chinese calligraphy could be applied to manage flow and to visualize relationships between the parts to each other and the parts as a whole. Of the four basic qualities one can look at in understanding a calligraphic composition, two that would be interesting to experiment with for this purpose are the concepts of energy linking and balance. I know this sounds pretty vague and in the realm of the woo-woo; the best way to really articulate all this would be to just try it out with few specific components:
a) space: have people be typing into individual thought bubbles arranged in a circle, as with the individual video chat screens, which can float to a middle forum upon completion of typing.
b) timing: don’t let people have the luxury of writing first privately and then hitting “return” for everyone else to see it. By making the typing as immediately present as possible, people can actually pace themselves better, with an attunement to where others are at and how a visual conversation is unfolding as a whole. This restriction will slow down the pace by addressing the twofold problem of people needing to insert their ‘voice’ as quickly as possible in the current linear chat flow (partly why they hit “return” before finishing their sentences) as well as people’s inclination to just write without taking the time to think.
c) expression: make use of typing speed as well as force/pressure to convey rhythm and musicality (thinking of a visual parallels to legato, staccato, piano, forte). Most importantly, expression can shift away from the symbolic realm of emoticons to more subtle possibilities that combine both intentional and unintentional gestures.
3) What could people learn by adapting to and using this type of tool? By giving users the option of making something look pretty, or in harmony or dissonance, etc., can they gain an aesthetic awareness, or a different body sense, or a simple creative satisfaction from communicating via typing? Could there be a way to see or intuit another person’s emotional state or stylistic sensibility from how they type? And could this fundamentally be a data visualization piece that on some level allows people to sense, for instance, when they are coordinating well or when things become tense?
4) Of course, one important balance to strike would be level of difficulty: you want to make this tool challenging enough for people to l/earn something from it (most obviously, increasing levels of expression), but also easy and fun enough to stay engaged in. Too, this type of chat interface would probably find its most receptive audience in China where the users are familiar with both pin-yin and the calligraphic tradition.
On that note, it’d be interesting to see how re-imagining an chat interface could in turn reshape the ways in which traditional Chinese calligraphy is produced and appreciated. Aside from re-thinking calligraphy as a social, collaborative production (which could also draw from pre-existing poetic traditions in at least the Chinese and Japanese cultures), there would be a potential for re-conceptualizing the spatial parameters within which one writes calligraphy, both in terms of the square boxes students learn in, as well as dimensionality and narrative perspectives. And with a final, as yet unrelated, nod to Joyce, it’s worth mentioning that the structural set-ups of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake organize information and the reader’s narrative journey in ways that really speak to hyperlinking and search engines, and that Joyce would have adored the vernacular productions found in LOLCats and its Bible Translation Project.
Posted: February 15th, 2011
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