Telerelating in Cyberspace: Research and Practice

© Carrie Heeter, Ph.D. February 9, 1998

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Computers offer wonderful potential for "telerelating" sustaining and even enhancing close personal relationships among professionals students family friends lovers

Technological advances proliferate in email, chat rooms, audio and video conferencing, virtual meeting tools and avatar world technologies.

However, the human, interpersonal, social dimensions of collaborative technologies have not received adequate design or research attention.

Rapid growth in technologies is being driven only indirectly by human need. That is, we are not standing back and asking the question: "Here is an important human activity, how can we facilitate it with technology?" (John Canny, Berkeley U)

How have you telerelated this week?

What are the goals/problem statement for a particular telerelating event?

How could technology better facilitate those goals?

Telerelating is HOW WE USE technology, not just the technologies themselves.

from America Calling by Claude Fisher at Berkeley

Phones were initally billed as a help in household management, and not for personal conversations.

Telephone marketers faced a need to educate people on what phones could do and how to use them.

"A Canadian notice in 1896 instructed: To Listen: Place the telephone fairly against the ear, with an upward motion, so that the lower extremity or lobe of the ear is gathered in, into the cavity of the telephone; in this position it will be found to fit snugly and comfortably-- the lobe of the ear acting as a cushion and at the same time closing out all ulterior sounds, thus enabling the voice to be heard with clearness and precision."

"Early telephone men often fought their residential customers over social conversations, labeling such calls as frivolous and unnecessary. For example, a company announcement from 1881 complained, "The fact that subscribers have been free to use the wires as they pleased without incurring additional expense [i.e., by using flat rates] has led to the transmission of large numbers of communications of the most trivial character."

Telerelating is using the telephone to call your mother, once a week every Sunday evening to talk for half an hour. And the rituals and behaviors associated with the call.

EXAMPLES OF SPECIAL FUNCTION TELERELATING

Virtual Bouquets (www.virtualflorist.com)

Online Photo Albums

(www.pictranet.com) Pictranet

(www.kodak.com) Kodak Picture Network

Online Mourning of the Dead

Virtual Memorials (www.virtual-memorials.com)

Weird Web Awards

Kodak PhotoCHAT (www.kodak.com)

Telerelating from San Francisco to East Lansing:

IChat/Pager (www.acuity.com/ichat/index.html)

Heeter to Tellschow: Heeter throws a plastic bug at Tellschow, landing on her shoulder.

Tellschow to Heeter: Tellschow scrambles through drawer, finds dart gun, and a dart under the desk, and during conference call, wings a dart part Heeter, which stick on the window above her computer.

Heeter to Tellschow: Heeter's eye is accidentally put out by the dart Tellschow shot, but no one can see Heeter's new eye patch because video transmission is not yet functioning. She tries to shoot back, but the dart misses ( it is hard to aim with one eye) and hits Devries instead.

Devries to Heeter: ouch

Tellschow to Heeter: Carrie takes advantage of missing eye to have Borg eye implanted in it's place . Now armed with laser scope vision, Sanna finds rubber bugs hurled with deadly accuracy!

Heeter to Kurtz: Heeter walks by Kurtz and gives him a hug, on her way to look for Brian.

Ubiquitous Tele-Embodiment and Tele-Presence

John Canny and Eric Paulos, UC Berkeley

Computing, Communication and XXX:
A human-centered meta-research program

**DRAFT** 3/28/96 by John Canny

(www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jfc/TeleX.txt)

Psychology and temperament are more important than technology.

You have to think about the human, and especially human-human interaction.

The trick is to figure out how to preserve the important elements of the experience of being-there without making the cost prohibitive.

(i) Two-way Speech (ii) One-way Video (iii) Mobility (iv) Two-way Video (v) Ability to point at things (vi) Ability to grasp and move things (vii) Body language

Blimp technology (Personal Roving Presence) is important for those people who like to wander around and have spontaneous meetings, to see what's happening, and to feel part of the group. The kind of people who wander the hallways, and stop into your office from time to time.

(www.prop.org)

Webcams: Around the World in 80 Clicks

(www.steveweb.com/80clicks/www.steveweb.com/80clicks/)

Virtual Potluck

Virtual Birthday

Being a SpeakerPhone

TeleDisembodiment

ViaTV (www.viaTV.com)

Video "DeGlamorizer"

Videophone technology brings out the worst in faces. Top photo is before transmission. Bottom photo is received image. Fixing this might improve attitudes toward picturephoning...

from Susan Brownmiller

(Femininity, Fawcett Columbine: New York. 1984)

1. Body

2. Hair

3. Clothes

4. Voice

5. Skin

6. Movement

7. Emotion

8. Lack of Ambition

 from Deborah Tannen

(You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversations, Ballantine Books, NY, 1990.)

 

Women	Men
"Rapport Talk"	"Report Talk"
Private Speaking	Public Speaking
Listening	Lecturing
Community	Contest
Conflict is Upsetting	Conflict is Involving
Intimacy (Connection)	Independence (Status, Competition)
We're close and the same	We're separate and different
Play down expertise	Exhibit expertise
Good Conversation = Personal	Good Conversation = Factual, Task-focused

My Research on Avatar Preferences

Women	Men
Fantasy Face	Real Face
Real Name	Fantasy Name
Costume	Costume
Real Hands	Whole Body

The telephone is used more often by women for sustaining social relationships: kin-keeping, caring, friendship, and support.