Language differences in the presence of shared workspaces

There has already been a great deal of research investigating the use of shared visual context while completing collaborative tasks such as solving a puzzle or a murder mystery. Most of this work focuses on video conferencing (so each participant can see every other participant), or sharing videos of each participant's real-world workspace (in the context of a puzzle, each participant can see the puzzle that every other participant is working on). There is a smaller body of research that looks into shared digital workspaces for collaboration tasks, and a lot of this work focuses on heavily constrained work spaces that have been developed or adapted for a particular task. We are interested in how the presence of a less-constrained shared workspace such as a digital whiteboard affects the way people interact with others. We are also interested in how people adapt their language and behavior if the medium they are using is not conducive to the task they need to solve. Specifically we are interested in how different group and goal-oriented tasks are more appropriate to be completed via text, a shared visual workspace, or a combination of the two and how groups compensate for a poor match between task and communication medium.

In order to study our question, we plan on using a 3 by 3 factorial design. There will be three forms of media richness: chat only, digital whiteboard only, and digital whiteboard with chat. There will also be three tasks that are yet to be determined. In choosing tasks we plan on choosing one task that will be easiest under the whiteboard condition, one that will be easiest under the chat condition, and a third that will be easiest under the mixed condition. Under these conditions, we will observe the similarities and differences in the language used and exchanged between the participants of our study, their use of the whiteboard, and how efficiently they completed the task. Our team hypothesizes that the language used will vary within the different spaces and that certain tasks are better suited to be completed under certain conditions.

As our team continues to solidify our research question and procedure, there are still matters that are uncertain and yet to be clarified. While we believe that dictating street directions to a person would be most feasible via an on-line whiteboard and telling a story would be most appropriate via chat, we need further guidance in selecting our tasks. Also, while our team members have shown interest in this research space, we are still trying to answer the question "why?" We want to ensure that we can make practical recommendations based on the findings of our study. We question if finding differences in language usage under the three noted conditions will suggest any kinds of modifications in present day conventions of groupware and collaborative tasks.

Email Etiquette

Research Question
Conversations can be divided into three segments: an entry where two people agree and coordinate the commencement of a conversation, the body where the participants discuss one or more topics, and the closing where all conversation partners agree to close the conversation. In asynchronous conversation mediums such as email, conversation boundaries can become blurred when one full conversation can be composed of a number of discrete messages that themselves can be made up of an entry, body, and closing. We are interested in how the composition of the individual messages changes over time in a prolonged email exchange. More specifically, how do people alter their greetings and signatures within prolonged email exchanges?

We hypothesize that greetings and signatures will be altered to mirror conversation partners within prolonged email exchanges. In order to test our hypothesis we have designed an experiment where we will track a thread of emails between one subject and one confederate in two conditions, and two subjects in the third condition. Regardless of condition, each pair will be given a task, which they must complete through email.

Condition One
The subject, an undergraduate, will be given a task and a partner (the confederate who they are told is also an undergraduate) to complete the task with. The subject must initiate the email conversation, but after that, anyone can write at any time. In this condition the confederate will stop using greetings and signatures on the third email that he/she sends.

Condition Two
The setup and participants are the same as in condition one, however in this condition the confederate will use greetings and signatures throughout the exchange.

Condition Three
In this condition both subjects will be undergraduates. They will be given the same task and told to complete it via email.

Further, we hypothesize that the first message from each partner will include a formal greeting and introduction, as the partners do not know each other. In condition one we hypothesize that once the confederate changes his or her entry method, the subject will follow in order to take part of the joint project. In the second condition, where the confederate continues to keep the entries and exits formal, we hypothesize that the subject will do the same in order to be polite.

After collecting the dialogues, we will throw out any dialogues with less than six discrete messages and those that took longer than 2 days from start to finish. After reviewing the transcripts we will make a determination as to what constitutes a greeting and a signature within a message. We will then code all of the resulting greetings and signatures on measures such as length and formality. Finally, we will use our coded data to observe patterns in the greetings and signatures of conversations between conditions.

The Now&Later Pledge

With the members of Team Now & Later as my witnesses, I pledge to do the following things in order to ensure success throughout the duration of this project:

1. I promise to do what I say I will do.


2. If circumstances arise that prevent me from doing my part, I will notify my team members in an appropriate manner.


3. I will keep my team members informed of my progress and update them on my status.


4. Above all, I will keep team morale high!