Share and Share Alike?

Abstract

Interfaces are commonly designed from the perspective of individual users, even though most of the systems we use in everyday life are in fact shared. We argue that more attention is needed for system sharing, especially because interfaces are known to influence coordination of shared use. In this work, we aim to deepen the understanding of this relation. To do so, we design three interfaces for a shared lighting system that vary in the type of social information they allow people to share with others and in their overall interaction style. We systematically compare longitudinal and real-life use of the interfaces, evaluating (1) people's appraisal of three types of social information and (2) the influence of an interaction style on coordination of shared use. The results disclose relations between the interface and the amount of verbal communication, consideration, and accountability. With this work, we urge the need for interaction designers to consider shared use.

Designing for Awareness in Interactions with Shared Systems

“…When designing interactions with everyday systems that are shared in use-i.e., systems that are integrated in the routines of people's everyday lives and environments-we feel that designing for awareness deserves even more attention and should become a standard consideration. We can illustrate this argument with our previous work, in which we investigated designing for awareness in interactive lighting systems [92,93]. We designed three interfaces for an interactive office lighting system, which differed in the type of information they allowed people to share among each other through the interface.…”

“…We designed three interfaces for an interactive office lighting system, which differed in the type of information they allowed people to share among each other through the interface. Evaluation of the interfaces demonstrated how the availability of information can help people to coordinate shared use among each other, by lowering the threshold for verbal communication, by making social norms more prevalent, and by increasing feelings of accountability [93]. Moreover, we found that when people have too little information about the subjective rules around system sharing, this leads to more conflict-avoiding behavior and fewer interactions with the system [92,93].…”

“…In parallel, we worked on multiple design implementations of awareness information in the field of interaction with connected lighting systems. These interaction designs were both from our own hand and were designed together with students (see [91,93,129] for some of the outcomes). In these design projects, we have used the design considerations of the framework in various stages of completion.…”

“…The three themes on how the awareness can be used effectively in interaction have been least explicitly addressed in other literature. Where the themes in Sections 5.1 and 5.2 primarily result from literature, these themes in Section 5.3 form a direct result of our own research (especially [91,93]). The themes included are anticipation & revisability, interaction alternatives, and recoverability & intervention.…”

“…The themes in the framework could be used as vocabulary when defining criteria for the evaluation of an interface. For example, in our own evaluation of lighting interfaces for a connected office lighting system [93], we compared three types of information (preference, intention, and authorship) to see which would be most useful. Also, we assumed during the design process that the level of detail (Section 5.1.2) of authorship information was less important than privacy protection (Section 5.1.4): if people could identify which controller was used to make a light setting, that would be enough detail to ask the people around that controller for permission to change the light.…”