Thesis Project | Chad Thornton

Overview
Over the last year I've been interested in the social and emotional effects created through the use of popular online communication mediums such as instant messaging, weblogs, and social networking services. What users of these mediums share is a strong sense of audience, of seeing and being seen. This affects how people use these systems and how they feel while using these systems.

My primary research has been a series of interviews with teens about their uses of instant messaging and weblogs, reading about others' reflections on use of these mediums as posted on their weblogs, and personal reflections and experiments using these mediums.

Secondary research includes Erving Goffman's work on self-presentation, Herbert Clark's theories of language use and common ground, the developing field of presence research, and research on social visualizations, especially those of Thomas Erickson at IBM and the Sociable Media Group at MIT.

Based on insights and implications from this research, I produced several design concepts for applications that might create improved means for self-presentation and awareness. Working in collaboration with Neema Moraevji, a Masters student in HCI, we designed and produced a prototype based on one of these concepts, an application which we call called Apeer.

Apeer lets people share a text message, URL, or photo with a group, whose members can reply to that posting using the same means. In this sense, Apeer could be seen as a private group weblog of sorts. However, unlike weblogs, Apeer visualizes all levels of involvement of those using the system in order to create a greater sense of awareness and contribution. Like instant messaging, people are shown as logged into the system – a person's presence being the most basic level of involvement. Which postings each person reads is also shown to the rest of the group, building common ground in a lightweight but powerful manner. Comments on posts allow participants to become more involved and for discussion to occur, while new postings create topics that invite interaction or at least recognition for what a person has shared.

My work with Apeer is ongoing. Neema has focused on coding, I have focused on the interface, and together we work on the interaction design. We have tested the application with two groups, each for a few days, and I am currently recruiting for a two-week study for teens to try it out.

Apeer will be presented in the Interactive Posters track at CHI 2004 in Vienna. We have also designed and built Mopeer, a version of Apeer designed for use on mobile devices, which we submitted to the Microsoft ImagineCup. Finally, we recently submitted an abstract to the Persistent Conversations mini-track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) conference, where we hope to discuss the research leading to and design motivations behind Apeer and Mopeer in greater detail.

Collaborators
Primarily Neema Moraveji, with coding assistance on the Apeer webserver from Patrick Barry, Kevin Shiue, and Justin Weisz.

Advisors
John Zimmerman, Shelley Evenson

Poster of Findings, Insights, & Implications [PDF]	Interface Concepts	Poster for CHI Conference [PDF]
Time-lapse: Apeer in Use	Mopeer: Mobile Apeer
Thesis Project Fall 2003, Spring 2004 – currently in progress I studied how teenagers use instant messaging to maintain awareness of and sense of connection to their friends. Based on this research, I designed a product that helps to support awareness by visualizing social activity.