Social Catalysts: enhancing communication in mediated spaces

June 14, 2004
Karrie Karahalios | MIT Media Lab

Mediated communication between public spaces is a relatively new concept. One current example of this interaction is video conferencing among people within the same organization. Large scale video-conferencing walls have begun to appear in public or semi-public areas such as workplace lobbies and kitchens. These connections provide a link via audio and/or video to another public space within the organization.
When placed in public or semi-public work spaces, they are often designed for casual encounters among people within that community. Thus far, communicating via these systems has not met expectations. Some drawbacks to such systems have been lack of privacy, gaze ambiguity, spatial incongruity, and fear of appearing too social in a work environment.
In this talk, I discuss a different goal and approach to linking public spaces. We are not creating a substitute for face-to-face interaction, but rather new modes of conversational and physical interaction within this public space. This is accomplished through the introduction of what we are defining as a social catalyst.
We address the need for designs best suited for linking public spaces and present a series of design criteria for incorporating mediated communication between public and semi-public spaces.

Speaker Details

Karrie Karahalios is a PhD student with Prof. Judith Donath in the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. Her work focuses on the interaction between people and the social cues they perceive in networked electronic spaces. Of particular interest are interfaces for pubic online and physical gathering spaces such as chat rooms, cafes, parks, etc. The goal is to create interfaces that enable users to perceive conversational patterns that are present, but not obvious, in traditional communication interfaces.Her current thesis work involves integrating social catalysts into the design of interfaces for connecting spaces using audio and video. Previous projects include: Visiphone, a communication object that visualizes conversation patterns between two spaces; Hear&There, an augmented reality interface for placing sound envelopes in space and retrieving them with an audio interface; Chit Chat Club, a hybrid social space that combines the immediacy of the traditional cafe with the global reach and easy introductions of an online chat.Karrie completed a S.B. in electrical engineering, an M.Eng. in electrical engineering and computer science, and an S.M. in media arts and science at MIT.