Thomas Erickson, Social Computing Group, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Trust Among Strangers Thomas Erickson Social Computing Group IBM T. J. Watson

Thomas Erickson, Social Computing Group, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.

Trust Among StrangersTrust Among Strangers

Thomas EricksonThomas Erickson

Social Computing GroupSocial Computing Group

IBM T. J. Watson Research CenterIBM T. J. Watson Research Center

Revisting Online TrustRevisting Online Trust

CSCW 2006 WorkshopCSCW 2006 Workshop

Banff, November 4, 2006Banff, November 4, 2006


Overview

The Blender• The story

• An analysis

Trust Among Strangers• The trust of sidewalks

Designing for Trust• Social proxies

• Some conjectures


The Blender: the Story

The Purchase• At a local kitchen equipment story from ‘Carl’, a clerk

• Factors: look, brand, Carl’s recommendation

• Outcome: a new blender, a sales slip (and a warranty)



The Problem• It broke, after about 6 months (really, 6 weeks)

• I had lost the sales slip



The Resolution• On a visit to the store for a different matter I saw ‘Carl’

and chatted with him about it and discovered the lost sales slip was not a big problem

• Factors: Carl ‘recognized’ me; also, possibly:(leeway under store policy); (Waring or perhaps the distributor’s policy)


The Blender: an Analysis

The Riegelsberger Framework• Signals from trustee and context

- symbols

- symptoms

• Warrants (why trustee may act to fulfill trust)

- embeddedness: temporal, social and institutional

- intrinsic: ability, internalized norms, benevolence (‘manifested’ through interpersonal cues)

Problems I had applying the framework• Not sure on what is trustee and what is context

• Difficult to distinguish between symbols and symptoms

• Treatment of signals and warrants not parallel

• The three types of embeddedness difficult to entangle


The Blender: an Analysis

A few thoughts• It seemed easier to focus on objects and entities

- the blender, the sales person, the store

• These are levels of analysis that may vary systematically

Kitchen Window Amazon eBay

• It also struck me that we can make a distinction between natural trust and artificial trust


Trust Among Strangers

Jane Jacobs and the Trust of Sidewalks

The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop. ... Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all. The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level – most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands, all of it metered by the person concerned and not thrust upon him by anyone – is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and resource in time of personal or neighborhood need. (p 56)

Photo © 2004 Project for Public Spaces, Inc. www.pps.org



Triangulation and engagement• Triangulation: Events that cause strangers to

interact with one another

• Note the possibility for degrees of engagement

- Passerby

- Watcher

- Participant

- (Payee!)



Non-entangling relationships• According to Jacobs, one important thing that

makes sidewalk interactions ‘work’ is that they are ‘non-entangling’



In a previous workshop I argued• The trust exhibited among strangers in

face to face interactions is supported by social norms

• Social norms work among strangers, even when the possibility of “enforcement” by an authority is distant or non-existent

• And that social norms are supported by visible cues, which include

- cues embedded in the environment

-and behavioral cues from people

Photo © 2004 Project for Public Spaces, Inc. www.pps.org


Designing for Trust

Q: How do we design systems that support trust amongst strangers?

A: Support the development of ‘non-entangling’ familiarity by making people visible to one another


Designing for Trust

Visibility via social proxies• A social proxy is a minimalist

graphical representations that make people and their activities more visible

An example for a multi-room text-based chat system. . .


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• A conversation is represented by a circle


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• People are represented by colored dots


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• People in the ‘current’ conversation are

shown inside the circle...


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• People in other conversations are

shown outside the circle


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• When a person is ‘active’ in the chat

(types, clicks or moves the mouse), their dot moves towards the center of the circle...


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• So an active conversation in which lots

of people are speaking or listening looks something like this


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• As a person is idle, their dot slowly drifts outward

(over the course of about twenty minutes)


Designing for Trust

A social proxy• An inactive conversation (but one in

which people are still ‘around’) looks something like this


Designing for Trust

The Babble system• The social proxy was implemented

as part of the Babble system, a persistent chat application


Designing for Trust

The Babble system• Over the course of five years it was

deployed to about two dozen groups

• And it was generally quite successful:participants liked the proxy

“It makes me feel like people are in the room with me”


Designing for Trust

The Bottom Line on Babble• The Babble proxy was easy to learn• Participants used it,

often in unexpected ways• And it seemed to be have interesting

social and experiential aspects


Designing for Trust

Other Social Proxies

• Design sketch for a lecture proxy

Giving a talk during a conference call

• Design issues

- it makes the lecture ‘norm’ visible

- and can serve as a resource that participants can use to steer their own interaction


Designing for Trust

Other Social Proxies

• Design sketch for an online meeting

A ‘meeting room’ with a shared whiteboard and chat facility.

• Design issues

- Spatial access to special functionality

- Ability to (publicly) assume role


Designing for Trust

Other Social Proxies• For search• For auctions• For wikis

For any online situation in which people are involved, there are ways to make them and their activities mutually visible


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

1. Support visibility• People need to see one another, and the activities being engaged in


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

2. Support recognizability• This does not mean that real names or personal details must be revealed, but

simply that participants must have a distinct and persistent identity that makes it possible for them to be recognized as the same person, over time and across places


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

3. Support Non-Entangling, Minimal Interactions• If one can have an interaction, without fear of further entanglement, one is more

likely to become enter into it.

• Interestingly, online spaces rarely support minimal interactions. Often, the most minimal interaction one can engage in with another is to start a conversation – which is not very minimal at all.


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

4. Support a Hierarchy of Involvement• Though people rarely come to an online space seeking to become involved, they

can be lured into greater involvement, through a series of progressive (and positive) interactions


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

5. Support triangulation• In line with Whyte’s observation that external events can cause strangers to

begin interacting with one another, designers of online systems might think of online equivalents. Scheduled events, or activities, or even things like interactive polls have been used in online systems to catalyze activity.


Designing for Trust

Six Conjectures

6. Provide traces of past activity (especially good behavior)• As noted in the discussion of the blender story, trust doesn’t occur on its own.

Evidence of various sorts – from memories, to material tokens like sales slips that serve as ‘proof’ – provides a sort of scaffolding for trust. As trust grows stronger, it can span larger gaps in evidence, but at the beginning best not stretch it too far.


Thank You!

Thanks to • those involved in the Babble project...

Erin Bradner, Jason Ellis, Brent Hailpern, Christine Halverson, Wendy Kellogg, Mark Laff, John Richards, David N. Smith, Cal Swart, Tracee Wolf, and several generations of users

• ...and to my colleagues at IBM for support and inspiration

The Social Computing Group

Next Generation Web Interfaces

• ...and The Project for Public Spaces (http://www.pps.org)

For many photos (as noted)

For more information• [email protected]

• http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/

Documents

Thomas Erickson, Social Computing Group, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Trust Among Strangers Thomas Erickson Social Computing Group IBM T. J. Watson