Multiparty collaboration using a common language is often challenging for non-native speakers (NNS). Conversation can move forward rapidly, with terms and references unfamiliar to NNS often going unexplained because NNS do not request clarification due to cognitive overload or face concerns. Language difficulties may further lead to NNS having a low level of participation in a conversation, which could be a loss for multilingual teams. To help NNS resolve potential confusions due to unfamiliar language use without risking face concerns, we created a conversation agent that asked clarification questions intended to help NNS follow and participate in multiparty conversations. We conducted a within-subjects laboratory experiment with 17 triads of 2 NS and 1 NNS, who performed a series of collaborative tasks under three conditions: a) no agent, b) a high-level agent that resembles a NNS with good command of English, and c) a low-level agent that resembles a NNS with poor English skills. Results suggest that NS made significantly more clarifications in both agent conditions than without an agent. In the high-level agent condition, NNS reported an increase in understanding after the agent’s interruption and spoke significantly more. Further, NNS evaluated their communication competence in English highest in the low-level agent condition and lowest in the control condition. Our findings suggest several directions to improve the tool to better facilitate multilingual multiparty communication.
As an emerging business phenomena especially in China, instant messaging (IM) based social commerce is growing increasingly popular, attracting hundreds of millions of users and is becoming one primary way where people make everyday purchase. Such platforms embed shopping experiences within IM apps (e.g. WeChat, WhatsApp), where real world friends post and recommend products from the platform in IM group chats. and quite often form lasting recommending/buying relationship. How and why do users engage on instant messaging based social commerce? Do such platforms create novel shopping experience that is distinct from traditional commerce? And do these platforms bring changes to user social lives and relationship? To shed light on these questions, we launched a qualitative study where we carried out semi-structured interviews on 12 instant messaging based social commerce users in China. We showed that IM based social commerce 1) enables more accessible, cost-reducing and ubiquitous user shopping experience, 2) shape user decision making process in shopping through pre-existing social relationship, mutual trust, shared identity and community norm, and 3) create novel social interactions, which can positvely/negatively influence social relationship. We demonstrate that all these unique aspects of IM based social commerce link closely to the coupling of user social and economic lives on the platform. Our study provides important research and design implications for social commerce design and CSCW applications in general.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3449141
Online chat functions as a discussion channel for diverse social issues. However, deliberative discussion and consensus-reaching can be difficult in online chats in part because of the lack of structure. To explore the feasibility of a conversational agent that enables deliberative discussion, we designed and developed DebateBot, a chatbot that structures discussion and encourages reticent participants to contribute. We conducted a 2 (discussion structure: unstructured vs. structured) × 2 (discussant facilitation: unfacilitated vs. facilitated) between-subjects experiment (N = 64, 12 groups). Our findings are as follows: (1) Structured discussion positively affects discussion quality by generating diverse opinions within a group and resulting in a high level of perceived deliberative quality. (2) Facilitation drives a high level of opinion alignment between group consensus and independent individual opinions, resulting in authentic consensus reaching. Facilitation also drives more even contribution and a higher level of task cohesion and communication fairness. Our results suggest that a chatbot agent could partially substitute for a human moderator in deliberative discussions.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3449161
Bulk email is a primary communication channel within organizations, with all-company messages and regular newsletters serving as a mechanism for making employees aware of policies, events, and other needed messages. Ineffective communication could result in substantial wasted employee time and lack of awareness or compliance. Previous studies on organizational emails focused mostly on recipients. However, organizational bulk email systems are a multi-stakeholder problem including recipients, communicators, and organization itself. Thus we study the effectiveness, experience, practice, and assessments of organizational bulk email systems from different stakeholders' perspectives. We conducted a quantitative study within a large organization to understand the extent to which the recipients retained the messages from the organizational bulk emails they received. We conducted a qualitative study with communicators and recipients within the organization. We delved into the bulk email distributing mechanisms of the communicators, the reading behaviors of recipients, and the bulk emails' values from communicators and recipients' points of view. We found that the recipients were not retaining most of the messages from the bulk emails though they opened a large number of them. The tools for designing and distributing organizational bulk email for communicators were very limited. The assessments on bulk emails' values and effectiveness were different between communicators and recipients. We discussed possible solutions that could improve organizational bulk emails' designing and distributing mechanisms.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3449154
A primary goal of remote collaboration tools is to provide the most effective meetings possible for all meeting participants. To study meeting effectiveness and meeting inclusiveness, we first conducted a large scale email survey (N=4,425) at a large technology company (pre-COVID-19); using this data we derived a multivariate model of meeting effectiveness and show how it correlates with meeting inclusiveness, participation, and feeling comfortable to contribute. We believe this is the first such model of meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness. The model shows the following factors are correlated with inclusiveness, effectiveness, participation, and feeling comfortable to contribute in meetings: Sending a pre-meeting communication, sending a post-meeting summary, including a meeting agenda, attendee location, remote-only meeting, audio/video quality and reliability, video usage, and meeting size. The model and survey results give a quantitative understanding of how and where to improve meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness and what the potential returns are. Motivated by the email survey results, we implemented a post-meeting survey into a leading computer-mediated communication (CMC) system to directly measure meeting effectiveness and inclusiveness (during COVID-19). Using initial results based on internal flighting we are able to create a similar model of effectiveness and inclusiveness, with many of the same findings as the email survey. This shows a method of measuring these metrics which is both practical and useful in a commercial CMC system.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3449247
Pull Requests (PRs) are a frequently used method for proposing changes to source code repositories. When discussing proposed changes in a PR discussion, stakeholders often reference a wide variety of information objects for establishing shared awareness and common ground. Previous work has not considered how the referential behavior impacts collaborative software development via PRs. This knowledge gap is the major barrier in evaluating the current support for referencing in PRs and improving them. We conducted an explorative analysis of \textasciitilde7K references, collected from 450 public PRs on GitHub, and constructed taxonomies of referent types and expressions. Using our annotated dataset, we identified several patterns in the use of references. Referencing source code elements was prevalent but the authoring interface lacks support for it. Three classes of contextual factors influence referencing behaviors: referent type, discussion thread, and project attributes. Referencing patterns may indicate PR outcomes (e.g., merged PRs frequently reference issues, users, and tests). We conclude with design implications to support more effective referencing in PR discussion interfaces.
Video chat continues to play an increasing role in the personal and professional lives of many people. When meeting someone for the first time via video chat, traditional icebreakers such as discussion questions may be used to ease conversation and facilitate disclosure; however, icebreaker questions have been shown to be less effective at facilitating relationships for some people than others. In this paper, we propose synchronously sharing online media as a more flexible, robust, and effective method of facilitating initial interactions in video chat. Our comparative study of icebreaker questions and media sharing reveals that shared media supports a different style of conversation than icebreakers, but results in equal levels of self-disclosure and trust along with higher levels of warranting and relatedness. Further, while the effectiveness of icebreakers in building trust is lower for individuals low in agreeableness, media sharing results in similar trust formation at all levels of agreeableness. Synchronous media sharing is a promising way of leveraging the digital context of video chat to better support early stages of relationships.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3479518
Over three billion people use personal email accounts for a wide variety of communications, largely from businesses. These messages often require additional information that users need to look for outside of the email itself, such as store hours, bill details, or related news articles. We studied these "email-prompted information needs" in a pilot interview-based study, a two-week diary study, and a large-scale survey with 790 total participants, finding that Notification, Deal, and Newsletter messages were the most likely to spark a need for external information. We conclude with several designs evaluated in a concept evaluation study with 276 participants and implications for the design of personal email services to better meet users’ external information needs.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3479861