Social: Theories and Models - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 248

Chapter 9
Social: Theories and Models
Abstract In the previous chapter we introduced concepts related to teams and
teamwork. This chapter provides concepts for analyzing, interpreting, and modeling
how teams work. We turn to models of social communication and coordination that
have gained prominence as we think about people in technical and social networks
and at higher levels of organization. This chapter introduces some of the many
concepts, theories, and results related to social processes that can influence system
design, and also notes how to model social processes for use as theories and for
applications.
9.1 Introduction
As distributed, networked computing systems have become increasingly part of
our everyday lives, new models for understanding group and team communication
have arisen. Kang ( 2000 , p. 1150) has noted that for the Internet, at least, the killer
app is other people. It is certainly the case that our understanding of human-human
interaction has evolved since the introduction of rich media connections. In part
this is due to the fact that so many new forms of interaction have arisen since the
development of the Internet. Thirty years ago, the idea that we would be able to
videoconference in real time with colleagues and friends on the other side of the
planet from a mobile phone was considered science fiction. Now it is a frequent if
not commonplace occurrence.
In addition to making use of these innovations, we are also able to mine and
analyze behavioral data at fine-grained levels of detail. All transactions online can
be recorded and studied for interaction patterns at various levels of abstraction.
Studies have combined observational and logged, transaction and activity data to
look at email use in organizations (e.g., Desanctis and Monge 1998 ) and across
national and cultural boundaries (Rutkowski et al. 2002 ), to study the use of text-
based virtual environments for work coordination and collaboration (Churchill and
Bly 1999 ), to consider how graphical virtual environments enable collaborative