Essay for Orals Presentation

Nitin Sawhney
June 8^th, 2000

 Overview:

1. Self-Expression & Behavior in Public Places - Goffman & William Whyte, 60s-70s
2. Influence of Media on Social Settings - Meyrowitz, 80's
3. Cognitive & Cultural Probes into Elderly Communities - Altman & Bill Gaver, 80s-90s

To recognize the effect of technology intervention in physical and social settings, we can peek into sociological methods & findings to gain some insight. We will review here the work of sociologists in understanding social behavior, in terms of self-expression (Goffman), physical place (Whyte) and the role of media (Meyrowitz). We then examine the domain of elderly communities (Altman) and consider innovative methods to elicit cultural understanding for design (Gaver). In part II, we will try to relate these perspectives in the survey of computer-mediated systems and pose them in the context of scenarios like the home, workplace and public settings.

1. Self Expression in Public Places: observations by Erving Goffman

Goffman poses the question - How does an individual in everyday situations present himself in the presence of people?

Goffman uses the metaphor of "Theatrical Performance" to explain people's social behavior - i.e. people are constantly involved in different dramas, changing their roles and performances in different situations. He suggests that individuals find it beneficial to control their self-impression observed by others. He describes the kinds of implicit/explicit expression one creates while sustaining such performances. Goffman recognizes the inadequacies of such a model, but feels that it still provides a useful framework for examining the structure of social interaction in public.

Methodology: Goffman recounts research in sociology, informal memoirs of others, and his own observations in a crofting community (subsistence farming) in the Shetland Islands (1950's).

Main Theme - Individuals exert two kinds of expressive behavior - Given or Given-Off

Goffman believes that the true attitudes, beliefs and emotions of individuals can be attained through involuntary expressive behavior. However, Goffman notes that this distinction has only an initial validity, as individual can intentionally convey misinformation in both expressions.

The control of one's expression reinstates the symmetry of communication process, setting the stage for an infinite cycle of concealment and false revelation. However as people notice an unintended or involuntary expression (given-off), the asymmetry is re-established. It seems that the "art of piercing individual's efforts at calculated unintentionally is better developed than one's capacity to manipulate self-expression." Hence witness are always at an advantage over actors.

Everyone is always more or less consciously playing a role. Goffman questions the extent to which we believe in the parts we play. Eventually conception of our role may become 2^nd nature and an integral part of our personality. However it constantly changes in different situations.

Role or Social Front - part of the individual's performance that defines the situation. Consists of:

Setting - Physical layout of the scene within which the performance unfolds.

Appearance - clothing, facial expression, race, age, and so on

Manner - expression - may contradict the others.

A given social front may get institutionalized with abstract stereotypical expectations, making it a collective representation. The personal front is employed not only for the self, but expresses characteristics of the tasks and the wider scene (e.g. role of receptionist).

Expression vs. Action - There is a problem with awareness of undramatized actions. E.g. Nurses.

Region Behavior (Place) - regions bounded by some extent by barriers to perception. E.g. glass panels or cubicles bounded by audio or visual range determine the performers' decorum.

Front Stage vs. Back Stage - are places where one expresses or suppresses behaviors knowingly. E.g. differences in a waitress's behavior in a restaurant vs. the kitchen. Unblocked partitions in housing projects reveal the backstage sounds of other's daily routines.

The same place can serve as front/back stage at different times of day. One often invokes "backstage regressive style" in a place transforming it into the backstage. E.g. Airline stewards relax and act out of their roles in the rear seats. Woman in working class quarters of Paris extend the backstage to their circle of neighborhood shops.

The 3^rd residual region would be considered an "outside". Outsiders often witness a show not meant for them. "Audience Segregation" - playing different parts for different audiences.

Here I'd like to reflect on the "street" as a loose metaphor for behavior in everyday social spaces.

For 16 years William Whyte, a sociologist, has been walking the streets and public spaces and watching how people use them. He started the "Street Life Project" with a number of social researchers and a band of observers (students). The work was supported by a number of foundations and the NYC Planning Commission. NYC was concerned with the growth and workability of the city; Whyte was more curious about "how new spaces were working out". At the time he managed to get an "expedition grant" for the study of urban spaces. The study of parks and plazas was mainly meant for architects and urban planners. However, I think his observations of social behavior in public places and suggestions for the design of urban spaces is highly relevant to computer-mediated environments for the future. Most current research tends to be far removed from everyday situations.

Methodology - Core of the work was mostly direct observations by him and a small group of students along with some interviewing & experiments. They used a battery of discreet cameras perched high on streets (time-lapse photography) to track pedestrian flow, street encounters and social patterns. The intent was to observe people in real-world everyday situations rather than isolated studies of social/psychological behavior in laboratory settings. Pedestrians in great metropolitan centers (NYC, London, Tokyo) act more like each other (than smaller cities), reacting to the high density situations and range of stimuli.

I'll summarize below a number of interesting findings: (show diagrams and photos from book)

Main theme: "What attracts people most, in sum, is other people … many urban spaces are being designed as though the opposite were true." People talk of "escape" and "retreat" when asked in questionnaires, however on the street most tend to gravitate to social centers. When people fill up a space like a plaza, they don't distribute themselves evenly, they go where others are. Dense areas get denser. However they tend to cooperatively maintain constant occupancy even though not evenly spaced. Most spaces designed as if people will uniformly distribute themselves. [Does the new workplace need mobile/wireless social centers, than fixed working infrastructure? Architectural studies suggest a mix of both]. The pond and TI areas have social clutter - messy and informal activity hubs where people can easily cluster

Spontaneous Encounters - There is a surprisingly high incidence of chance meetings in streets and 30% of conversations seem to be unplanned. Street encounters tend to be either brief greetings, "awkwardly tentative" (should I pass or stop) or persist for 3 or more minutes. Difficult to gauge the value of chance encounters (we can all think of examples where they lead to meaningful exchange) … but corporations moving out of cities forfeit such interactions.

When people meet in the street, most conversations tend to occur in the middle of pedestrian flow in "100% Locations" - prime social spaces. Even trajectories of moving conversations centered around 100% locations. There is an inclination to remain in the main flow, jostling traffic. And others tend to move around easily (pedestrians surprisingly tolerant of blockers). Similar pattern observed in NY, Copenhagen (by architect Jan Gehl) and Australia (Matthew Ciolek). Contrary to common sense expectations, relatively few people formed their gatherings away from the navigational spaces. Why? There is a high likelihood of chance meetings in the main flow. Conversations originating in the flow, less likely to be taken out. Staying in the flow allows maximum social choice to break-off, switch or continue on. Similar phenomenon in cocktail parties (moving conversations growing denser) - people tend to prefer staying "in" social centers, not out. People tend to gravitate to the 100% locations. Most 100% conversations spotted in the busiest crossroads (street corners). [Figure - page 9]

Social Ritual of Schmoozing - mostly groups of men lined up on the curbs, facing inwards in idle gossip. Fairly consistent in choosing locations (edges of curbs and pillars) and the duration of their sessions (10-15 min) and they constantly renew themselves. Some of it can be business, but a great deal is social. [Figure - page 13]

Dynamic Social Distances - "Crowding can make crowding more tolerable". Social distances expand or contract (as space fills up) based on density of people around.

Mayors as Communication Hubs - Most well used places have a "mayor" - food vendors, guards, newsstand operators. They understand the area well (and vendors probably gravitate to socially navigated spaces themselves) - they are quick to notice a departure from the normal routine. Passers-by check with them throughout the day, and the mayors may even anticipate their questions. People also feel a sense of safety with such mayors around, and may gravitate in those areas or in their visibility. Street performers in subways can calm commuters down. Places designed for security do worse, as they place large blank walls or fences to keep away "undesirables" - making them isolated and underused for social flow. Such isolated places then allow shady activities to function well.

Relationship to the Street - key to success of an internal public space - how it visually and spatially ties to the outside. Most store doorways impose a binary choice - "no place for indecision, halfway steps or second thoughts." A transitional space allows people a comfortable chance to decide whether they can linger, enter or move on. Plazas elevated or sunken below 3 feet attract less flow. Sight lines are important - if people don't see a space they won't use it.

Window shoppers - highly selective behavior - slow down or stop at certain places. Takes in whole window in a visual swoop - mean elapsed time 40-60 sec. People on the inbound side trend to look at window more so than outer. Many windows not designed for close-up view (like Portal). Window shoppers come in bunches - because of traffic patterns in pedestrian flow. A domino effect (usually short-lived) triggers others response to gather around a scene.

Sense of Place - knowing where you are in a space and having a sense of time (natural light) is reassuring. Messy streets with a mishmash of activities can provide good cues for navigation - the sensory experience of smells, touch, sounds, visual memory, uneven pavement.

Temporal Rhythms of public spaces - In plazas there is a fairly consistent pattern - sporadic activity in morning, most clientele between noon - 2:00 PM (80% activity). Not much after 5:30 PM. Change of social rhythm indicates anomalous events in or around the space.

Supply creates demand - a good new space builds a constituency. Gets people into new habits to use new paths. Best-used spaces show a higher proportion of couples, groups and women. Effective radius of a space is less than 3 blocks - 80% look within this radius. Successful places have strong pedestrian flow besides them e.g. hallway or subway nearby.

Accidental spaces - some of the best spaces tend to be accidental ones. The "bland conformity of good taste" makes streets over-designed. Need basic amenities that are usable - clocks, trash bins, benches, fountains, payphone, poles, glass walls, sculpture - they all serve many different functions. However one has to allow flexibility to restructure as needed - movable chairs and bins.

Triangulation - process by which some external stimulus provides social linkage between people and prompts strangers to interact e.g. unexpected nature of street acts or public sculpture.

Consider two illustrative Scenarios: (we will come back to them in part II)

Garden Space - Has a distinct temporal rhythm and a mayor (Dean). Relationship to hallway and the couch area is now a 100% Location. The Aware Portal initially provided a sort of triangulation.

Subway Stations - Dense flow of people and consistent daily rhythms. People don't uniformly gather but cluster in 100% locations. Role of poles, trash, T-maps, benches, and performers. Familiar strangers [Milgram] - In NYC commuters claim 4 individuals they recognize but never speak to and 1.5 conversed with. Some are "socio-metric stars". They often think of others. A real relationship exists - both people have agreed to ignore each other without implication of hostility.

Situations are usually defined in terms of social or physical settings. Meyrowitz believes the social significance of physical settings is less relevant today due to influence of electronic communication in people's lives. I disagree … the actual physical settings between distant parties does impact their social behavior while using electronic media. Many of the same social/physical constraints apply to mediated communication. Meyrowitz is often cited in the studies of electronic communication systems. I didn't find it that useful, much of it seems obvious or redundant today.

Methodology - a commentary on social/cultural phenomenon, no direct observations. Perhaps one should look at Nass and Reeves at Stanford for actual studies [The Media Equation '98].

Meyrowitz suggests that Goffman takes a "stable view of social life" - people acting according to stable social order, roles, places and events. In Goffman's social world the scripts and stages are relatively unchanging. Meyrowitz points to changing of roles in the 60's - people mixing up their performances - extending the "backstage" to public arenas, breaking old segregation of behaviors and audiences. McLuhan (writing in the early 60's) anticipated the behavioral changes of the late 60's and attributed them to widespread use of electronic media. McLuhan felt that introduction of new medium to a culture changes the sensory balance and alters consciousness? But he provides no clear reason as to how and why media brings about such changes.

Electronic media rearranged social forums, so that people find themselves in contact with others in new and unexpected ways and must cope with it somehow. Many social spheres that were once distinct can be found to be overlapping due to media. Traditionally perceived differences between social groups and (physical) situations blurred … not entirely true. In my mind, electronic media has simply provided an opportunity for developing new roles and new places, yet these are just as influenced by our prior/current social and physical settings.

Meyrowitz talks of "informational settings". It is not the physical setting itself that determines the nature of interaction, but the patterns of information flow. He says media breaks down Goffman's notion of regions as places with "barriers to perception". E.g. Intercom in the Kitchen left on in the restaurant and conversations of waiters heard by patrons extends the backstage by opening a channel of information to it. The dividing line between backstage and onstage is informational not necessarily physical. He believes in a continuum rather than Goffman's extreme dichotomy of regions. He proposes middle, deep back and forefront regions, which contain elements of both front/backstage settings (to different extent) and people in these settings adjust their performance or social roles accordingly. Middle region behavior can result from new overlapping of situations and audiences.

Notion of group identity and territory previously tied to relationship between place and information access. Electronic media is blurring previously distinct group identities, social roles and personal/private spheres.

Let's consider a domain where such a multi-disciplinary understanding is helpful.

Gerontology - the study of elderly and their environment. Here we consider orientations in place, social, cognitive processes, media, culture and design. An ethnographic approach is useful.

Methodology: Altman ('83) suggests that surveys and extensive interviews have not found to be entirely reliable and yield sufficiently meaningful knowledge for design purposes. [Lawton'79 - 1000 people in 150 housing units interviewed]. One needs "understanding from within" which requires establish a rapport at a level of intimacy to reveal customary or taken-for-granted dimensions of their experience. Also important to view their lifestyles in their personal and historical context [Mills 59]. Howell (1980) used qualitative approaches to get elderly to talk openly about their environment and unobtrusively observed them in public spaces. Rowles (80-83) conducted the Colton study done over a 4 year period with a declining rural community of 400 - relationship with 15 elderly, participant observations, recorded interviews, space-time activity diaries, cognitive mapping tasks, aerial photography.

The Colton elderly reveal a bimodal pattern of service activity - reliance on community for everyday services and travelling to nearby town. They rely on others to make trips, they became less frequent over time. Trips were meaningful as a social activity to for pleasurable, spontaneous and unplanned personal contact with others. The trips establish a regular rhythm in their lives. Maintaining a daily routine in the use of their space may be supportive to the functioning of the rural old. Overtime the establishment of regular paths is ingrained in their subconscious. A "Body Awareness" of the setting facilitates an ongoing participation in the environment. Younger residents become attuned to the regularized daily routines of the elderly; should one fail to make the expected daily walk to the post office, it would be noticed and investigated.

Activity spaces of the rural elderly become progressively more constricted as they spend more time closer to home. Barker discovered that such "Behavior regression" resulted in the mean occupancy time in all behavior settings equivalent to that of preschool child. Rural elderly cognitively differentiate their physical environment into zones of decreasing intensity of involvement away from their homes. Their duration of residence means that the space assumes distinctive meaning to hold identity, artifacts and memory that constitute their personal history. This space is cognitively differentiated from the 'outside'. Outside the home is a "surveillance zone" - much time spent on the porch watching events in this visual field - important sense of involvement through monitoring the natural events. Locations around the community evolve into incident spaces, where significant events transpired. Localized social spaces develop differentiated as functionally and socially discrete with local folk names.

Physical environment perceived as "Hierarchy of zones" focused on their homes. Cognitive Zones linked to the type and frequency of their physical participation in these spaces. The community is perceived as a zone in which everyday support may be received from family and friends accumulated over lifetime. The overall community may be viewed in terms of an array of "perceived community functions" i.e. potentials for maintenance, recreation, personal relations, that it fulfills.

Since prior social ties are likely to be disrupted at old age, there is a strong personal significance to maintain stable social bonds in the family and community. Desire to see their kids nearby. There is a need to be in a social context that is conducive to being "known well" and knowing others in the community. There is an attachment to the place of proximate social surroundings, enhanced by ongoing social exchanges and relationships. They wish to maintain among peers a shared memory of past events in specific locations. Communication media (radio, TV, papers) provide an environmental context not easily available in their local focus. With geographic dispersion telephone becomes a critical medium for such support [Rowles83].

A prosthetic service environment can undermine their independence and ability to maintain involvement outside. A passive contentment leads to a decline in health. Traditional homes may allow them to retain an "active strain" (as described earlier), although some need additional care.

Some thoughts - The temporal and spatial rhythms of elderly in and around their surroundings are clearly vital to their social/cognitive well being. Communication with peers, family and external news sources seems critical. Much comfort is derived from local relations and places. How does one strengthen such bonds within the context of their physical settings? Is there a role for home appliances & mobile devices that allow them to maintain such connections and let others see their daily rhythms?

If we plan to introduce mediated communication/awareness in social/physical settings, some understudying of the social/cognitive context can help; consider the two issues illustrated below:

Supporting Temporal Rhythms of people in their physical setting are important. How to we support or coexist with them? We must recognize for example that elderly will not always like to be situated in the home, being out and about is vital. So any support/awareness system should take this mobility into account. Since we think it might be a consistent pattern over time, we might be able to predict broad regularities or deviations.

Backstage/front-stage: Say we want to develop an activity monitoring / communication used in elderly homes to connect them to caretakers or family. Any such system will oblige the elderly (even if they agree) to give a performance to the observer that is expected of them. Hence the presence of a sensor (camera, microphone or infrared) will make their home a front-stage, where they will be inclined to follow a routine that appears proper. They may no longer feel comfortable acting in a backstage style (temper, moods, private moments) that their grandkids may find unbecoming of an elderly. It seems that a more appropriate approach would be to provide the elderly with a means to control the staging of the system, i.e. setting the system to a mode where they can appear to be more expressive and easily switching front-stage to back-stage as needed.