The Social Computing theme aims to investigate ways by which Human-Computer Interaction can be turned into a social experience. We focus on the following aspects:
When entering a new application, a new space, a new service, users will have to learn how to behave. If the actions of other users are visible in the interface, these can inform and tell us what is appropriate behaviour, what can/cannot be done - it provides social affordance.
Over a time period, the usage of a space/application/service should make the functionality 'drift', similar to how natural language is under constant change. We want to make the usage, both aggregated behaviours from many users, but also individual users, be part in shaping and reshaping the system.
Introducing social trails and other aspects of sociality in the interface will alter users' experience of the system. Systems of this kind will begin to invoke cognitive, emotional, social, aesthetic and ethical reactions not seen with 'traditional' user interfaces. This sets demands for new kinds of user studies to aid design and further our understanding of how these experiences come about.
The world is a space that consists of many places, it is constantly changing and people are physically in it. How can the idea of social computing be applied to that type of space? We want to study the effects of enhancing the physical reality with virtual social trails that is accessed and used from within that reality.
Social trials alllow us to exploit new ways of helping users navigate an information space by creating a system topology that reflects its use. By combining the social trails with traditional content-based methods for information filtering and navigation it should be possible to overcome some of the problems a pure social filtering approach faces.
As we move beyond the tool metaphor of interfaces towards social or intentional interfaces, numerous new metaphors and functionalities become relevant: communication between people, entertainment/affective interfaces, services and work delegation to intentional interfaces, arts and personal expressions, etc.
Åsa Rudström and Petra Fagerberg has got the paper Socially Enhanced Travel Booking: a Case Study accepted to the Journal of Information Technology and Tourism 6(3), special issue on Travel Recommender Systems.
