CHI 99 Online Communities Workshop
Position Paper

David Millen

Senior Researcher
AT&T Labs - Research
100 Schulz Drive
Red Bank, New Jersey 07704
Email: drmillen@att.com

Research Summary

My current research is focussed on understanding how individuals and small groups use the Internet and other new communications technologies. My particular interest includes understanding usage patterns and communication roles in computer-mediated communication. I am also particularly interested in the representation and use of archival online conversations. The goal of this research is understand customer requirements and to define and design new consumer and business communications services. My recent work includes the study of a new web-based email service, evaluation of an audio-only media space, and several studies of online communities.

Research Methodology

I use multiple research methods in my research. For example, in a recent study of business Internet pioneers, my colleagues and I used work observations and ethnographic interviews. This field work was then followed by participant observation and analysis of several related online discussion groups. As part of our fieldwork, we used multiple representations of the work tasks and organization relationships (e.g., mind maps and casual models) in order to more creatively and more completely understand the work activities. Our collaborative visual field notes were subsequently used in a meta-analysis using more formal causal models. I have used both quantitative and qualitative analysis tools in order to understand online discussion groups. Quantitative tools help me to understand the general nature of the discussion through temporal, activity, and speaker data visualizations. Several of these "conversation maps" are then used to identify areas for more a more detailed content analysis of the discussion.

Future Directions for My Research

Issues that I am focusing on include:

• Associative communities. I am trying to understand the creation and use of online community by groups that are grounded in already established physically distributed organizations. One example has been my work investigating an online community of journalists who formed as a result of their membership in a professional association (i.e., a special interest group of reporters).
• Conversation visualization. I am interested in using visualization techniques to help understand online communities. I have developed conversation maps of several different online groups and am trying to understand the usefulness of these representations in discovering similarities and differences in various kinds of online groups.
• Conversation as a collective good: The creation and management of collective goods is an important characteristic of most online communities. I am interested in how web-based tools can be used to support access to community collective goods and the use of conversation as a special kind of created good.

Other Important Issues for the Field

A few issues I believe are particularly important to the future of the field are:

• Synthetic Faces. How can we use recent advances in facial animation technology to enhance community interaction? Also, how can we best use autonomous virtual humans in virtual environments?
• Social norms, values and shared practices: We need to understand better how they develop, and how they change over time. Also important is how they are codified and communicated to new members.
• Media mix and media choice: while many virtual communities are supported by a dominant medium, there are an increasing number of ways that individuals and groups can choose to communicate. For example, voice chat services are emerging that may or may not be associated with text or 3D visual environments. How will users make media choices in virtual environments? What kinds of media are best (or preferred) for what kinds of online community activity.
• Online ethnographic methods. What are appropriate methods and tools that can be used to study online communities? How do we analyze and communicate the results of our research in a way that is most useful to HCI community? Ethical issues including informed consent, avoidance of harm, and confidentiality are problematic for many kinds of online research.

Selected Publications

• Millen, D. R., Milewski, A. E., Smith, T. M., Weimer, D. M., & Wellner, P. D. (forthcoming) The Corner Office: An Exploration of an Informal Teleconferencing Service. Proceedings of Human Factors in Telecommunications '99. Copenhagen, Denmark, May 5-8.
• Pandzic, I. S., Ostermann, J., Millen, D. R., User Evaluation: What are synthetic talking faces good for? (in press) Special Issue of The Visual Computer on Real-time Virtual Worlds.
• Millen, D. R., & Dray, S. (1999) Information Sharing in an Online Community of Journalists. Proceedings of Esprit i3 Workshop: Ethnographic Studies in Real and Virtual Environments: Inhabited Information Spaces and Connected Communities. Edinburgh, January 25-26.
• Millen, D. R., (1998) Multiple Views: Direct and Indirect user Participation in the Development of a Web-Based Email Service. In M. Divitini, B. Farshchian, T. Tuikka (Eds,) Internet-Based Groupware for User Participation in Product Development. Working Papers series B 56.. Oulu: Oulo University Press. pp. 37-41. To be reprinted in a forthcoming SIGGROUP Bulletin.
• Camino, B. M., Milewski, A. E., Millen, D. R., Smith, T. M. (1998). Replying to Email with Structured Responses. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 48, 763-776.
• Millen, D. (1997) Information Technology and the Computer- Assisted Reporter. Summer. CASTAC Conference (Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
• Millen, D., & Dray S., (1997) Job transformation in the age of the Net. interactions., 4, 2 (Mar. 1997), pp. 13-18.
• Millen, D., Schriefer, A., & Lehder, D., & Dray, S., (1997) Mind Maps and Causal Models: Using Graphical Representations of Field Research Data. CHI 97 - Human Factors in Computing Systems.