🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JANSSEN.90Jul18175044@holmes.parc.xerox.com>,
janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) writes:
> In article <WEX.90Jul18111259@dali.pws.bull.com> wex@dali.pws.bull.com
(Buckaroo Banzai) writes:
> 
>    So what I get from Kevin's posting (enjoy your vacation) is that you're
>    really fairly unwilling to have the system automated, mostly for reasons
>    like feeling out of control.
> 
> A bit more.  The willingness to consider a "pencilled-in" appointment might
> be stronger than we think.  What if we could see "scheduled events", which we
> have not committed to, on our calendar?
> --
>  Bill Janssen        janssen@parc.xerox.com      (415) 494-4763
>  Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
>  3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California   94304

This illustrates a good point.  In a computer system, "pencilled in" and
"scheduled" have undefined representations.  But the semantics of how
you explain them may have a great effect on the reaction to the system.

For example, if I want to "pencil-in" an event, I open your schedule
and mark an area out on it, and label it with the event name.  The
computer notes that I created this event.  When you look at your
schedule you see this event that I put in.  It is easy to see that
someone else put it in, because it is highlighted in a way that
indicates that its status is "new, created by someone else, tentative
until accepted".   I don't like you writing in my calendar, so I
deleter your entry.  But I might think "I hate this calendar system
because other people write in my calendar and I don't want them to, and
I have to keep cleaning it up."

It is also possible to describe the system as a notified of scheduled
events.  I might look into your calendar, and based upon times that
seem open, I might schedule an event.  I leave a "post it" in your calendar
showing you the time that you are invited and when and where the event
is.  Of course you can always ignore or remove the post-it note.  In 
the computer system, this might be implemented the same way as the
situation above, where a calendar entry is highlighted in a special way,
and the owner confirms or denies it.   While the implementations may
be precisely the same, the semantics of what you are doing are described
differently, and these differences can be sufficient to affect acceptance
of the new technology.   This is what I meant in an earlier posting about
how the sociology of human interactions and conventions will affect acceptance
of any particular groupware system.  

Another good example of this was the trials of the Action Technologies'
"the Coordinator" product discussed at CSCW '88.  People in different
companies with different conventions had different reactions to the
choice of words such as "request", "accept","refuse","counter-offer",
etc.  For some companies these words were too formal: at some companies,
"requests" are really demands, but said more politely.  It is really
unacceptable to "refuse" those requests, etc.  Because cultural conventions
vary widely between companies, and even within companies, products may
not be accepted in one company simply because of the semantic descriptions
attached to the implementations.  The Coordinator was a success at EDS
(where a strongly hierarchical and formal communication structure was
the norm), a failure at Pacific Bell with its informal structure, and
a mixed case at HP where success or failure  varied with sub-cultures.

Scott McGregor
mcgregor@atherton.com