DIADEM

     

DIADEM at CHI 2010  

Henriette Cramer of the SICS Mobile Life Centre (and formerly at the University of Amsterdam) will present an experiment conducted within the DIADEM framework at the prestigious ACM SIGCHI (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in April. Participants performed a search task in a crisis context while being interrupted by a location-aware mobile agent that both provided and requested information in order to investigate the effects of the mobile agents’ social system behaviour on user compliance and trust.

Mobile, context-aware applications can provide users with information relevant to their current circumstances. Distant services in turn can acquire local information from people in an area of interest. It is important to understand what motivates people to respond to such requests. Socially expressive, empathic system behaviour has been suggested as a way to build reciprocal relationships and increase user trust.

The study shows that even though there is great potential for socially expressive and empathic systems, getting them wrong can have serious consequences. Even though the socially expressive system in this study was recognised as more empathic, it was not trusted more, nor were participants more willing to respond to the system’ s requests. Instead, social expressiveness reduced trust in the information provided and reduced compliance to the system’s warnings. A clear distinction has to be made between effects on trust in a system overall and specific advice and requests.

Perceived empathy was directly correlated to the perceived dependability of the system and its source credibility, but not directly to trust in the information provided. Social expressiveness and the level of empathy need to be congruent to the context and the message delivered. It also has to be adapted to the individual user as participants with a less empathic personality had a less positive affective experience when using the social expressive system.

This study shows that (inappropriate) social expressiveness can have clear (behavioural) consequences. Careful consideration of which behaviour will fit the context, user and system purposes is crucial. Social expressivity has great potential, but if the displayed behaviour appears inappropriate or, in worst cases, manipulative, both services and users will pay dearly.