They cite one of the meeting participants who stated he was not used to "thinking in English". More general knowledge about using the software was flagged as an issue. During some of the meetings, the Japanese colleagues had to join in via a telephone connection — this was a significant barrier to informal conversations, and at this time conversations were infrequent and formal, having to be carefully prearranged.
Scheduling these formal meetings brought its own problems: because Friday in California is Saturday in Japan and Sunday in California is Monday in Japan, the work week during which meetings could take place was effectively shortened. In later meetings more informal gatherings were possible owing to improvements in network services and the provision of direct TCP access. At this time, colleagues could meet on the basis of availability and participation became more a matter if personal choice as conversations could be more fluid.
Many of the meetings, in particular the formal ones, involved presentation of images. Here, it was found that not all workstations presented the images adequately due to resolution variations.
These resolution differences favored presentation slide styles more predominant in the US over the Japanese style that tends to be more detailed and contain more text. Things we learnt and questions posed From these experiences we have raised a number of issues for explicit consideration in addressing any cross-cultural technology for interaction. Thus, even though I may have never met you, if we work in a related area you are likely to know people I know, and I am likely to have some working practices in common with you.
We already have considerable common ground from which to base negotiations and discussions. So when do problems arise? Some potential problems arise from differences in 1 technologies, 2 time differences which affect rhythms of interaction, and 3 language and national culture. The extent to which each of these has an effect will depend on the nature of the relationships being fostered.
We briefly consider each of these in turn. At the most extreme, there is simply whether one has the technology or not. They report a success story concerning the use of the internet by a low income family — in this study, technology and internet access was provided for a long period of time.
However, when the study ended, the technology was to be returned to the research group. The family had to face the possibility of losing access to the virtual communities of which they were now a part.
For them, once the technology was provided, interacting with other internet users and engaging in virtual communities and contributing to internet subcultures became a part of their lives. Even when people have access to technologies and are connected, we make incorrect assumptions about the kinds of technology that are available to others.
We often assume others have access to the same technologies as we do, and that their level of connectivity is also the same. The example of differential image resolution above illustrates this point. There are also infrastructural reasons why people may not be available to partake fully in inter-cultural communities. These issues come down to issues like the fact that many countries have a different way of charging for internet access that prohibits being constantly on-line — or even being on-line at peak times for social activity.
The example offered above illustrated the difference between being able to connect into a virtual environment via a TCP line and having to dial in from Japan to the States. As we design for cross cultural applications we need to consider what technological infrastructure is in place and consider the consequences for involvement.
How can we understand not just what technologies are available, what the impact of connectivity is and what technological expertise exists, but also what understandings there are of the use of and place of technologies in our lives? There are also instances of different cultures wherein the understandings about how technology is to be used differ.
Technologies are not simply there. Technologies themselves and their usage have different meanings in different cultures. Wilhelmsen and Mauseth in their recent workshop position paper talk of the different understandings users of technology have of their systems [25]. In our culture we are identified as being almost represented by our machines — my laptop is my personal mail box, it is my filing cabinet, it holds lists of my favourite URLs, and all these things are essentially private.
Wilhelmsen and Mauseth talk of a different set of assumptions about computers that lead to the subversion of practices around passwords. The password is something that preserves privacy — they describe a setting where there is no need for a personal, private machine and where passwords, as soon as they are issued, are shared amongst the group. There are also skills which one must have to use the technologies for communication effectively.
Often these skills become another form of background, invisible work. Such time differences can be overcome if expectations are set over time. As our MUD data have demonstrated a set of shared expectations about where to leave messages and available times for interaction created a sense of co-presence between people who in fact spent very little time together on-line.
There are broader cross-cultural sets of meanings around time and how time should be spent which affect our ideas of appropriate availability. Holidays often do not overlap internationally. Often notions of private versus public time often do not cross cultural boundaries easily. Even for proficient speakers of second languages, the inability to use familiar words and expressions can lead to a fracture in the flow of communication.
Over time this can lead to a sense of alienation. The words I learn now don't stand for things in the same unquestioned way they did in my native tongue. With increased focus on visual virtual environments we need to consider how our avatars will gesture and how we will present ourselves.
It is clear that the development of certain social cues and etiquette takes time, as in the development of context-adding cues in email like 'smileys'. Being unaware of appropriate cues and established protocols exacerbates problems like those discussed. A question or two to consider Given these kinds of issues arise, how do people cope with them and overcome the difficulties? It seems that if there is a compelling reason to be in touch, people will continue to use even the most arcane technologies, and overcome many barriers.
Cherny amongst others have also noted, however, that such environments can be very cliquey and that etiquette transgressions can be dealt with severely. Newcomers can feel alienated. So for us, the questions remain - how do we as designers establish what are sufficient technical conditions for successful communication and how do we help to develop socially compelling virtual spaces when it is so clear that designing such communication spaces will involve not purely technical but also social solutions.
When considering such questions about the methodologies for designing virtual environments, two basic phases can be identified: 1 gaining an understanding of existing environments, and 2 using observations as guidelines for the design of new environments and spaces. These will be briefly considered in turn: 1 Methodologies for observing online life So what are the appropriate methodologies for gaining a deeper understanding of the lifecycle and daily life of on- line cultures?
How can we begin to understand issues that arise in multi-cultural on-line worlds and what mechanisms there are for negotiation and discussion? How can we begin to understand where online cultures intersect with the cultures of the material world s in which individuals live their daily, material lives?
What are methods for unpacking those social understandings both on-line and off-line? How do we gain an understanding of the intersecting cultural influences on an individual and on groups if we do not have access to the totality of their material and virtual worlds? In the context of virtual environments, what does it mean to design from the interaction out? How can this be achieved? How can we being to understand the dynamic and slow evolution of virtual cultures and climates?
Considerable work on virtual communities has used interviews and surveys as a means of establishing who is talking to whom, for how long and about what. Much of this work has been carried out on intra-organizational networks looking at logs and messages [20], and in virtual worlds like lambdaMOO [e. This work has done much to lay the foundation for questions that are now being posed and for the move towards a more detailed analysis of symbolic and cultural dimensions.
This recent thrust has foregrounded the situated perspective associated with social constructionism for a brief discussion of this see Davis and Brewer [5] and Cherny [1] amongst others have taken a linguistic approach to analyzing single online communities in fine detail. Evidence suggests people are creative in establishing new norms and codes for making visible cues that in face-to-face situations would be transferred through visible non-verbal cues [1,2, 5].
For Davis and Brewer, there is a focus on the conversational devices students used in an online discussion forum. In her work she offers some comparisons to other communities, but all of them are of the same technology genre, MUDs. She does make the that point that many of the individuals who interact in one MUD may appear as core members of new MUDs — thus, the community can move into new virtual spaces and retain some of its own integrity.
This raises a clear question about research on cultures and communities: are we to see online cultures as being made up of people who interact regularly with each other using multiple forms of communication technology e. Luciano Paccagnella [17], drawing on Durkheim and Weber, argues for comparative studies and a case-based approach.
Whilst different researchers have focused on alternative methods for getting at the patterns of use of virtual environments, the specifics of the situation in which a virtual world is used are clearly of relevance.
Our MUD data tells us this clearly. This leads us to blur the boundaries between online and offline which appear more clearly demarcated when considering purely online relationships. An interesting example to consider here is the Senior Net virtual community, where on-line relationships are supplemented on occasion with developing physical world relationships. So where does this leave us currently in terms of our thinking about methodologies for studying the world of intersecting and emerging cultures that is an online virtual forum?
We are driven in terms of selecting our research methods by current questions the context of use of the virtual environment, so at any one point a different focus and a different activity may be called for. What are appropriate methodologies for designing multi- cultural collaborative virtual environments? How can we design to encourage social interactions and design to allow negotiation when the points of fracture occur?
How can we comprehend different cultures and then co-develop as a foregrounding negotiation across culturally diverse community members? How do we coach people to participate more effectively in cross-cultural virtual worlds? How can we determine what are appropriate design metaphors for the worlds we create?
How can we be sensitive to the various political issues that arise in designing any virtual environment design? These questions do not have clear answers. Relationships build around the existence of those places and those things.
Summary In this short paper we have considered a number of issues relating to the design of virtual places and spaces. We have taken a broad definition of culture in thinking about the ways in which such environments may support fostering of online relationships between people from different cultures.
Cherny, L. Conversation and Community. Chat in a Virtual World. Churchill, E. ACM Press, Ubiquitous access to others: maintaining co-presence through MUD locales. FX Palo Alto Lab. David B. Electronic Discourse. Linguistic Individuals in Virtual Space. Davis, M. Who killed LA? A political autopsy. New Left Review , Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures. BasicBooks, Graham, S. Telecommunications and the City. London: Routledge. What Can Space Do for the Arts? Through the lenses of creative placemaking and neighbourhood arts ecology, Trivic re-examines the position of community arts in the spatial, social and cultural landscape.
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