’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs “ It ’ s More Like a Letter ” : An Exploration of Mediated Conversational Effort in Message Builder Journal Item

ing with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. © 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 2573-0142/2018/11-ART87 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3274356 Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2, No. CSCW, Article 87. Publication date: November 2018. 87:2 R. Kelly et al. Sticker suggestions, and Google’s Allo app includes a smart replies feature, which generates a set of potential responses to conversation by analysing messages that have been exchanged previously. Researchers in HCI and CSCW have begun to question this drive for effortlessness in the design of communication platforms. In particular, questions have been raised by a body of work that suggests people in close personal relationships appreciate the investment of effort into communication [21, 33, 34, 46, 47] and that effort in the selection and use of communication outlets is interpreted as a sign of mutual affection and care [6, 17, 38, 50, 60]. Correspondingly, there has been an interest in designing chat systems that use effort as a foremost driver of the interaction design, thereby providing users with positive opportunities for investing effort into their messages [30]. However, there are currently two issues that hamper our understanding of how to support meaningful effort in communication systems. The first is that there has been no study of how such systems could foster effortful interactions, beyond a selection of initial design concepts [30] and the observation that people may benefit from technologies which encourage effort [21, 46]. This is important because effort could be resented just as easily as it could be valued, depending on the manner in which it arises [22]. There is thus a need to consider how effort can be leveraged productively and in a way that has utility for close personal communication. The second issue is that prior research on effortful exchanges has focused on isolated or one-off acts of communication [e.g. 30]. Although such acts form an important part of the communication landscape, a focus on one-time exchanges ignores the way in which effort might be valued as it accrues over time. If it is truly the case that communication systems could enhance their users’ relational maintenance practices by leveraging effort, then we see a need to explore these issues in practice. To this end, we designed and implemented Message Builder, a prototype communication system that has a number of features which seek to provoke effort. In particular, the system requires users to send increasingly long messages, a feature that we use to probe the means by which effortful interactions can be prompted by a chat system and whether certain kinds of effort are differentially appreciated in communication. Through a field deployment, our study draws attention to the ways in which effort can be usefully provoked and structured by mediating technologies, providing a basis for future work on designing with effort in mind. The paper therefore contributes: • The Message Builder system, a communication platform designed to explore the ways in which users might be guided towards effort investment. • Findings from a field trial of Message Builder, accounting for values and practices that emerged in use of the system. • Directions for future work on designing around effort in communication technologies, attending to the need for such effort to be authentic and meaningful. 2 BACKGROUND AND RELATEDWORK In this section, we provide the groundwork for our study by first considering the meaning of effort in HCI vis-à-vis its meaning in close personal relationships. We then consider how effort has been raised as a design property for the development of communication platforms, before examining how one might design to encourage effort in communication. 2.1 Understanding and Characterising Effort While the term ‘effort’ is commonly used in HCI and CSCW, we note that the literature lacks agreement as to the value of effort in different settings. As such, there is currently no widely accepted definition of effort in the HCI literature. One early definition by Zijlstra [62] positions effort as work that is required to handle the demands of a task. In Zijlstra’s view, any task imposes a degree of workload on the human operator. Effort describes the work that is done to handle and Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2, No. CSCW, Article 87. Publication date: November 2018. An Exploration of Mediated Conversational Effort in Message Builder 87:3 alleviate the demand imposed by this workload. Such effort may be physical or mental and may be experienced differently in accordance with a person’s aptitude for the task [62]. This perspective on effort has its roots in task-oriented approaches to systems design, where a designer’s emphasis is typically oriented towards streamlining users’ interactions and identifying areas in which effort can be minimised [e.g. 26, 52]. This is often for good reason, and there are many areas of human activity in which it makes sense to reduce user effort, such as when designing medical devices for older adults who have limited manual dexterity [44]. However, this conceptualisation of effort is problematic when it is applied to the arena of close personal relationships [30]. While it is certainly possible to conceive of a relationship as an entity that requires work to maintain, such a view does not reflect the subtle, intimate and enriching qualities of caring connections [51]. Effort in this context thus represents something quite different, and has been aligned with the notion of relational maintenance, which refers to “efforts to keep a relationship in a specified state or condition” ([15], p. 164). This type of effort is important for sustaining the health of personal relationships, and helps to foster feelings of closeness, gratitude and mutual affection [1, 13]. In this sense, effort becomes a property that is not to be minimised per se, but is rather one to be nurtured and encouraged through designs that are attuned to the complexities of close relationships [30, 58]. In light of these perspectives, recent work has attempted to articulate the various forms of effort that can arise in the use of communication technologies, and hence how this effort might be differentially valued. Markopoulos [37] delineates two forms of effort: procedural and personal. In his view, procedural effort refers to the work required to operate an interactive system. Example tasks include starting a device or navigating to an application, both of which he describes as not valuable. Conversely, personal effort is described as valuable because it represents work that is done in service of the message recipient. Examples include the selection of particular media or saying things that the recipient might like to hear. Kelly et al. [30] expand on the notion of personal effort by describing qualities of meaningful effort that can arise across a range of communications media. Examples include the investment of discretionary effort, which characterises messages that are delivered through a sender’s own volition rather than through external prompts, and effort that is responsive to the recipient, which refers to messages that reflect the personality, desires or wishes of their intended reader. Their work also highlights that the distinction between procedural and personal effort is not straightforward; procedural effort may in fact be valued if it gives insight into the personal effort that is invested by a sender [30]. While these studies have utility for informing the work of designers, they have not investigated how communication technologies could foster effort when used in real-world relationships. Our work extends this literature to provide additional insights into the way in which effort can become meaningful in communication, and further explores the dichotomy between effort that is relationally sustaining versus that which is expended in the mere use of a system. 2.2 The Value of Effort in Personal Communication Technologies Researchers in CSCW have for a long time been interested in designing technologies to support close relationships [51], and a vast number of systems have been designed to support feelings of connectedness between people who care about one another [see 27, for a review]. Within this literature, several studies have recognised that effort in communication is valued by people in close relationships [21, 34, 46, 47]. CSCW research on social media has similarly noted that the selection of communication outlets on platforms such as Facebook can exemplify effort and care [7, 60]. For example, choosing to comment on a user’s post may be regarded as expressing greater affection than low-cost ‘likes’ [50], and a study by Burke and Kraut [6] demonstrated that receiving high-effort messages on Facebook is associated with increases in personal well-being. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2, No. CSCW, Article 87. Publication date: November 2018. 87:4 R. Kelly et al. These findings lend support to the suggestion that, rather than deferring to speedy and lightweight exchanges, communication technologies could be designed to prompt moments of effortful maintenance and reflection from their users [53]. King and Forlizzi [33] argue that devices for close relationships should forego lightweight exchanges and instead demand effort in order to foster moments of ‘emotional resonance’. However, lightweight exchanges can play a valid role in the maintenance of relationships [29] and it is important to recognise that not all social exchanges warrant the investment of time and effort, particularly when messages play a coordinative role [e.g. 23]. Yet this observation does not preclude the potential