Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence

Citation: Takayama, Leila, Go, Janet (2012) Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1145/2145204.2145281
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1145/2145204.2145281
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1145/2145204.2145281
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence
Download: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2145204.2145281
Tagged: robotic telepresence (RSS), metaphor (RSS), Frames (RSS), source orientation (RSS), robotics (RSS), Ethnography (RSS)

Summary

Takayama and Go utilize observational data from 8-week alpha tests of a robotic telepresence platform at four organizations, interviewing employees along the way. They had variation in user role/status, number of remote users, distance from the "hub" site, available systems and history of previous experience with digital communication tools.

Their key finding was that problematic patterns of use emerged when users applied different (generally contradictory) metaphors to make sense of the system. They advise designers to induce a coherent set of interpretations with each implementation to reduce associated problems.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

As of this writing (2012), mobile, robotic telepresence is quite a novel technology, and is therefore poorly understood. The authors offer preliminary findings and a variety of testable hypotheses for future research.