Visualizing Language Use in Team Conversations: Designing Through Theory, Experiments, and Iterations
Abstract
One way to potentially help people develop effective teamwork skills is to visualize elements of their language use during team conversations. There are several challenges in designing such visualizations, such as how to balance attention between the conversation and the visualization and how much guidance to offer about appropriate behaviors. We discuss the design space around these questions in the context of GroupMeter, a chatroom augmented with visualizations of language use. We generate and critique potential answers to these questions using prior theoretical and empirical work, then describe how the interface evolved and how our answers changed over a series of prototypes we deployed in experimental studies. We conclude with the lessons from our experience that could be used by designers of collaboration-enhancing systems.