The scope of research in HCI and other related fields has expanded from functionality and usability into supporting collaborative work and social activities. More and more methodologies and theories from sociology and psychology have been introduced and used in IT development. For instance, patterns of reciprocity and behaviors due to social dilemmas or endeavors have been discussed in numerous works, to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between individuals and communities and their expectations (Kollock, 1999;
Preece & Maloney-Krichmar, 2003; Parameswaran & Whinston, 2007).
In addition, cultural issues have appeared in both interface and interaction design, as many technology products, services and online applications have begun targeting global markets and have had to face intercultural conflicts and localization (Marcus, 2002).
Moreover, manners, sense of privacy, personal distance and the way people convey their own feelings and emotions also differ from one culture to another, which can determine if a service or a product can be accepted and accessed (Huang & Deng, 2006). However, such macro-level cultural issues are typically not considered in design research. Therefore, I argue that to deal with service design and experience design for social interaction purposes, it is crucial to accurately understand both the activities’ cultural context and individuals’ attitudes and motives, which means the research scope should cover both macro-and micro-level phenomena.
To support my arguments, this section will first introduce several important sociological theories that heavily influence social interaction design today, and highlight critique from scholars outside the design community regarding how the theories overlook important macroscopic phenomena. The discussion is followed by an argument in favor of an integrated viewpoint that combines micro-level details with macro-level context, and a comparison of current design research methods in terms of how well they support such a viewpoint.
The past decade in CSCW and HCI has been characterized by a discussion of how new services and functionality supported by emerging technologies have failed to match the social
world. Researchers have argued both that social activities are highly situated and nuanced, and that it is a must to bridge across the gaps between social needs and technical feasibility (Ackerman, 2000). The same argument has been made in social software development, where the introduction of new technologies has created new forms of social interaction, such as online communities (Acquisti & Gross, 2006; Boyd, 2007). Therefore, many sociological theories and concepts, such as accountability, social order and dramaturgy have been introduced in IT development, to offer explanations of how people interpret subtle details of interactions and respond with considerable agility and situated concerns (Goffman, 1959;
Garfinkel, 1967; Suchman, 1987; Stauss, 1993). These theories have brought up new topics in computer-mediated communication, such as common ground theory, the lack of social context cues hypothesis and social dilemma (Olson & Olson, 1997; Sproull & Keisler, 1986;
Wellman & Gulia, 1999). To better support social activities, design strategies like social translucence and social visualization have been introduced, both of which aim to enhance users' awareness of social contexts by revealing more detailed information of behavior patterns and social cues (Donath, 1995; Viégas & Donath, 1999; Erickson & Kellogg, 2000).
Moreover, new genres such as embodied interaction even propose to apply the concepts of intentionality and intersubjectivity from phenomenology into design practice (Dourish, 2001;
Fernaeus, Tholander & Jonsson, 2008).
The above-mentioned theories are often considered as microscopic theories, including symbolic interactionism, phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology and dramaturgy (Ritzer & Goodman, 2004; Smith & Riley, 2009). All of them share the goal of understanding social encounters and the abilities that people have to perceive and to interact with the social world. There are several important shared interests among these theories, which have deeply influenced today's design approaches. First, micro theories consider that interpersonal encounters are essential to social life, which has motivated the focus on social cues and contexts in communication platforms in some work. Second, most micro theories assume that people are creative and knowledgeable and therefore that they are capable of handling interpersonal encounters by making themselves predictable, mature and understandable, and that social order and norms slowly emerge from these interaction patterns. Current CSCW and HCI research focuses on understanding the way that people interpret and respond to communities; a process that is very close to the interests of the micro theories. By studying individuals' social activities in daily life, these theories provide rich clues and theoretical frameworks to explain social order, and therefore have been well accepted and applied in IT
development (Erickson & Kellogg, 2000; Eriksén, 2002; Chen & Duh, 2007; Robinson, 2007).
Most micro-sociological theories emerged from arguments against functionalism, in which social behaviors are described as passive mechanical operations under social settings.
In opposition to assuming that people’s behaviors are determined by social structures, microscopic works consider that social order arises as a product of concrete interactions, achieved by the actor's reflexivity, creativity and agency (Ritzer & Goodman, 2004; Barker, 2000). However, this position unavoidably underestimates and ignores the impact of the existent society and culture upon actors and their actions. For instance, symbolic interactionism considered that people relate to each other and to objects on the basis of shared meanings, which are derived from social interactions. From this viewpoint, the discussion of meanings has been confined to understanding how people create and share the meanings, without considering if they could be explained by culture. Similarly, Goffman’s (1959) theory of dramaturgy accentuated people's reflexivity and ability to manipulate objects, space and the encounters of daily life. However, many sociologists have argued that both symbolic interactionism and dramaturgy ignore issues of power, norms and culture, and oversimplify people's attitudes and motives behind actions. In addition, many psychological factors such as emotion and aspirations, which might drive one's behaviors, are missing (Meltzer, Petras, &
Reynolds, 1975; Ritzer & Goodman, 2004; Smith & Riley, 2009).
Other microscopic works widely discussed in HCI and CSCW are Schütz's explanation of lifeworld and phenomenology and Garfinkel's ethnomethodology (Dourish, 2001;
Suchman, 2002; Eriksén, 2002; Chalmers, 2004). Schütz took a very different approach to analyze and explain an individual's world of everyday life by applying phenomenological approaches and concepts, including Husserl's reduction and Scheler's intersubjectivity (Schütz, 1962; Schütz, 1967). He detailed the way that a person experiences, interprets, conducts and interacts with the social world, physically or ideally. These works provide rich explanations about how people compile a stock of experience to define life situations, and by knowledge and intersubjectivity, people in contact with one another can understand each other and are able to deal successfully with one another under normal circumstances (Schütz, 1962; Schütz, 1967). Following Schütz, Garfinkel considered the objectivity of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment of people's practical and rational activities in everyday life. In his ethnomethodology, social order is considered as emerging from specific settings, in which members make their own context-specific actions understandable to others and strive to comprehend others' actions (Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984). For that reason,
ethnomethodologists tend to conduct empirical investigations of particular contexts and settings, and are primarily concerned with the way that people actually perform activities.
They study methods, procedures and considerations, which people utilize to make sense of the world and each other, as well as to act on the circumstances (Heritage, 1984; Ritzer &
Goodman, 2004). However, social order and the achievement of shared understanding and common sense are not accomplished only by society members' concrete interactions and involvement. Things like appropriate manners and norms are developed by long-term processes, in which there exists an external social structure and culture enabling and constraining people's behaviors (Elias, 1939/1994; Bourdieu, 1990). Hence, some scholars have criticized ethnomethodology like other microsociological theories, as avoiding power issues, the effects of culture and preexisting social structures (Alexander, 1987; Pollner, 1991;
Smith & Riley, 2009).
The above-mentioned theories and approaches have had enormous impact on HCI and CSCW design research. Dourish (2001) has addressed a concept of embodied interaction, which interconnects social computing, context-aware and tangible design by introducing phenomenology, including intersubjectivity and Merleau-Ponty's idea of bodily perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Dourish, 2001). Furthermore, for dealing with social interactions and larger-scale issues, there are numerous works also influenced by ethnography and ethnomethodological approaches, including Suchman's discussions for Situated Actions, Fitzpatrick's Locale Framework, Gaver's cultural probe and accountability design for communication (Button & Dourish, 1996; Gaver, Dunne, & Pacenti, 1999; Eriksén, 2002;
Suchman, 2002; Fitzpatrick, 2003; Crabtree, Nichols, O’Brien, Rouncefield, & Twidale, 2000). Current well-accepted design methods, such as traditional field studies, contextual design and participatory design, focus on users, contexts, objective behaviors and sometimes users' requirements. Compared to traditional task analysis and experimental evaluations, they reveal rich information and hidden meanings within the activities (Ackerman, 2000; Preece &
Maloney-Krichmar, 2002). Most of these studies conducted in IT development mainly emphasize particular settings and work flows, and the way that researchers interpret and manipulate field data are close to empirical and behaviorists' analysis. According to Schütz's works, both meanings and motivations for an action, including in-order-to motives and because motives, which refer to one's experiences and environmental backgrounds, should be identified (Schütz, 1967). Based on this concise statement, to account for social activities is to look into people's everyday lives, including their perceptions, experiences, knowledge and
background. However, current design studies have narrowed down the scope of research contexts, which barely refer to usage, artifact, detailed interactions and physical environments.
Concerns like individual's attitudes, social positions, power structure and culture are absent.
From the feminist sociological viewpoint, Suchman applied Haraway's situated knowledge into technology development and highlighted the social issues of individual differences and effects of political and organizational positions in design practices (Suchman, 1987; Haraway, 1988; Suchman, 2002). Eriksén (2001) had similar arguments about the limited use of ethnomethodological approaches and ethnography in IT development. She pointed out that both use- and action-oriented design topics such as usability and actability, were discussed from a mechanistic view of users, and fell back to traditional task-oriented perspectives. For instance, she regarded the notion of Dourish's system transparency for accountability as in-depth but narrow, which refers to mainly human-computer interaction instead of social encounters. Although some design research methods have taken social behaviors into consideration, most still ignore large-scale cultural and social contexts. Like the microscopic theories, these methods do not consider culture to be an inherent, deep and motivating force for actions.
[...] However, it does lead to a culturally denuded understanding of action. Motivations can appear shallow and material rather than complex and ideal. [...] Clearly something is missing here. This is an understanding of the power of culture to motivate actors and to establish passionate structure of internalized emotion and commitment (Smith & Riley, 2009:pp. 60-61).
New genres in IT development, like social media, service design and e-government, have to be concerned with diverse communities and generations, and inevitably need to support more complex social activities in the coming future. According to the central concept of ethnomethodology, people are intelligent and creative, and with ad hoc practices they can apply their knowledge across domains and act in different contexts. It is people’s background knowledge, values and attitudes that matter and can help researchers to predict their further actions. Therefore, understanding the background motives and reasons and the whole social and cultural context is essential to develop more flexible and thoughtful services for social purposes in the future. Dealing with large-scale or international issues, it is necessary to have a thorough and integrated research framework to link from individual's perspectives to cultural and social matters.