Making Space for Stories: Ambiguity in the Design of Personal Communication Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how ambiguity in personal communication systems can help resolve social difficulties like unresponsiveness, emphasizing the balance between ambiguity and clarity in design.

Contribution

It introduces design cases illustrating how interactional ambiguity influences user behavior and discusses balancing ambiguity with usability in communication technology design.

Findings

Ambiguity can help resolve social difficulties in communication.

Design cases show how technology influences user responses to unresponsiveness.

Balancing ambiguity and clarity is crucial for effective communication systems.

Abstract

Pervasive personal communication technologies offer the potential for important social benefits for individual users, but also the potential for significant social difficulties and costs. In research on face-to-face social interaction, ambiguity is often identified as an important resource for resolving social difficulties. In this paper, we discuss two design cases of personal communication systems, one based on fieldwork of a commercial system and another based on an unrealized design concept. The cases illustrate how user behavior concerning a particular social difficulty, unexplained unresponsiveness, can be influenced by technological issues that result in interactional ambiguity. The cases also highlight the need to balance the utility of ambiguity against the utility of usability and communicative clarity.