Scaffolding Positive Engagements Between Strangers in Public Spaces

Scaffolding Positive Engagements Between Strangers in Public Spaces by Robert Zacharias a thesis submitted on May 15, 2017 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Tangible Interaction Design in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania an electronic version of this document is available at rzach.me/thesis 1 Contents Abstract. .3 Gratitude . 4 Background. .5 Social theory . 5 People are happier when they’re connected, though they don’t know it . .5 People distrust or dislike people from outside groups. .10 Various measures of social connection show declines on small and large scales. 11 Building installations for social purposes. .12 Best practices for creating social connections . 12 Interactive objects in the public space. 14 Selected prior art. 19 Exhibits in museums that encourage social interaction. 20 Interactive pieces in public spaces that encourage social interaction. 24 Pieces in public spaces intended explicitly for social-good purposes . 27 Long-distance relationship building. .30 Original interactive pieces for novel engagement between strangers: process and product. 32 Touchey Facey. 32 Origins. 33 Basic operation and user experience. 33 Development and technical notes. 33 Start the Stop . 39 Origins and inspiration. 39 Motivation and theory of operation . 40 Mechanical development . 42 A Better Mousetrap . 55 Origins and intention . .55 Interaction design . .56 Store selection. 58 Caveats, questions, and next steps . 60 Results, interpretation, and next steps . 62 Touchey Facey. 62 Observed outcomes. 62 Next steps. .65 Start the Stop . 66 Observed outcomes. 66 Next steps. .71 Tying the threads together. .72 Shifting the context. 72 Advice to my past self. 73 Bibliography . 75 2 Abstract In this thesis I explore different ways of using tangible design elements to scaffold and encourage positive engagements between strangers in public spaces. The foundational idea is that given a carefully designed opportunity, people can be brought to have enriching shared experiences, even in places (such as waiting spaces in the public transit system) that normally inspire more boredom than joy. The purpose of these interventions is to increase social cohesion in the broader public, particularly across lines of race, class, urbanity, and politics. Three different pieces for interactive engagement are presented: Touchey Facey operates on an intimate centimeter scale of proximity and is predicated on physical contact in an usual way between two participants; Start the Stop operates in the several-meter scale of a bus stop and encourages strangers to cooperate in a creative task; and A Better Mousetrap, still in planning, will operate across a distance of kilometers and scaffold a cooperative mechanical building task bridging that span. For Touchey Facey and Start the Stop I discuss questions of design, implementation, field efficacy, and planned next steps, as well as reviewing observed outcomes. A Better Mousetrap is still in planning and prototyping, and I project future directions for it based on lessons learned from the other two pieces. 3 Gratitude The media emerged, and then it receded, but with the understanding, guidance, and intellectual flotation devices provided by a wonderful group of faculty, we weren't pulled into the undertoe. For the last two years I've felt sincerely lucky to have been able to learn an enormous amount from Professors Daragh Byrne, Golan Levin, Eddy Man Kim, and Garth Zeglin, all of whom topped it off by joining my committee, meeting with me many times over, and generously giving me more of themselves than a student has a right to expect. My sincere thanks as well to Lisa Brahms, who generously agreed to join my committee as an external member despite being extremely busy and living out of state. I would have learned a lot but felt very little without the companionship and camaraderie of the Codelab crew. It has been a remarkably rich and rewarding two years and I'm not ready to say goodbye…so instead I'm thinking I'll probably just keep hanging out. Come find me if the laser's acting up and I bet we can figure it out together. The weekly homilies and generosity of Hearty White have left unmistakeable fingerprints on this work; my thanks to him for continuing to share his special brand of tikkun olam. To my funny dad, favorite motherdear, and youngest brother: love you too. 4 Background This background chapter consists of three sections: 1. A theory and literature review section that situates the core ideas of the present work relative to previously published ideas in social theory and empirical sociological research. A model of the practical value of the current work is proposed. 2. A discussion of some foundational ideas about museum interaction design based on a literature review. 3. A critical review of related prior art, grouped under four headings of loosely defined types: museum exhibits encouraging social interaction, pieces in public spaces encouraging social interaction, public pieces intended explicitly for social-good purposes, and long-distance relationship building. The pieces are presented and briefly discussed. Social theory The underlying claim of this thesis depends on social connection having value in that it helps to strengthen modern civil society. But what is the value in maintaining or improving the state of civil society? Ultimately there’s something axiomatic about the belief that it is good for people to share positive interactions with each other. It is a leap that we will make. So: beginning from the belief that there is value in bringing people together positively, how might a designer of tangible interactions in the public sphere go about achieving that end? Thankfully there is a body of empirical research alongside well- developed theory to provide guidance on this question. People are happier when they’re connected, though they don’t know it Social rules generally prohibit unnecessary meaningful interactions with strangers Why do many people have a revulsion to speaking with strangers? There is a complicated history at play and it's not a question that's easily answered. However, some foundational social science writing by Goffman1 addresses the question nicely, and even though the work is now more than fifty years old it still feels in many ways like it describes contemporary norms. In the eighth chapter of this now-canonical work, "Engagements among the Unacquainted," Goffman mentions some categories of people who are generally allowed to be engaged by strangers without any need for social justification. These include police officers, priests wearing their vestments, and also 1 Goffman, Erving. Behavior in Public Places. The Free Press of Glencoe: New York, New York. 1963. 5 the very old and the young. The general rule is that unless a stranger fits into a special category like these select few, one may not initiate meaningful communication with them. But in addition to the members of these special categories, Goffman points out that otherwise regular people who are temporarily "out of role" can be engaged by strangers; examples of this sort of person are drunk people or people dressed in clown costumes. Why? “Presumably on the the assumption that the self projected through these activities is one from which the individual can easily dissociate himself, and hence need not be jealous of or careful with."2 Goffman’s read is that alternative selves can be commented on socially, engaged with safely, etc., because any commentary on this alternative does no injury to the “real” core of the person in question. The emotional protection of the ego, of the inner self, emerges as the primary rule in all social interaction. Absent the special circumstances like those described above, Goffman has a label for the generalized purposeful mutual avoidance between strangers: "civil inattention"3. By quickly acknowledging each others' presence, often by making and then immediately breaking eye contact, strangers in public spaces in places like Pittsburgh confirm they see the other person and do not intend to threaten or engage with them. Some people may engage with a token “hi, how are you?” communication, called phatic communication by linguists.4 (This sort of exchange is generally understood to merely be an extension of the same sentiment as can also be communicated by fleeting eye contact.) Whether in gestures or words, once the simple message of acknowledgement and nonthreatening is communicated, there's not likely to be need for further contact between two self-sufficient adults and they grant each other ongoing civil inattention. Bigger cities produce less friendly connections between strangers Goffman coins a lovely term to describe one difference between small-town and big-city expectations of comportment: “In Anglo-American society there exists a kind of ‘nod line’ that can be drawn at a particular point through a rank order of communities according to size. Any community below the line, and hence below a certain size, will subject its adults, whether acquainted or not, to mutual greetings; any community above the line will free all pairs of unacquainted persons from this obligation.” (Goffman p. 132–3.) This is a quaint formulation of an idea that is supported by folk wisdom: people in small towns are friendlier. Decades after Goffman's book, a wide-ranging sociological 2 Goffman, Behavior. p. 126. 3 Goffman, Erving. Relations in Public. Penguin, 1972. p. 385. As cited in Wikipedia article "Civil inattention," accessed May 13, 2017. available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_inattention 4 See Stark, Kio. When Strangers Meet. Simon & Schuster, Inc.: New York. 2016. p. 18 for further discussion. 6 investigation by Robert Levine et al.5 of kindness and courtesy in 24 small, mid-size, and large American cities experimentally substantiated this message. The researchers did a few tests where they artificially generated situations calculated to encourage strangers to help a person in need.

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