Loops: Designing A Web-Based Environment for Persistent, Semi-Structured Conversation Thomas Erickson, Christine Halverson, Wendy Kellogg, Mark Laff, Peter Malkin, Tracee Wolf IBM T.J. Watson Research Center P.O. Box 704 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA +1 914 784-7826 {snowfall|krys|wkellogg|mrl|malkin|tlwolf}@us.ibm.com ABSTRACT We describe the design of Loops, a second-generation CMC system aimed at small to medium-sized groups in a corporate environment. One goal of Loops was to preserve the lightweight conversation and awareness model developed in Babble. Creating this sort of environment on the web, a stateless and asynchronous medium, posed both design and implementation challenges. A second goal of Loops was to provide mechanisms for allowing users to impose structure on both static text and ongoing conversation. We discuss our approach—a server that uses TCP/IP-based XML communication to drive a client—and discuss the resulting system’s architecture and interface. Keywords Design, CMC, Chat, Conversation, Structure, Semi- Structured Conversation, Social Proxies, Awareness INTRODUCTION Our chief goal is to design “socially translucent” systems — systems that convey social information and context by providing visual cues about the presence and activity of participants. We argue that such systems can, by taking advantage of the human ability to make inferences from traces of activity, provide an environment that supports a wide range of social processes (e.g. imitation; peer pressure) which permit groups to function effectively. Up to this point, our work has been embodied in a first- generation system called “Babble.” Babble is an online, conversation-centric system designed to support small to medium-size workgroups. In a series of publications we’ve described the design of the system [4], the “social translucence” rationale behind it [3], and studies of deployments and adoption of the system. In most of this work we have kept the focus on the socially translucent aspects of Babble, that is, the features which support participants’ awareness of one another (and their awareness of that awareness). This paper builds upon this previous research, but opens up two new areas of discussion. First, we describe the design and implementation of the second generation system, Loops. Although the goals of Loops are similar to Babble’s, the implementation is radically different, involving a shift from client-server Smalltalk applications to a web-based system with a server driving a client written in Flash™ from Macromedia™ * . Because of the stateless, asynchronous nature of the web, it as not easy to preserve the socially translucent aspects of Loops. The second new area has to do with the issue of structure. In terms of design, one of the main ways in which Loops differs from Babble is that it incorporates interface elements intended to provide its users with lightweight means of structuring information. This emphasis on structure stems from observations of the very considerable efforts that users devoted to structuring information. Thus, as we discuss the rationale for the design of Loops, we will focus primarily on the evidence related to the creation and use of structure, since we have thoroughly discussed awareness and social translucence in other venues. This paper begins by providing background on the design context in general, and the Babble system in particular. In the next section we lay out the factors that shaped the design of Loops; we devote particular attention to examining how users constructed structures within the weakly-structured Babble environment. In the third section we describe the architecture and user interface of Loops. Next we discuss work, still underway, that draws upon the Loops architecture and interface to provide scaffolds for semi-structured conversations. We close with reflections on the relationship between design and research. BACKGROUND Before turning to the factors which specifically drove the design of Loops, we’ll say a bit about the context in which development occurred. Here we describe the position and role of the development group, the general situations for which we were designing, and the nature and use of the first generation system to which Loops was a response. * Macromedia is a registered trademark, and Flash is a trademark of Macromedia Inc. DRAFT - Do not circulate without express permission. ©Copyright 2001 IBM Corp. All rights reserved.