dessalles

Been thinking about different forms of digital communication and why they exist. I’m seeing an increasing need, particularly in the design of online communities and social networks, to formalize the conditions under which the needs of a conversation no longer align with the affordances of a particular communications channel – forcing a change in medium. At what point does a Facebook Wall conversation migrate to email? What influences a text message conversation to become a phone call?

Those who’ve held onto their grade school science will remember, in chemistry, a phase transition is the process by which a substance passes from one state of matter to another due to relatively small temperature and pressure changes. I’d like to see a similar mapping between a conversation’s conditions/needs and it’s corresponding medium or “phase”. And some nomenclature would be nice. What would you call the transition from text-messaging to a phone call? What’s the communications equivalent of condensation?

But first, some sorting. What dimensions do we even want to include? What constitutes a “phase”?

Format: Non-verbal, Text, Voice, (Photograph,) Video
Not sure if I want to tackle forms of communication that might fall under media sharing at the moment; but it’s hard to ignore MMSs. I do, however, think it’s important to include non-verbal forms of communication. Virtual hugs, nudges and nods are becoming increasingly common as people search for ways to maintain persistent communication with each other.

Synchronicity: Asynchronous, Real-time
I’m pretty sure this is an either-or situation. But maybe not. Should real-time and asynchronous be ends of a spectrum? Sometimes text-messaging can cross over into the realm of almost-real-time.

Audience: Public, Private, Personal
Other than the involved parties, who is the conversation visible to? The intended audience implies how the message is sent: direct, broadcast or posted.

Forum: Local, Remote
Probably not the best choice of words here, but what I’m trying to convey is the difference between local correspondence that’s sent directly to the recipient (mobile phone) and remote correspondence that’s sent to a place the recipient is expected to return to (Flickr account). Note that “forum” is closely related to synchronicity. Are there better terms for these concepts?

So an example “phase” might be “remote, private, asynchronous, non-verbal communication” (yeah, some nomenclature would be nice). To Facebook users, this is also know as a Poke. If we switch the forum from “remote” to “local” communication, we have something more akin to “beeping”. Beeping (remember beepers?) entails calling a mobile phone and immediately hanging up before the other party has a chance to answer (See Jan Chipchase’s report on Shared Phone Use for more insight into the practices of beeping and flashing). It’s purpose is to request the other person to return your call in order to avoid network surcharges. What’s important to note is how that subtle difference contains a lot of meeting. Instead of “poking” to attract attention, you’re “beeping” to initiate synchronous communication. Also implied is differing levels of intimacy and familiarity between the two parties. Though Pokes are often interpreted as a form of sexual advance, a beep is typically the product of a closer relationship.

Ok, so with some sense of the properties and composition of a “phase”, the next step is to establish the conditions and influences that dictate which “phase” is appropriate for a particular conversation. I see there being two, high-level axes:

Content
What’s the conversation about? Is it intimate? official? playful? complex? lengthy?

Context
Where is the conversation taking place? At home or on the street? How pre-occupied is one or both of the parties? Is the relationship/conversation symmetrical? Is there a need for permanence – an archive of the conversation?

These are still to abstract and scattered to be useful, so I’m going to spend some more time thinking them through. Note that right now I’m focusing on communication between two people, but it’ll be interesting to extend this idea to one-to-many and many-to-many conversations. I’d also like to see how this helps to understand unsolicited communication such as direct marketing or Facebook’s Beacon. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I just hope this makes sense to anyone other than myself.