Defining and measuring social presence: Contribution to the Networked Minds Theory and Measure

My initial premise is that virtual heritage environments currently do not provide a sense of‘cultural’ engagement, and, secondly, that is it important to fulfill these needs. Indeed, howcan we develop virtual environments for cultural applications that successfully evoke a senseof engagement or immersion?This paper suggests that the above issue has been indirectly addressed by entertainmentsoftware design. A proposed solution to the issue of cultural presence is thus to apply theinteractive mechanisms used in games (social agents, maps, dynamic environments, levels ofinteraction constraint, and task-based artefactual use) to virtual heritage environments. Thehypothesis is that the resulting environment will allow for a more culturally immersivelearning environment.Virtual environments also often lack adequate feedback mechanisms. A proposed secondarysolution is that designers and researchers of virtual environment can use the above interactivemechanisms for the evaluation of user engagement without simultaneously interrupting theuser’s feeling of engagement. Virtual HeritageVirtual Environments Lack Meaningful ContentMany critics have argued that virtual environments have had a large number of issuesblocking widespread dissemination, distribution, and use. Some issues cited include a lack ofengagement and of presence (as in, a feeling of “being there,” of being transported to anactual place).Technical issues include slowness, and a lack of realism. Other criticisms of virtualenvironments have pointed to a lack of meaningful content, confusing interface design,orientation and navigation difficulties, and a paucity of useful feedback mechanisms (Costalliet al, 2001, Campbell, 1997, Economou, 2000).Virtual environments are often criticized for evoking ‘cyberspace’ but not ‘place’.In otherwords they lack the richness of associations and encounters of meetings in real space. ReferKitchin (1998), Benedikt (1991), Johnson (1997), Heim (1997) and Coyne (1997, 1999).Virtual Heritage Environments Lack Cultural PresenceAs well as inheriting the above problems, one may argue that the lack of public engagementin virtual heritage environments is due to a lack of realism, to inadequate fidelity of recordingor displaying technology. I suggest it is rather with a lack of meaningful content thatcontextually places the virtual environment in an engaging way.If the purpose of virtual heritage models is to to preserve the culturally signficant articles ofthe past, they must demonstrate the reasons for simulating that past material culture. Yet theyare generally used as showcases for technology rather than for edification. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 29-11-2006For example, a major portal for virtual heritage, www.virtualheritage.net, records the mostpopular articles, not the most popular models. Virtual heritage models are still not consideredworthy intellectual content even by societies dedicated to their advancement. Majorconservation organizations do not know of the potential of virtual environments to preserveboth the formal specifications of the objects, and their cultural associations.The ICOMOS Burra Charter does not list digital media as one of the many listed media torecord cultural heritage, (ICOMOS Burra Charter Guidelines: Cultural Significance 1998arevised edition was promised to appear in 1999). Surely, if ICOMOS thought culturalheritage was accurately recorded digitally, they would list it as one of the media. Yet, withcurrent advances in scanning and related technology, realistic capture does not seem to be aninsurmountable problem.I suggest virtual heritage environments lack meaningful content necessary for a sense ofcultural presence, as there appears to the relevant bodies no reason to value 3d models ofaccuracy over traditional means of evaluating or experiencing heritage objects. Virtualheritage environments do not convey the context, the cultural setting.This may be due to the difficulty of conveying the worth of objects from a different culturalbackground, of conveying its cultural signicance, its imagined presence. This idea of culturalpresence is my term for a feeling in a virtual environment that people with a different culturalperspective occupy a place. Some researchers have even defined presence as being in a placethat has some present meaning to the viewer (Slater, 1999).True, it is almost certainly far more difficult to evoke this sense of presence of beingtransported to a “there” that feels different, as compared to evoking the conventional meaningof presence (merely feeling that one is “there”).Yet difficulty does not logically necessitate impossibility. In order to evoke a sense ofcultural presence we need to understand how cultural cues are created and identified.Researchers such as Schank, (1990), and Miller (1999), believe we learn about a culturethrough dynamically participating in the interactions between• Cultural setting (a place that indicates certain types of social behavior)• Artifacts (and how they are used)• And people teaching you a social background and how to behave (through dialoguedevices such as stories and commands) along with your own personal motives.A culturally constraining environment with task-related artifacts as used by social agents ismissing from the majority of virtual heritage environments. Social immersion is a powerfulmechanism for creating a sense of engagement. However, without artifacts and a sharedunderstanding of tasks, the presence of others only allows social behavior to occur.Schiffer and Miller argues that even though only 6-7.7 per cent of major research journals inanthropology deal with artifacts or technology, “every realm of human behavior andcommunication involves people-artifact interactions”, (Schiffer and Miller 1998, 5). Culturalbehavior in an environment without modifiable or movable artifacts will thus be extremelylimited, as a great of cultural transmission is through “people-artifact interactions”.The social agents also require an environment that interacts with them in order for a region todevelop into a cultural setting. Without a shared understanding of setting, the appropriate(time and space-specific) use of artifacts will be more difficult to learn. The process ofcultural dissemination requires a notion of place. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 39-11-2006For Dorothy Massey, place may have any of the following features: a record of socialprocesses; fluid boundaries; and internal conflicts. A place is evocative and often fluid, andfull of mementos from other places. To view a place as a container of x y and z dimensions isto deny it a cultural content. A place is more like a nexus, or a web [Massey, 1997]. Thequestion then is, how do we gain such a sense of place via virtual environments?We can argue that for creating a virtual heritage environment with a notion of a ‘place’ (aregion recognisable to a user as a culturally coded setting), that we need to have more thanmerely identifiable or evocative virtual environments. Instead we need to create a virtualenvironment that evokes and identifies a place that carries cultural indications of inhabitationdriven by a different cultural perspective to that of our own. A virtual heritage environmentmust allow us to see through the eyes of the original inhabitants.This virtual place must suggest ideas of thematically related events, evidence of socialautonomoy, notions of territorial possession and shelter, and focal points of artefactualpossession. In other words, the virtual environment must provide a perspective of a pastculture to a user normally only deduced by trained archaeologists and anthropologists frommaterial remains (fossils, pottery shards, ruins, etc).“If during the VE experience it were possible to ask the question ‘where are you?’ ananswer describing the virtual place would be a sign of presence. However, this questioncannot be asked without itself raising the contradiction between where they know themselvesto be and the virtual place that their real senses are experiencing."[Slater, 1999]. Are wereplacing a vague notion of presence with a vague notion of place? Cultural PresenceSome researchers have defined presence as being in a place that has some present meaning tothe viewer (Slater, 1999). I suggest virtual heritage environments lack meaningful contentnecessary for a sense of cultural presence, as there appears to the relevant bodies no reason tovalue 3d models of accuracy over traditional means of evaluating or experiencing heritageobjects. Virtual heritage environments do not convey the context, the cultural setting.This may be due to the difficulty of conveying the worth of objects from a different culturalbackground, of conveying its cultural significance, its imagined presence. ‘Cultural presence’is my term for a feeling in a virtual environment that people with a different culturalperspective occupy or have occupied that virtual environment as a ‘place’.True, it is almost certainly far more difficult to evoke this sense of presence of beingtransported to a "there" that feels different, as compared to evoking the conventional meaningof presence (merely feeling that one is "there"). Yet difficulty does not logically necessitateimpossibility. In order to evoke a sense of cultural presence we need to understand howcultural cues are created and identified.Researchers such as Schank (1990), and Miller (1999), believe we learn about a culturethrough dynamically participating in the interactions between setting, object, and audience.That is, cultural setting (a place that indicates certain types of social behavior), artefacts (andhow they are used), and people teaching us a social background and how to behave. We learnsuch behaviour and context through dialogue devices such as stories and commands alongwith our own personal motives.A culturally constraining environment with task-related artefacts as used by social agents ismissing from the majority of virtual heritage environments. Social presence is a powerful Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 49-11-2006mechanism for creating a sense of engagement. However, without artefacts and a sharedunderstanding of tasks, the presence of others only allows social behavior to occur.The social agents also require an environment that interacts with them in order for a region todevelop into a cultural setting. Without a shared understanding of setting, the appropriate(time and space-specific) use of artefacts will be more difficult to learn. The process ofcultural dissemination requires a notion of place. PlaceWe can argue that for creating a virtual heritage environment with a notion of a ‘place’ (aregion recognisable to a user as a culturally coded setting), that we need to have more thanmerely identifiable or evocative virtual environments. Instead we need to create a virtualenvironment that evokes and identifies a place that carries cultural indications of inhabitationdriven by a different cultural perspective to that of our own. A virtual heritage environmentmust allow us to see through the eyes of the original ‘other’ inhabitants. Hence culturalpresence is not just a feeling of ‘being there’ but of being in a ‘there and then’ that is notfollowing the cultural rules of the ‘here and now’.In order to suggest a culturally distinct ‘place’, the virtual environment must suggest ideas ofthematically related events, evidence of social autonomy, notions of territorial possession andshelter, and focal points of artefactual possession. A virtual environment must provide aperspective of a past culture to a user, a perspective normally only deduced by trainedarchaeologists and anthropologists from material remains (fossils, pottery shards, ruins, etc).Kalay and Marx propose eight criteria for “Cyber-Placemaking” (Kalay and Marx, 2001)borrowed from architecture and town planning. These include: as settings for events, that areengaging, provide relative location (i.e. orientation), provide authenticity, are adaptable,afford a variety of experiences, afford choice and control over transitions, and are inherentlymemorable.Relph notes: “The identity of a place is comprised of three interrelated components, eachirreducible to the other, physical features or appearance, observable activities and functions,and meanings or symbols.” So the place-making criteria of Kalay and Marx address only twomajor types of environments addressed by Relph, environments that afford ‘physical featuresor appearances’, and those that afford ‘activities’. The Kalay-Marx criteria, being based onmodes of reality, do not address virtual environments that attempt to offer interpretations ofpast and present cultures.Partly this omission is due to the fact that it is difficult to simulate culture. As Yi-Fuan Tuannotes (1998), “Seeing what is not there lies at the foundation of all human culture.” The onlyway then to approach this issue is to view (and design) environments depicting humancultures to be hermeneutic (that afford an actively engaged interpretation of the lives andintentions of past inhabitants). The hermeneutic features of place in these environments arealmost certainly more difficult to create digitally, but that does not negate their importance.Luckily for virtual environment designers, these hermeneutic features have been described bysocial scientists.For cultural geographers, culture has a setting and this setting is enabled through a perceivedsense of place. As culture requires a setting, it must be “embedded in real-life situations, intemporally and spatially specific ways” (Crang 1988). While unique, place is further an“integration of elements of nature and culture...linked to other places by circulation”(Lukermann cited in Relph 1986). Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 59-11-2006The interactions between these objects and their setting may be quite complex (Cantor 1976).Culture is a feedback loop. A visitor perceives space as place, and inhabits (modifies theplace), place “perpetuates culture” and thus influences the inhabitants in turn.We might say that social behavior is behavior between two or more people. Cultural behavioris a subset of social behavior, where behavior is governed by or understood in terms of acultural setting. And as culture almost inevitably involves transactions, there must be objectsof shared transactional value. Hence, to convey cultural knowledge, we have to representprocesses, which requires interactivity.Designers of real and virtual environments need to build on relationship between patterns ofinhabitation and usage of spatial artifacts, such as furnishings, (Rapoport 1982; Beckmann1998). Even if the word ‘culture’ is a noun and not a verb, cultures are processes notproducts. Cultures can only exist socially through artifacts, labeled by Sauer as “agents ofchange” (Crang 1998). However, artifacts alone constitute only a fragment of the culturalprocess. To fully understand a cultural environment, one requires both artifacts, and an ideaof the task that motivates using them.Thus, the old communication model of culture requiring only a sender and receiver of data isinadequate; culture is a highly interactive dialogue of human ideas transmitted via social andindividually constructed places. In order to create culturally evocative environments, we needto understand which interactive elements disseminate cultural information. According toSchank (1990), and Schiffer and Miller (1999), we learn about a culture through dynamicallyparticipating in the interactions between• Cultural setting (a place that indicates certain types of social behavior).• Artifacts (and how they are used).• And people teaching others a social background and how to behave along with one’spersonal motives. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 69-11-2006Table 1: Graduation of Place and Cultural FunctionsType of VE Relph’scategoriesFeaturesPersonal / Cultural Attachment Locational (links) Locates settingSpatialVisualizationExistentialoutsideness-(Objective) Navigational (orients) Locates paths and centresMemorable (unique) Has uniquely occurring eventsTerritorial (protects) Locates shelter; repose in regardsto dynamic environmentActivity-based Vicarious-behavioral-empatheticinsideness(Activity andEvents)ModifiableThe artifacts and surrounds can bemodifiedCulturally codedSupports an idea of agency-directed symbols that reveal secretsof the environmentAbandoned inhabitation Evokes an idea of social agencyand past inhabitationLived-in inhabitation Supports interpersonal socialbehavior through human and orcomputer agentsHermeneutic Existentialinsideness(Symbolic) HomeAffords personal shelter, primaryorientation,identification,possession and collection ofartifacts.The recent developments of highly accurate and large-scale virtual heritage scanningtechnology indicate that the impedance to public use of virtual heritage models is thus NOT aproblem with capturing realism. Virtual environments exist with photo-realistic laser-scannedartefacts, augmented by textures scanned in from real-world materials. Therefore virtualheritage environments may lack a sense of engagement not so much through a lack of photo-realism, but because they lack the interactive elements that have made computer games sopopular. Learning Interactive Techniques via Game DesignThe technological limitations of internet-available virtual environments do not seem to havehindered the popularity of complex games. The most popular form of virtual environments isarguably the computer game. Nearly 75 per cent of people under thirty have played acomputer game, it outsells books in the US and is worth more than 80 per cent more thanvideos in the UK (Bryce & Rutter, 2001). Entertainment software is the fastest growing of alltypes of entertainment, outselling films. Today’s game consoles also rival supercomputers ofa decade or more, (Laird, 2001). Games are designed for interactive engagement, and arearguably the most popular and widespread form of virtual environments. So it seems thatinteractive engagement are the two most desirable features of virtual environments to thegeneral public. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 79-11-2006Games have context (user-based tasks), navigation reminders, inventories, records ofinteraction history (i.e. damage to surroundings) and social agency. Engaging virtualenvironments requires interaction geared towards a task, a goal. As in games, virtualenvironment users may prefer personalization, (Hein, 1991). Further, as the most populargames (excluding Tetris), requires representations of opponents (social agents), so too dovirtual environments.Game designers engage and hold the attention of the user via interactive features (such as theprovision of maps, dynamic features of the environment, social agency, and task-directedartefacts). Furthermore, games cater to learning curves of new users by advancing incomplexity over time, they can also be personalised and typically have a built-in assessmentof task performance. However games are often destructive rather than constructive, anddestroy rather than create other cultural context. In other words, games do not generallychange ways of thinking in relation to a culturally appropriate setting. Interactive ElementsThe below list in the scenario section is of interactive features common to games that Isuggest using in virtual heritage environments.Dynamic PlaceCreate changing factors in dynamic environments that have an effect on how people movethrough virtual environments. Paths, changing light and obstacles will aid or impedenavigation. Less skillful navigation will adversely affect metaphorical ‘health points’ (asborrowed from game design). The dangers and opportunities of the environment will becontextually related to the local cultural perspective.Interactive Task-Oriented ArtefactsIn the proposed scenario participants will collect and trade artefacts in order to improve theparticipant’s social role. Some artefacts will act as portals to previous times. By relating theuse of artefacts to tasks and to setting, it is hoped that the user will understand the originalcultural significance of the object.Travelers can view the effects of how they choose to complete tasks via the artefacts at theirdisposal and record the rate of completion of tasks. Further, artefact selection indicatesknowledge (allow a maximum of artefacts to be carried by the user).AvatarsComputer-scripted agents that users can talk to, gain information from, and that rememberthem, will give the user information on where artefacts are, and how they cam be utilised.Scripted agents will act as dialogue aids agent-traveler dialogue to help travelers viaappropriately worded questions. The speed and accuracy with which users learn how to talkto the phrase limited agents suggests engagement.Memento MapsDisorientation is an issue noted by several writers [Darken, 1995]. Others mention that forinfrequent visitors to a site, help in establishing cognitive mapping is required (Modjeska,1997). Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 89-11-2006For orientation and to keep mementos relating to special events, participants can select, scale,and position thumbnail icons of events, encounters, or artefacts onto their map (here knownas a ‘memento map’).As users progress through the virtual environment, the map improves in local accuracy. Anydevice for orientation will help users navigate through an environment but a map furtherallows a graphical history of their virtual travels, (see especially Ramloll and Mowat, 2001).Users can update the memento maps with their own sized positioned and scaled thumbnailicons. These icons when clicked on will hyperlink to the time and location of the eventencounter or landmark recorded. The frequency, accuracy and sizing of icons will indicatetheir amount of care and concern with the landmarks. Proposed EvaluationHow do we evaluate user satisfaction? For computer games it is easysuccessful ones arebought by people who personalise artefacts in the game and make worlds (often called levelsor maps) to add to it. The most popular games involve worldwide online competitions tocombat others. Highly detailed online fan forums also support major games. In short, gamesare generally reviewed and critiqued by how engaging they are.Academic virtual environment evaluation usually involves requesting test users to fill outquestionnaires indicating a level of presence against 3, 4 or 5 general criteria (a feeling ofphysical space, negative feelings, social agency, naturalism or realism, and engagement).For example, Professor Mel Slater uses questionnaires although he does not want to, and thebest time to ask people to measure a sense of presence is the worst time as well.To check engagement we need evaluation devices but we cannot stop people who are in avirtual environment to evaluate their feelings of engagement as that will affect their sense ofengagement. Further, on evaluating people after their experience of the virtual environmentmay be prone to error, as it relies on memory recall and on their noticing and communicatingexactly what made their sense of engagement seem powerful or weak or non-existent.If a virtual environment seems ‘natural’ to viewers, they may not notice important featuresthat a trained expert would consider distracting or ineffective. We need ‘passive’ evaluationmechanisms to determine the level and type of engagement without breaking that level ofengagement. For example, in games, data is gathered by innate interactive mechanisms (chatlogs, health points, completion of the memento map, and the final state of the inventory ofartefacts). Such data could be compared against results from a pre and post-experience userevaluation questionnaire to determine if we can can gain user feedback on cultural immersionin virtual heritage environments without their enjoyment being curtailed, and without thembeign forced to participate in laboratory interviews or complete survey forms. Evaluation ProjectThe following project is designed to address problems of interacting with a time-basedcultural setting in order to resolve which features add to a hermeneutic feeling of place. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 99-11-2006Stages of features(with volumecontrol)Explore SiteLearn social rolesthrough speaking toAvatarsShare maps and artifactswith other users FootstepsYesYesYesNoiseYesYesYesView of ownavatarYesYesYes View of ownavatar incontextualcostumeYesYesYes InventoryYesYesYesDirectional/Disembodied VoicesYesYesYes Hieroglyphs withevent-basedsoundYesYesYes Avatars with chat YesYesYesAvatars withspoken chatYesYesYes Avatars withspoken chat andrecallYesYesYes Ability to seeavatars of otherusersYesNoYes PerformanceEvaluationInventory. Recordicons on map.Record dialogue, checkcontent and user recallInventory. Gain allartifacts and locate on mapUsers will enter each enter one of three different virtual reconstructions of an archaeologicalsite, Palenque, a Classical Mayan site in Mexico. The first group has to merely explore thesite in time and space, and click on objects to travel back in time. The goal will be to reach allparts of the site (which will automatically ‘fill in’ the related memento map).The second environment will have the same modeled world along with hyperlinkedinteractive panoramas and avatars that can ask and remember simple dialogue. The task willbe to gain knowledge through questioning the avatars.The third environment will have the same modeled buildings as well as collectable artefactsthat are required to navigate through the site, (in time and space-Mayan artefacts wereconsidered portals to spiritual sites) by solving culturally specific problems. The objectivewill be to collect and trade with other users the most powerful artefacts (the artefacts willhave a ranking in terms of social prestige, and participants can only carry a certain number of Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 109-11-2006artefacts) in order to change the social role. Certain artifacts will also act as constraints, slowdown or obscure progress etc.Presentation of Expected Findings engagem e ntm ap/inve nto rysam ple grap h o f% o f s ub jec tiveuser sa tisfac tion /ob jectiveperfo rm ance ob jectivetask g ro up 1 task g ro up 2task gro up 3fea ture 3fea ture 2fea ture 1 ‘p lace ’info rm atio n ConclusionThe data gathered from user evaluations will hopefully suggest answers to the followingquestions. Which varying modes of interactivity (constraints and affordances) add most toengagement in a virtual tourism environment and to a ‘sense of place’? Which tasks are msotpopular? Is this indicated by the data collected by the interactive elements themselves or bythe questionnaire?Is it possible for wide segments of an audience to be engaged and educated at the same timeby interactions in a virtual archaeology project? Or must we leave genuine engagement to therealm of games?Finally, did travelers most enjoy collecting artefacts, questioning avatars or trading with theirfellow avatars, and did this allow them to gain a culturally embedded new world-view? 1 Another possible affordance-constraint-task situation would be using dynamic environmental features, such as battling theelements to reach remote parts of the site. For this experiment, such a model has been deferred, as it is less likely todirectly enhance cultural immersion. Cultural Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments with Inbuilt Interactive Evaluation Mechanisms Erik ChampionPage 119-11-2006AcknowledgementsInitial modeling of temples at Palenque by Dylan Nagel.My supervisors, Assoc. 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