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i n v e s t i g a t o r s :

Keith Evan Green
Design & MechE, Cornell

Gilly Leshed
Info Sci, Cornell

Ge (Serena) Guo
PhD student lead, Info Sci, Cornell

SocialStools

        A Socio-Spatial Interface for Fostering Togetherness Between Strangers


v i d e o s :

Full Video | Preview Video for CHI 2022 / Interactivity Paper

Full Video | Preview Video for CHI 2023 / HONORABLE MENTION BEST Paper

o v e r v i e w :

SocialStools is an installation of three responsive stools on caster wheels that generate sound and imagery in the near environment as three strangers sit on them, move them, and rotate them relative to each other. SocialStools leverages the human propensity for embodied interaction to foster togetherness between strangers.

In our study with 12 groups of three strangers and SocialStools, we found a sense of togetherness emerged through interaction, evidenced by different patterns of socio-spatial movements, verbal communication, non-verbal behavior, and interview responses. This research contributes insights toward designing cyber-physical interfaces that foster interaction and togetherness among strangers at a time when cultivating togetherness is especially critical.



Three core interactions of SocialStools:
(a, d) The expanding of ripples.
(b, e) Distance between stools controlling volume, pitch, and timbre music.
(c, f)  Angular orientation between stools controlling bubble effect.

p u b l i c a t i o n s :

Ge Guo, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Evan Green. 2023. “I normally wouldn't talk with strangers”: Introducing a Socio-Spatial Interface for Fostering Togetherness Between Strangers. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA 20 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581325. [videos]
HONORABLE MENTION BEST PAPER

Ge Guo, Gilly Leshed, Trevor Pinch, and Keith Evan Green. 2022. SocialStools: 
A Playful, Socio-Spatial Interface for Fostering Togetherness Across Strangers.
In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing 
Systems (CHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA,
 Article 173, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519877.[videos]