Share and share alike: exploring the user interface affordances of file sharing

ABSTRACT

With the rapid growth of personal computer networks and the Internet, sharing files has become a central activity in computer use. The ways in which users control the what, how, and with whom of sharing are dictated by the tools they use for sharing; there are a wide range of sharing practices, and hence a wide range of tools to support these practices. In practice, users' requirements for certain sharing features may dictate their choice of tool, even though the other affordances available through that tool may not be an ideal match to the desired manner of sharing.In this paper, we explore users' current practices in file sharing and examine the tools used to share files. Based on our findings, we unpack the features and affordances of these tools into a set of dimensions along which sharing tools can be characterized. Then, we present the set of user interface features we have prototyped in an interface called a sharing palette, which provides a platform for exploration and experimentation with new modalities of sharing. We briefly present the tool as a whole and then focus on the individual features of the sharing palette that support reported styles of sharing.

REFERENCES

• 1: Apple iTunes. http://www.apple.com/itunes, 2006.
• 2: Victoria Bellotti , Nicolas Ducheneaut , Mark Howard , Ian Smith, Taking email to task: the design and evaluation of a task management centered email tool, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642672]
• 3: R. Bentley , W. Appelt , U. Busbach , E. Hinrichs , D. Kerr , K. Sikkel , J. Trevor , G. Woetzel, Basic support for cooperative work on the World Wide Web, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.46 n.6, p.827-846, June 1997 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1996.0108 ]
• 4: Brown, B., Sellen, A.J. & Geelhoed, E. Music sharing as a computer supported collaborative application. In Proc. of ECSCW 2001, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2001), 179--198.
• 5: Pavan Deolasee , Amol Katkar , Ankur Panchbudhe , Krithi Ramamritham , Prashant Shenoy, Adaptive push-pull: disseminating dynamic web data, Proceedings of the 10th international conference on World Wide Web, p.265-274, May 01-05, 2001, Hong Kong, Hong Kong [doi>10.1145/371920.372066]
• 6: W. Keith Edwards , Mark W. Newman , Jana Z. Sedivy , Trevor F. Smith , Dirk Balfanz , D. K. Smetters , H. Chi Wong , Shahram Izadi, Using speakeasy for ad hoc peer-to-peer collaboration, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587114]
• 7: Thomas Erickson , Wendy A. Kellogg, Social translucence: an approach to designing systems that support social processes, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.7 n.1, p.59-83, March 2000 [doi>10.1145/344949.345004]
• 8: Flickr. http://www.flickr.com, 2006.
• 9: Gnutella. http://www.gnutella.com, 2006.
• 10: Nathaniel S. Good , Aaron Krekelberg, Usability and privacy: a study of Kazaa P2P file-sharing, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642636]
• 11: Groove Virtual Office. http://www.groove.net, 2006.
• 12: Jintae Lee, An end-user perspective on file-sharing systems, Communications of the ACM, v.46 n.2, February 2003 [doi>10.1145/606272.606300]
• 13: Bo Leuf , Ward Cunningham, The Wiki way: quick collaboration on the Web, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2001
• 14: KaZaA Media Desktop. http://www.kazaa.com, 2006.
• 15: Napster. http://www.napster.com, 2006.
• 16: Network File System. http://www.nfsv4.org, 2006.
• 17: Norman, D.A. The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, New York, 1988.
• 18: Judith S. Olson , Jonathan Grudin , Eric Horvitz, A study of preferences for sharing and privacy, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1057073]
• 19: Tom Rodden, Populating the application: a model of awareness for cooperative applications, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.87-96, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240200]
• 20: HongHai Shen , Prasun Dewan, Access control for collaborative environments, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.51-58, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.143461]
• 21: Sikkel, K. A group-based authorization model for cooperative systems. In Proc. of ECSCW 1997, Kluwer Academic Publishers (1997), 345--360.
• 22: D. K. Smetters , R. E. Grinter, Moving from the design of usable security technologies to the design of useful secure applications, Proceedings of the 2002 workshop on New security paradigms, September 23-26, 2002, Virginia Beach, Virginia [doi>10.1145/844102.844117]
• 23: Amy Voida , Rebecca E. Grinter , Nicolas Ducheneaut , W. Keith Edwards , Mark W. Newman, Listening in: practices surrounding iTunes music sharing, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1054972.1054999]
• 24: Voida, S., Edwards, W.K. & Newman, M.W. The Sharing Palette: A user interface for file and service sharing. Poster presented at UIST '04, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 24--27, 2004.
• 25: Ka-Ping Yee, User Interaction Design for Secure Systems, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information and Communications Security, p.278-290, December 09-12, 2002

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.m Miscellaneous
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces

Keywords:
computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), file sharing, sharing, user agency, user interface design