Abstract
End users have begun to incorporate cloud-based services into their collaborative practices. What spurs and constrains this adoption? Are the cloud services understood adequately and used effectively? How might we intervene to promote a better connection between user practices and cloud services? In this study, we focus on collaborative practices that surround the adoption, use, and understanding of two popular, but sometimes contrasting, cloud services for creating and sharing content: Dropbox and Google Docs. We conducted 22 in-depth interviews with people who used these services, including collaborators who used the services together, and people who had migrated from Google Docs to Google Drive. We found that users thought of the cloud in terms of the practices it helped them accomplish. Their understanding of the cloud was often shaped by the particular file storage and sharing technologies the cloud was replacing (remediation). Furthermore, collaborating with others through the cloud sometimes revealed different assumptions about how the cloud worked, leading users to develop socially negotiated practices around their use of the cloud. We use this analysis to identify some specific opportunities for designers to help users build more accurate conceptual models of the cloud and use its capabilities more fully: (1) when users are adopting the cloud to enact a practice; (2) when users are replacing an existing technology with the cloud; and (3) when users are encountering others’ practices through collaboration.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Biggs, J.: Google Drive Is Live With 5GB Of Free Storage And Google Docs Hoo-kup. TechCrunch (2012), http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/24/google-drive-is-live/
Bolter, J., Grusin, R.: Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, Cambridge (1999)
Bolter, J.D.: Formal Analysis and Cultural Critique in Digital Media Theory. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 8(4), 77–88 (2002)
Bowker, G.C., Star, S.L.: Sorting Things Out. MIT Press, Cambridge (1999)
Corbin, J., Strauss, A.L.: Basics of qualitative research. Sage, Newbury Park (2008)
Dearman, D., Pierce, J.S.: “It’s on my other computer!”: Computing with Multiple Devices. In: Proc. CHI 2008, pp. 1144–1153 (2008)
Dourish, P., Bellotti, V.: Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces. In: Proc. CSCW 1992, pp. 107–114 (1992)
Dourish, P., Lamping, J., Rodden, T.: Building bridges: Customization and mutual intelligibility in shared category management. Group 1999, 11–20 (1999)
Dropbox. What is Dropbox (2012), https://www.dropbox.com/tour/1
Goetz, J.P., LeCompte, M.D.: Ethnographic Research and the Problem of Data Reduction. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 12(1), 51–70 (1981)
Google. An overview of Google Docs (2012), http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=49008
Grudin, J.: Groupware and social dynamics: Eight challenges for developers. CACM 37(1), 92–105 (1994)
Hamlen, K.W., Liu, P., Kantarcioglu, M., Thuaisingham, B., Yu, T.: Identity management for cloud computing: Developments and directions. In: Workshop on Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research (2011)
Kellogg, W.A., Breen, T.J.: Evaluating user and system models: Applying scaling techniques to problems in human-computer interaction. In: CHI 1987, pp. 303–308. ACM Press (1987)
Lanzara, G.F.: Remediation of practices: How new media change the ways we see and do things in practical domains. First Monday 15(6-7) (June 2010)
Marshall, C., Tang, J.C.: That syncing feeling. In: Proceedings of Designing Inter-active Systems Conference (DIS 2012), pp. 544–553. ACM Press (2012)
Marshall, C., Wobber, T., Ramasubramanian, R., Terry, D.: Supporting Research Collaboration Through Bi-Level File Synchronization. In: Proc. Group 2012, pp. 165–174. ACM Press (2012)
Rader, Emilee, Yours, Mine, and (Not) Ours: Social Influences on Group Information Repositories. In: Proc. CHI 2009, pp. 2095-2098 (2009)
Ratto, M.: The Ethics of Seamlessness: Resources and Future Directions. International Review of Information Ethics 8(12), 20–27 (2007)
Sohn, T., Li, K.A., Griswold, W.G., Hollan, J.D.: A Diary Study of Mobile Information Needs. In: Proc. CHI 2008, pp. 433–442 (2008)
Weiser, M.: The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American 265(30), 94–104 (1991)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tang, J.C., Brubaker, J.R., Marshall, C.C. (2013). What Do You See in the Cloud? Understanding the Cloud-Based User Experience through Practices. In: Kotzé, P., Marsden, G., Lindgaard, G., Wesson, J., Winckler, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2013. INTERACT 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8118. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40480-1_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40480-1_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40479-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40480-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)