Common Ground

This is kind of the follow up to my previous post, in which I promised to discuss common ground. So here goes. Basically, this relates to one of my grad school foundation courses from a few months ago, in which we discussed (among other things) what it means to truly communicate. It centers around the idea of establishing common ground, which we defined as basically a belief among all parties that everyone knows what everyone else is talking about. We also discussed the various media that people to use to communicate and the various advantages and disadvantages of each one; for instance, if you're speaking face-to-face with someone, you know your partner receives your messages immediately and you can reference things in the environment, but if you use email or IM instead, that offers you the opportunity to review your messages before you send them, and to review everything that has been said previously. Finally, we talked about some costs that each medium has, and how people adjust what they do to account for each cost; an example was that when typing a message over IM, in which it is relatively expensive to compose a message, people will tend to use fewer messages with more information in each one to minimize the total cost.

I don't want to sound too gushy here, but this discussion made me rethink some things about how I'm doing A2A. It's easy to say that Apples to Apples is entirely random and there's no strategy or no such thing as being good at it. But I realized that that's not true. (For one thing, I tend to demonstrate that there is such as thing as being bad at it.) There are a lot of random elements, like your hand, everyone else's hand, the green card, the judge, etc., but in order to succeed, you have to know how the judge thinks and what they're going to find amusing. So in other words, it's all about common ground. In order to figure out what the judge will like, you need them to start talking.

This is where the discussion about the costs of various media comes into play. I've figured that I can't really force people to talk, but if the interface isn't designed correctly, it will force people not to talk. It's especially true of spontaneous reactions, which I'd really like to capture. Granted, it's going to be expensive to type a message up regardless, but there was one thing I implemented. I have set up the game window so that its "focus" is permanently fixed on the chat message bar, meaning that no matter where you click in your browser, any random text you enter goes into the message bar, ready to be sent. It sounds like a small change, but I think it'll make a big difference. Imagine if you've just seen a hysterically funny red card, and your immediate reaction is to start typing about how much you like it. But after a few letters, you realize that nothing has been entered. You have to diagnose the problem, realize that you weren't focused on the message bar, move the mouse to the message bar and click on it, and then re-type and send your message. By the time you've done all that, the moment has passed and your reaction is different.

What I find interesting about this feature is that it's so minor, most people probably won't notice it. I'm expecting a lot of "wow-that's-so-cool" reactions from various parts of the interface, including the animation for playing a card, the chat application in general, and even the fact that people are actually playing A2A in their browser. But I'd be totally happy if no one ever notices this feature. In fact, I prefer it that way - if no one knows about it, that means it's working perfectly.

There are some other changes that I'd like to make based on this subject, though. In particular, I realize that the most important conversation to capture is when the judge is discussing their rationale for selecting the winning red card. I don't think the current interface really does a good job of promoting that kind of discussion, since the list of red cards to review is on the opposite end of the screen from the chat area. I am going to have to rethink where the list goes, especially since it also needs to fit all the red cards into one window without scrolling(any red card that the judge has to scroll to see is just not going to get picked). But that's a thought for another day.