Dimensions and Definitions of Etiquette

1. (or why “Etiquette” and what the @#$% does he mean by that anyway?) AAAI Fall Symposium, North Falmouth, MA, November 15-17, 2002 Christopher A. Miller Smart Information Flow Technologies St. Paul, MN Dimensions and Definitions of Etiquette

2. AAAI-Spring Symposium on Adaptive User Interfaces—March, 2000 “Rules ofEtiquette”orHow a Mannerly AUI should Comport Itself to Gain Social Acceptance and be Perceived as Gracious and Well-Behaved in Polite SocietyChris Miller

3. Etiquette(s) of Adaptive Automation • Etiquette rules are generally NOT created from scratch • based on observed good practice • extended into novel domains • made explicit for those who don’t get it naturally • Etiquette rules for AA should be the same • observe good human/human practice • extend and generalize to AA • Etiquette isn’t the same for all situations • Work situations are different than social ones • Etiquette violations can be powerful Dear Miss Manners, Are there any rules of etiquette yet governing use of voicemail systems?

4. Etiquette Violations 1 “How to Kill Clippy (or at least put him to sleep)”

5. Etiquette Violations 2

6. RPA’s Crew Coordination & Task Awareness Display Accuracy Ratings • Perceived accuracy of LED Task displays was very high • Comments (and other ratings) indicated these were very useful to pilots 4.4 Mission Task 4.3 Pilot Task 4.3 Co-Pilot Task 4.0 Associate Task* * Ratings in terms of ‘usefulness’ for the associate question 2 3 4 1 Very Inaccurate 5 Very Accurate Inaccu- rate Border- line Accu- rate HOVER MANUAL AREA MISSION PILOT ASSOCIATE COPILOT

7. My Proposed Etiquette List for Associates • Make many, many correct conversational moves for every error. • Make it very, very easy to correct your errors. • Know when you are wrong--and then get out of the way. • Don’t make the same mistake twice • Don’t show off—Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. • Be able to talk explicitly about what you’re doing and why— • Be able to take instruction; not only will this help you adapt to the user’s expectations, it may actually make you look smarter. • Make use of multiple modalities and information channels redundantly • Don’t assume every user is the same—be sensitive and adapt to individual, cultural, social, contextual differences • Be aware of what the user knows—especially if you recently conveyed it (i.e., don’t repeat yourself). • Try not to interrupt. Err on the side of caution. • Be cute only to the extent that it furthers your interaction goals.

8. Horvitz’s ‘Courteous Computing’ (CHI’99) 7. Minimize cost of poor guesses about action and timing 8. Scope precision to match goal uncertainty and variations 9. Provide mechanisms for efficient agent-user collaboration to refine results 10. Employ socially appropriate behaviors for agent-user interaction 11. Maintain working memory of recent interactions 12. Continue to learn by observing. 1. Provide significant, genuine, value-added automation 2. Consider uncertainty about user goals 3. Consider the status of a user’s attention in timing services 4. Infer ideal action in light of costs, benefits and uncertainties 5. Employ dialog to resolve key uncertainties 6. Allow efficient direct invocation and termination “…the sensitivity of an intuitive, courteous butler…”

9. Etiquette is … 1 • “… the defined roles and acceptable behaviors or interaction moves of each participant in a common ‘social’ setting … Etiquette rules create an informal contract between participants in a social interaction allowing expectations [and interpretations] to be formed and used about the behavior of others.” --(from the Symposium description)

10. Etiquette is … 2 • “…(1) the body of prescribed social usages. (2) Any special code of behavior … : ‘In the code of military etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference’ (Ambrose Bierce). … Synonyms: propriety, decorum, protocol.” --American Heritage Dictionary • Etiquette as “the Social Niceties” versus etiquette as domain conventions

11. Social Niceties vs. Work Conventions Etiquette for Domain X Proscribed Behaviors for Domain X Prescribed Behaviors for Domain X Range of Possible Behaviors • Both prescribe some behaviors and proscribe others for participants • Both assign meaning to behaviors • Facilitates efficiency and clarity of intent within the domain • Brown and Levinson on Politeness as diffusion of hostile intent • Etiquette is the set of prescriptions and proscriptions • “Social niceties” are generalizedetiquette • “Military etiquette” and ATC protocols are specialized etiquettes • Work domains frequently dispense with the polite forms of generalized etiquette in favor of their specialized etiquettes Specialized Generalized

12. Dimensions or Attributes of Etiquette 1 • Different Etiquettes for Different Interactions • Etiquette Evolves • Within individuals and in response to cultural and technological changes  learning of interfaces? • Initial etiquette tends toward the more formal precisely because it is most general Most likely (most conservative) source of acceptable Behaviors in Context = {XYZ} Strongly Proscribed Behaviors for Context = {XYZ} X = Church location Y= Friend Z= Football ~X Z Y ~Y ~Z X

13. Dimensions or Attributes 2 Unacceptable behaviors for Role A and B in Domain X Prescribed behaviors for Role A and B in Domain X X.A Etiquette for Domain X ~X.B X.B ~X.A • Etiquette is mostly implicit • Will be difficult to encode • Etiquette is only expected of ‘intelligent’ agents • But the barriers to imputed intelligence are low • Exhibiting etiquette implies intelligence • Etiquette generally implies roles • Generalized: e.g., petitioner/responder • Specialized: e.g., pilot/copilot • Power relationships are frequently encoded as roles • Not all prescribed behaviors are appropriate for all roles • Behaviors that violate role boundaries will strongly marked and potentially confusing

14. Dimensions or Attributes 3 Social & Organizational Characteristics Individual Human Characteristics Physical Characteristics (including Etiquette) Decreasing proportion of hard to soft constraints • Etiquette is Functional, yet Arbitrary • Functions (esp. of general etiquette) are common across cultures • Forms are arbitrary and varied • But forms must be adhered to within the ‘culture’ • Etiquette constraints are “soft” • “Let’s dispense with protocol” • But may contribute to efficiency, ease, enjoyment, (safety). • Etiquette-based behaviors can establish context or role • Etiquette-based behaviors convey intentions and capabilities • Etiquette violations will be disruptive, but occasionally useful

15. The etiquette perspective in Design • Acknowledges that computers and automation will be regarded as social actors (Reeves & Nass, 1996). • Attempts to understand, predict and/or influence human+machine system behavior through attention to those social parameters Questions from the Etiquette Perspective If this system were replaced by an ideal human, how would (would we like) that human to behave differently? If a human were to provide this information/re-commendation/action in this way, how would s/he be perceived by colleagues?

16. Questions • What is etiquette? • What does it mean in Human-Machine interactions? • How might we design for good HCI etiquette? • Now, with current technologies and applications • In the future • Would it buy us anything if we did? • Is etiquette anything different from what we already do? • Will it provide sufficient added value to justify the cost?

17. Further Reading … • H.P. Grice, 1975 • Reeves and Nass, 1996 • Brown and Levinson, 1987 • Norman, 2002 (and Forthcoming) • Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better