Computer systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Computer systems - Essay Example But due to the fact that interface of most computer systems has limited range of expressions, users has no opportunities to interact with them as with real people. Current tools, such as email, mailing lists, chat rooms, discussion phorums have substantial shortcomings. Their interface is designed only for delivery of simple ideas, without emotions, gestures or face expressions. Of course people can use so-called smiles (primitive pictures with emotions, such as smile or sadness), but every system has its own predefined set of smiles and does not allow user to insert custom image instantly. At the same time in a physical world people can easily express emotions in a discussion over a meal or a drink, meeting up at a conference or having a special offer pointed out to you by behaviour of a stranger. Social information in a physical world is transmitted on many levels. Most of these levels are lost in digital environment, hence socially blind. Therefore need of expression of social information arises, for example mood, condition, some feelings. So people can see emotional reaction of their interlocutors, not only what they express in words. This social information may be applied to knowledge management to make users' activities visible to others. The realist approach involves trying to project social... The realist approach is a straightforward answer to the question; it minimizes the difficulty of producing and interpreting social signals. However current technology places very strict limits on the resolution of teleconferencing and video space systems. The mimetic approach tries to represent social cues from the physical world, as literally as possible, in the digital domain. The mimetic approach is exemplified by graphical MUDs and virtual reality systems, and uses virtual environments and avatars of various degrees of realism to mimic the physical world. Work here ranges from attempts to implement a virtual physics to the considerably looser representations of social information found in the 2-D and 3-D avatars found in various graphical MUDs and 3-D VRML worlds. While the use of mimetic representations decreases some of the bandwidth requirements of such systems, in this sort of system social signals must be consciously produced via users manipulating their avatars. The abstract approach involves portraying social information in ways that are not closely tied to their physical analogs. Exemplars of the abstract approach include AROMA, the Out to Lunch system (which uses abstract sonic cues to indicate socially salient activity), and Chat Circles (which uses abstract visual representations). This approach also includes the use of text to portray social information. Text has proved surprisingly powerful as a means for conveying social information, so the abstract approach scales well, both textual and abstract graphical representations being relatively compact. (Erickson and Kellogg, 2002) 3. Using your knowledge and experience, explain how the application of context and domain modelling could be used to help establish a