Design for Social Control of Shared Media: A Comparative Study of Five Concepts

Interactive systems can support and mediate collaborative content selection by providing various modes of control to multiple users at once. However, less is known on how exactly the distribution of control among multiple users influences social interaction and collaboration in physically, shared environments. In this paper, we investigate five concepts of social control and their implementations in an exemplary use case of creating a shared music playlist using in-car infotainment systems. Testing the social control concepts in a mixed-subject experiment (N=27), we assessed their effects on social connectedness, as an indication of social interaction and collaboration. The results show that both Consensual and Autocratic control improve social connectedness and the collaborative experience. In contrast, Anarchic and Token-ring control obstructed group collaboration mainly due to overruling other users' decisions. Discussing the results, the paper draws further implications on how the concepts may improve social connectedness in co-located collaborative settings.