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• This is the paper that I would like to read.

./20161103-2041-cet-enhancing-organizational-communication-1-1.pdf

• The Sociometric Badge is initially intended to be used within organizational environment.

• This badge collects these things below from its wearer.
  • Location.
  • Motion.
  • Voice.

• From the data those taken (location, motion, and voice) this badge able to determine these things.
  • Face to face communication.
  • Conversational time.
  • Physical activity level.
  • Physical proximity of the badge wearer to other badge wearer.

• There are these applications that had been made to show what the Sociometric Badge can do.
  • Follow The Star, socially intelligent, location aware, visualization tool.
  • Meeting mediator.
  • Presence book.

• These are some questions those the Sociometric Badge wants to answer.
  • How can individuals get regular feedback on their communication habit?
  • How can leader enhance the effectiveness of their team?
  • What can be done to improve the quality of organizational communication?

• The Sociometric Badge was developed by Human Dynamics Group at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology.
• The Sociometric Badge automatically measures individual and collective patterns of behavior and predicts human behavior from unconscious social signals.

• So here are things those Sociometric Badge able to do.
  • Analyze collective pattern on group of people.
  • Predicts human behavior.
• "Predicts human behavior" seems to sci - fi to be true. Is this what Harry Seldon thought of?

• This is the most interesting part for me.
• The badge need to be able to detect patterns of unconscious social signals.

• Real time feedback through mobile application.
• Aggregate data is collected from the wearers. So this device is already in conform with MIT's Sandy Pentland "New Deals On Data" ways of dealing with privacy invasive application/gadget.
• Opportunity of improvement can be determined from group's social pattern.
• The 3 points of "New Deals On Data".
  • Data collections is an option and informed.
  • Individuals control their own data.
  • Data must be aggregated (the meaning of aggregated will be explained later).

• Real time feedback. So they have already thought about having data streamed into another media while the social activity happens.

• Aggregate, I read in the previous article that in case you want to do social data mining, ethically you need to aggregate the data ("New Deal On Data"). Check this article, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/424104/what-big-data-needs-a-code-of-ethical-practices/.
• Aggregate means that all data are bundle into one. More over, there would be no way to display the data per profile.
• What I meant here is that in case you take social data all data need to be displayed aggregately (perhaps by taking average, ...).

• Example applications.
  • Follow The Star.
  • Meeting Mediator.
  • The Presence Book.
• At this age term "application" is still for both hardware and software. While, nowadays "application" is more for software application. While, hardware application is commonly called by gadget.

• There was this Active Badge by Xerox PARC in 1992. Thing that kick started the usage of electronics/RFID badge nowadays.

• There was also this Vocera Communication System.
• This is like the original Sociometric Badge but with more communication features.

• There was this idea about having context aware mobile phone.
• Mobile phone that is aware of the user social situation (available, busy, psychological states of the user, ...).
• This mobile phone is expected to dynamically react to the environment and stream - in/out data in real time .

• There was this Reality Mining System.
• The website is pretty cool and informative actually, http://realitycommons.media.mit.edu/index.html.
• And also there was a VibeFones.
• VibeFones is the socially aware mobile phone. Perhaps this is what they meant by the context aware mobile phone they mentioned several paragraph above.
• This link refer to research paper about VibeFones, http://hd.media.mit.edu/tech-reports/TR-605.pdf.
• There is also this Android application about VibeFones, https://github.com/weirdwater/VibePhone. However it is lack of information.

• The Reality Mining System is presented by a mobile phone base system that uses Bluetooth addresses and database of user profile to determine face to face interaction within nearby user.
• I am wondering how can you determine face to face communication by only using Bluetooth connection?

• VibeFones uses its user location, proximity, and tone of voice to gain sophisticated understanding of people's social lives.
• This achieved by mining their face to face and phone interactions.

• Several points below mention about sensory modules and how this badge use those sensory modules to get sociometric data.
• There is this 3 axis xyz accelerometer to detect activity such as hand movement, nodding, sitting, and walking.

• I am not sure how can a sole xyz accelerometer detects hand movement.

• There is speech processing modules, but it does not record any content.

• Sending information over radio frequency.
• Location is determined by these radio frequency components. Perhaps, using some kind like triangular calculations.

• Capturing face to face conversation with IR (infrared).
• When each badge has a line sight of each other then it is confirmed that face to face to conversation happens.

• Bluetooth is used to interfacing the Sociometric Badge with user's cellphone.

• Detect turn taking pattern of the conversation.
• Often people does not realize if he/she is dominating the conversation, while there are other people that need to be encouraged to participate more.

• The Sociometric Badge also know if one's speech always trigger boredom and negative response.

• Each circle indicates participant in a meeting.
• The size of the circle indicated the speaking duration.
• Arrow indicates the flow of conversation, shows who is most likely to answer an argument from another person.
• Color of the circle can indicates characteristic of the participant such as interest level or persuasiveness.
• However, in this case color denotes movement of the person. The darker the color is the higher the activity that the person does (perhaps the activity meant is a body activity, like hand or feet movement).

• Sociometric Badge provides with real time analysis.
• The aggregate of the data it produces shows which speaker is the most dominant speaker.

• Accelerometer can record fidgeting behavior, hence quantifying boredom level of certain conversation.

• This Sociometric Badge sends data to the mobile phone for every 5 seconds.
• I am not sure why it is need to be every 5 seconds. Perhaps because at that time there are no smart phone yet.

• Here, it is known that the Sociometric Badge construct a mesh network (I think) to share user movement data to each other badge.
• Then it will take average of all badge wearer to raise or lower the movement threshold.
• The data then will be aggregated via Bluetooth to mobile phone of its wearer.

• The display of the mobile phones will be refreshed for every 5 seconds.

• There is this Presence Book.
• The Presence Book is like a socially aware phone book application for mobile phone.
• In case the person busy or available it can be told directly from Presence Book.

• Example mock up of presence book.

• In Presence Book movement and speech activity of a wearer determine whether this wearer is available or not.

• Let say the badge wearer has less movement and the badge wearer located on its office, he/she cold be sitting and available for face to face conversation.
• If the badge wearer is known walking. Then he/she might be accessible through email or phone call.
• This Presence Book use location data of the badge wearer to detect their accessibility.

• Presence Book can easily display which person might know what person.
• So this is like the People Wiki idea that I suggested before.

• This is an example called Follow The Star.

• Follow The Star is a location aware physical visualization that uses ceiling as display.
• Ceiling displays are ideal for stores and office because it does not obstructed by shelves or walls.

• This Follow The Star displays badge wearer's level of expertise on certain topic.
• The color of green on the "Follow Of The Star" indicates that the target is currently available.
• The color of red on the "Follow Of The Star" indicates that the target is currently occupied.

• I suggest that the target that they mean here is the badge wearer.
• So this Follow The Star installation is like the interface of the Sociometric Badge.
• Follow The Star is the mobile phone equivalent from the Presence Book implementation.

• Communication happen one way from badge to the Follow The Star.
• When the star receives data it will specific light bulb turned on.

• The biggest challenge is privacy concern.
• This is because in the actual implementation there will be a lot of social data mined out of the badge wearer.
• This paper is limited to application of which privacy concern minimal.

• Privacy concern can be reduced by reporting data anonymously.
• However, in the Presence Book application this is not possible due to its principle on reporting whether or not a person is available or busy.
• Another solution is to let user has a control of her/his privacy level.

• The main goal of the sociometry badge is to increase efficiency of organizational communication and work.