PERSON-TO-PERSON(S)

COMMUNICATION
Submitted To : Mr Amit Sachdeva
Submitted By : Mandeep & Kuljinder
 Abstract

As people change from face-to-face communication to

medi-ated communication the form of representation
changes. Dis-tortion of the message in face-to-face
communication is some-thing we have learned to live
with and control to some extent by the way we represent
ourselves, and our message, to the outside world. When
the message is being mediated and rep-resented to the
recipient by a communications device, we want the same
control. Without sense of such control, people may feel
out of control of the message they are transmitting. The
person-to-person(s) communication model describes the
communication process and helps designers in
identifying the different elements causing distortion of
the message.
 Table of contents
Introduction
Approach
Theory
Design Issue
References
 1. Introduction
Face-to-face communication relies heavily on other than primary
messages to transmit meaning, e.g. people use body language and
tone of voice to convey meaning. The mediated communication
appliances we use today also try to give us a broader scale of tools
for expressing ourselves. New tech-nology communication devices
provide the users with quite a broad means to convey information.
In theory, the tools we use for communication can bring us quite
close to the original, i.e. face-to-face context.
In a sense, even face-to-face communication is mediated. Our body
takes the role as a medium, which we use to convey our message
Communication and appearance are our way of ex-pressing to the
world what we really are. In theory, we have total control of the
message we are sending. In reality, most of our communicative
messages get added to: involuntary body movements, the tone of
voice and physical appearance load the message with extra content
and structure, telling more about us that we initially wanted it to.
 2. Approach
The mediated person-to-person(s) communication
model de-rives from our study on user interfaces in
the light of commu-nication theory. Our analysis is
based on Hall’s (1998) theory of encoding and
decoding, and the communication model pre-sented
by Shannon and Weaver (1949). Out of several
models applicable to the examination of mediated
communication (e.g. Gerbner 1956; Jakobson 1960;
Lasswell 1948; Newcomb 1953), these are most
clearly focused on the elements of the
communication structure important from a user
interface de-sign point of view, which in our
opinion makes them worth further exploration.
Hall’s theory concerns the communication situation
in mass media. It shows how discourse affects the
production of a message, as the message has to be
formed according to the rules of the medium, for
which it is produced. Thus, a news event is encoded
in different ways depending on whether the
medium is e.g. television or a daily newspaper.
Discourse similarly affects the way the message is
being interpreted as the medium itself dictates the
discourse in the light of which messages are read in
the context of that specific medium.
The communication model presented by Shannon and Weaver approaches
the transmission of a message from a
rather technical viewpoint. The focus is on the message being transmitted
from the sending to the receiving device. During this transmission, the
message is affected by noise, which dis-torts the message and limits its
capabilities to fulfil its original purpose. Although Shannon and Weaver
were mainly con-cerned with the technical aspects of the message signal,
later later interpretations allow a broader perspective. Thus the notion of
noise can be seen as anything from raw technical distor-tions of the
transmitted signal to anything affecting how the original message, as
intended by the user, is conveyed.
Mediated person-to-person communication makes use of similar structures
to those present in mass media. Messages have to be encoded and decoded
in a similar way as the me-dium restricts the way things can be
communicated. Com-pared with the situation in mass communication,
however, the important factor in person-to-person communication is how
the technical process of encoding and decoding affects the message. The
 3. Theory
The mediated person-to-person(s) communication model fo-cuses
on the effect of the technical structures in both the en-coding and
decoding process of the message. In the sender’s end, a message can
be either a message written by the user or alternatively an action
made by the user, e.g. that of moving into a mediated space. The
decoded message on the re-ceiver’s end is the presentation of the
sender as seen by the receiver.
The technical structures of the medium used for the com-
munication inevitably affect the message the user is convey-ing.
These effects can be identified and presented back to the user by the
interface s/he is using to communicate hers/his message with. The
rest of the decoding process is dependent on the receiving user’s
interface and is therefore out of the designer’s reach. One can never
be sure about how an outgo-ing message will be received after it
has left the service. One can know, however, based on the service
that is being used, what the service does to the message before it is
interpreted by the receiver’s interface.
Mediated person-to-person(s)
communication model
In order to correctly read the person-to-
person(s) communica-tion model it is important
to realize that every message ever made during
a communication process goes through the
whole model from left to right. This applies to
all messages and so both communicators are at
once both senders and recipients. When we talk
about sender and recipient, these are used in a
situational, not a static, sense.
 Message
A message is something happening along the user-service
communications channel. The model identifies two types of
messages: message 1 and message 2. Message 1 is the initial
message produced by the sender according to the rules of the user
interface, and message 2 is the distorted one, with modi-fications
(additions, subtractions or both) made by the ser-vice. Message 1
can be either an ordinary message produced by the user or an
action made by the user. Message 2 is the message sent by the
service to the recipient.
For instance, in a telephone conversation, the first mes-sage 1 is an
action: it consists of the user dialling a number. The service turns
this action into an attempt of connection to the dialled number
(message 2). If the connection is estab-lished, the conversation can
begin and both users say things at their end of the line (message 1),
which are delivered through the connection to the recipient
(message 2). In the end, the user will perform an action by hanging
up (message 1), which will cause the phone connection to break
(message 2).
 4. Design issues
From a designer’s point of view it is important to design
inter-faces as well as services in such a way that they support
ex-isting communication culture. Also, new services depend
on users, to become profitable. Designers cannot always be
sure of the ways usage cultures develop after the technology
is in the hands of the users. Therefore it is important to design
in-terfaces as well as services in such a way, that they allow
dif-ferent kinds of information to be sent and, on the other
hand, received by the interfaces. This multitude of different
re-quirements of information is one reason why distortions of
messages occur. In addition to designing how the service and
interfaces handle the technical aspects of varying incoming
and outgoing information, interface designers also have to
consider how the unavoidable distortions are handled in such
a way that the user feels comfortable and in control during
the communication situations s/he engages in.
 References
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http://persona.www.media.mit.edu/ Thesis/Cover.html