How can technology be used to enforce sociofugal or sociopetal?
Encouraging sociopetal
In Osmond's case, they found that people had various degree of conversation due to various relative positions sitting around a table. So they brought in tables to the wards and set patients to positions that tend to produce more conversations. In this way, patients talked more and became more sociopetal and less sociofugal.
Still encouraging sociopetal
How can we do that using HCI technology?
One thought about that: We have ice breakers - games designed for letting stranger get to know each other. How about using Proximity to design an ice breaker? With the four kinds of distance proposed by Hall, we know that different distances map to different relationships between people. On the contrary, having certain distance with someone might indicate reaching certain relationship with him/her (say if you kiss a girl, ...). In that sense, we can encourage people to reach certain level of relationship by knowing the corresponding distance. Suppose we are holding a graduate orientation, we often let people go around and talk to others freely. If you manage to start a conversation with someone, you two or three or more will shift from social distance to personal distance. And we can further detect how many 'shifts' you get in the free-talk (distance+orientation). Getting more means you talk to and get to know more people and the more ice you break.
Café de Flore， one of the most famous coffee places in Paris. People are seated like being in a theater or cinema, as if the traffic and passers-by were the show they are watching.
