The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Mediating chance encounters through opportunistic social matching
Author:	Mayer, Julia M.
View Online:	njit-etd2016-037 (xiv, 217 pages ~ 24.6 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Information Systems
Degree:	Doctor of Philosophy
Program:	Information Systems
Document Type:	Dissertation
Advisory Committee:	Jones, Quentin (Committee chair) Hiltz, Starr Roxanne (Committee member) Borcea, Cristian (Committee member) Ehrlich, Michael A. (Committee member) Vaananen, Kaisa (Committee member)
Date:	2016-05
Keywords:	Social matching Context-aware computing Social reccommender system Location-based services Chance encounters
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Chance encounters, the unintended meeting between people unfamiliar with each other, serve as an important social lubricant helping people to create new social ties, such as making new friends or finding an activity, study or collaboration partner. Unfortunately, social barriers often prevent chance encounters in environments where people do not know each other and people have to rely on serendipity to meet or be introduced to interesting people around them. Little is known about the underlying dynamics of chance encounters and how systems could utilize contextual data to mediate chance encounters. This dissertation addresses this gap in research literature by exploring the design space of opportunistic social matching systems that aim to introduce relevant people to each other in the opportune moment and the opportune place in order to encourage face-to-face interaction. A theoretical framework of relational, social and personal context as predictors of encounter opportunities is proposed and validated through a mixed method approach using interviews, experience sampling and a field study of a design prototype. Key contributions of the field interview study (n=58) include novel context-aware social matching concepts such as: sociability of others as an indicator of opportune social context; activity involvement as an indicator of opportune personal context; and contextual rarity as an indicator of opportune relational context. The following study combining Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and participant interviews extends prior research on social matching by providing an empirical foundation for the design of opportunistic social matching systems. A generalized linear mixed model analysis (n=1781) shows that personal context (mood and busyness) together with the sociability of others nearby are the strongest predictors of people’s interest in a social match. Interview findings provide novel approaches on how to operationalize relational context based on social network rarity and discoverable rarity. Moreover, insights from this study highlight that additional meta-information about user interests is needed to operationalize relational context, such as users’ passion level for an interest and their skill levels for an activity. Based on these findings, the novel design concept of passive context-awareness for social matching is put forward. In the last study, Encount’r, an instantiation of an opportunistic social matching system, is designed and evaluated through a field study and participant interviews. A large-scale user profiling survey provides baseline rarity measures to operationalize relational context using rarity, passion levels, skills, needs, and offers. Findings show that attribute type, computed attribute rarity, self-reported passion levels for interest, and response time are associated with people’s interest in a match opportunity. Moreover, this study extends prior work by showing how the concept of passive context-awareness for opportunistic social matching is promising. Collectively, contributions of this work include a theoretical framework encompassing relational, social, and personal context; new innovative concepts to operationalize each of these aspects for opportunistic social matching; and field-tested design affordances for opportunistic social matching systems. This is important because opportunistic social matching systems can lead to new social ties and improved social capital.