Things to Talk About When Talking About Things

This commentary reviews the existing research literature concerning support for talking about objects in mediated communication, drawing three conclusions: (a) speech alone is often sufficient for effective conversations; (b) visual information about work objects is generally more valuable than visual information about work participants; and (c) disjoint visual perspectives can undermine communication processes. I then comment on the four articles in the light of these observations, arguing that they broadly support these observations. I discuss the paradoxical failure of current technologies to support talk about objects, arguing that these need to be better integrated with existing communication applications. I conclude by outlining a research agenda for supporting talk about things, identifying outstanding theoretical, empirical, and design issues. HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2003, Volume 18, pp. 149–170 Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Steve Whittaker is a cognitive psychologist, with interests in the theory, evaluation, and design of collaborative and multimodal systems; he is a Senior Research Scientist at AT&T Labs–Research, Florham Park, NJ.