Hypothesis H3 posited that an interface which presents Personal and Public audio entirely through speakers will cause participants to work more collectively. Interaction log analysis shows that the audio presentation configurations did not influence individuals’ tendency to edit modules created by other group members, and altering the form of audio presentation did not cause individuals to create significantly more or less music modes, or influence the amount of editing they performed. However, when Public and Personal audio was presented entirely through speakers (Condition 1), interaction log analysis using the Friedman Test showed that participants made significantly less use of the Personal channel to listen to musical contributions than they did in either of the other conditions (p=0.0253, df=2, csqr=7.35). This result partially
supports hypothesis H3, insofar as participants were less likely to listen to contributions via their Personal channel when Personal audio was routed to their speaker. This finding may however be more related to the depreciated benefit of using the Personal channel when it was routed through speakers.
Furthermore, response to the questionnaire self-reported statement ‘I had the most privacy’ shows participants reported experiencing least privacy in C1 (p=0.0211, df=2, csqr=7.72). How-
ever, analysis of the post-test questionnaire results for the statements ‘We edited the music to- gether’, ‘We worked most effectively’ and ‘I worked mostly on my own’ suggested that there
was no trend for participants to report working more collectively in any of the audio presentation configurations.
One of the strongest descriptive codes in the interview analysis related to participants descrip- tions of control over the sharing of musical contributions, and the formulation of contributions away from the group. This is similar to the observed use of the Private space in Study one.
PARTICIPANT1: yeah, you didn’t want to introduce something terrible
(Session 5 Interview)
By reducing the privacy afforded by the Personal channel, the ability to formulate contribu- tions in isolation before sharing would clearly have been negated, therefore reducing the useful- ness of the Personal audio channel. However, forcing contributions to be more Public did not impact on the level of co-editing in the same way as reported in Study One.
When analysed for ordering effects, the post-test questionnaire results showed that a signif- icant number of participants reported working most effectively in the final condition they were presented with, regardless of which audio presentation configuration this equated to. A signifi- cant number of participants reported working mostly on their own in the first condition they were presented with, and similarly that people also ignored their contributions more in the first pre- sented condition. The final condition presented to the participants was most frequently selected for the statement ‘I understood what was going on’.
Findings related to the order of conditions are to be expected, as it makes sense that over the the group members would have become more familiar with the software, and with each other. This familiarity would explain their reported feelings of working more effectively together and understanding more about what was happening in the later conditions. However, as the experiment controlled for learning effects by altering the condition presentation order for each group (see Section 6.5) this finding does not negate the other findings of the study, which have been identified independently of the condition ordering.
Some participants reported an unanticipated use of the Personal channel, as a mechanism for discovering which modules were producing which sounds. During group interviews participants talked in more detail about the importance of knowing what was making a specific sound than knowing who was responsible for a given contribution. For instance one participant noted of the Personal audio channel:
before I submitted something, but also if I got, confused between, which sounds were, were what, then I would, would listen to it (Session 6 Interview)
Furthermore, analysis of the interviews suggested that the idea of becoming aware of what was creating sounds arose much more frequently than the category of who was creating a sound, and participants frequently noted not being aware of who was responsible for particular contri- butions.
In summary, presenting Personal Audio through speakers reduced the participants’ reported level of privacy, and also reduced the tendency for the Personal audio channel to be used. This can be explained through the reduced level of privacy afforded by presenting Personal audio through speakers. This finding relates strongly to the findings of Study One (Section 5.11) by showing that the option for privacy gets exploited when made available to participants. How- ever, as the experimental manipulations did not influence the way participants used the software (module creations, deletions, editing), it is difficult to find strong support for the hypothesis that presenting audio entirely through headphones caused the group to work more collectively. In- stead, analysis of the self-report questionnaire data also implied that the time the group spent working together and/or using the music software was a stronger predictor of how collectively they reported working together.