Ticket to talk-How do we start a conversation

I recently came across few interesting researches on presence and ambiguity in the digital
technology for social interaction. I thought I will share them with you.

So this one is called Ticket to Talk Television. It is help me build on my thinking on the reciprocal awareness concept that the S.Lab project is on.
There are two of them. I will start with the first one. It's called Ticket to Talk. Well, the idea is how do you create a conversation starter among senior citizens. So this research is very similar to our project. It tackles similar challenges. Senior citizen may be physically dependent on medical aids and at times on other people, but what is remarkable is the tendency to help themselves. Psychologically it has been discovered that there is hesitation among the senior citizens to ask for help: partly because they do want to disrupt someone's live and party because it makes them feel incapable.
"The issue seemed to be not only that people are living alone and in some cases are feeling lonely,but that loneliness is something people do not explicitly talk about and something they do not want to be associated with because it is experienced as a particular social identity or individual character/attribute that singles out him/her as negatively different in relation to others in the community."
This particular project uses a television in a medium to channel communication. It has the option of seeing who is watching television and you can directly use your phone to replace your remote. Once you know who is watching you can start with mundane conversations of what you were watching.

It speculates that the display of community TV activity may provide you with a sense of other people’s
presence reminding you that you are part of a community.

What is new about this research is the thought process that television is more than a pervasive media. It can actively also help build network of shared emotions and thoughts with fellow people with whom you already have common links.
The important part is that this as an indirect method of interaction. It doesn't give the contents to speak on but helps you build one.
An excerpt explaining the context:

"Even though senior housing communities are not much different to other social establishments, it revealed itself to us as a fascinating arena for understanding how people manage social engagements. The people living there were a diverse group with different backgrounds and interests who are in a stage of life that in no way can be characterized as a well defined final state only defined by age. Some of those who have moved into these living facilities are maybe still working, some getting ready to retire and some already retired, some living alone and some living with a partner. This element of diversity combined with the ongoing process of aging appeared to us as an additional social attribute that people are experiencing and dealing with on an everyday basis in interaction with others."

The second one is based on embracing the ambiguity in the design of digital technology for social interaction among senior citizens.

Harvey Sacks writes about the ways in which the dog – when walking the dog in the park – is a ‘ticket’ to start having a conversation with people who they are previously unacquainted without it being treated as an unwelcome advance.
Opening a conversation as much important to continue one. The use of digital technology is exactly trying to achieve that while in are in your comfort zone. You don't really have to take the dog for a walk anymore. The technology will instead give you the opportunities based on shared knowledge to begin a conversation that can ultimately help you build  a more intimate understanding of each other.

As we move towards design we identify three themes:
1. ‘Allowing room for ambiguity by leaving things unsaid’.
2. ‘Utilizing existing everyday activities when looking for enablers of social interaction’.
3. ‘The integration of digital technology with other resources for human action’.

On a similar line of thought we came across this idea where messaging can be open ended. So there needs to be the option of sending a blank message to something as open as What____? or So, __________.