Welcome, Computer! How Do Participants Introduce a Collaborative Application During Face-to-Face Interaction?

During cooperative interaction, participants introduce materials, artefacts, and other individuals into the ongoing interaction. Depending on how this introduction unfolds, the participants may embrace the new element in an easy way or not. If the new element is a collaborative application of interactive software designed to support the interaction, it may or may not improve the collaboration because of how it was introduced. Therefore, understanding and designing the initial interaction is key for unleashing the positive impact of collaborative systems. The literature has identified the fact that humans employ a specific range of behaviors when introducing an element into an ongoing interaction. Those introduction rituals are determined by whether the new element is a human or a material artefact. Introduction rituals involving interactive elements are still underexplored: How do participants introduce and initiate interaction with them? This manuscript explores the introduction behaviors emerging when an augmented-reality collaborative application is being introduced into a financial advisory service. It shows that the participants employ a wider range of introduction rituals during the introduction of this application than they do when they introduce a brochure. Notably, many of the observed behaviors resemble familiar opening rituals typically used when introducing and greeting humans. This supports the computers-are-social-actors argument and provides evidence that introducing a collaborative application has a social rather than a material character.