Thomas Erickson and Wendy A. Kellogg describes social translucence as: making team members and their activities visible to one another. Lets take an example from their text:

We have a door between the stairwell into the hallway. The door has one design problem, when opened quickly into the hallway it’s likely you might slam into someone on the other side. To solve the problem a sign was put on the door reading “Please open slowly” – not the most effective solution. If we build a socially translucent system into the door by putting a glass window it’s obvious it will have the desired effect of people not slamming doors into each other.

• As humans we rely on our ability to see – we react on the preset of other people.
• Through the glass I see the person on the other side, hence as a normal human being I don’t slam the door into you.
• And the ‘I know that you know I know’-reason from the earlier post: You know I can see you through the glass so if I for one reason or another choose to slam the door into you, you will know i did it deliberately – hence I get into trouble.