New publication: Towards Sheltered Communication Systems Design – A Socio-Technical Perspective

The proceedings were just published containing my paper: A. de Moor (2012). Towards Sheltered Communication Systems Design: A Socio-Technical Perspective. In Proc. of the 9th Community Informatics Research Network Conference, Prato, Italy, November 7-9, 2012.

Abstract

Social media are powerful conversation technologies. However, exactly how social media afford and constrain complex social requirements in collaborative communities is still ill-understood. One of these requirements concerns the need for sheltered communication systems: systems that support and interlink spheres of stakeholder communication with different required degrees of opacity. We introduce our Socio-Technical Conversation Context Framework as a way to analyze and design such complex socio-technical communication systems. We use collaboration patterns grounded in this framework as conceptual building blocks to capture design lessons learnt about matching community requirements with enabling tool functionalities. We illustrate the approach with the “sheltered communications” lessons learnt in a Dutch case of developing an e-learning tool system for students with physical and mental limitations.

New publication: “It’s the Conversation, Stupid!” – Social Media Systems Design for Open Innovation Communities

My joint book chapter with Mark Aakhus, “It’s the Conversation, Stupid!” Social Media Systems Design for Open Innovation Communities was just published in J.E. Lundström et al. (eds.), Managing Open Innovation Technologies, Springer, Berlin. ISBN 978-3-642-31649-4.

Abstract

Open innovation is about crossing boundaries to create networked synergies in/across collaborative communities. Conversations are the lifeblood of communities, building the common ground of shared meanings, beliefs, interests, norms, goals, trust and social capital. A fundamental challenge for open innovation lies in the successful crafting of the social media systems supporting the community conversations. Innovation communities (which are not limited to business interests but also include public and civic organizations and communities) therefore need to continuously make sense of the conversation context of the tools they use. We provide a conceptual lens with which to examine this socio-technical conversation context. We illustrate the use of this lens with a plausible scenario of open innovation in the societal stakeholder networks around climate change research.

“It’s the Conversation, Stupid!” – Social media systems design for open innovation communities

On November 5, the Swedish Open Innovation Forum organized a “Managing Open Innovation Technologies” workshop at Uppsala University, to present and discuss state-of-the-art research insights into open innovation & social media and for authors working on an anthology on this topic to get feedback on their draft chapters. It was a very lively meeting, generating lots of ideas for new research. Concluding, it was clear there’s still a very long way to go for social media to realize their full potential in this domain.

At the workshop, I gave a keynote on social media systems design for open innovation communities:

After that, my good friend and co-author Mark Aakhus (Rutgers University, USA), reflected upon what I said.  Mark wasn’t physically present, but participated from his study at his home in New Jersey, 6000 km away. Of course, I have been in many videoconferencing sessions, but normally these are cumbersome events, requiring lots of high tech, special rooms, microphones, cameras and what not. However, this time none of this was needed. All we used was a Mac and Skype. As Mark was presenting, he was displayed larger-than-life on the main screen using the projector:

Mark Aakhus presenting

Reception was crystal clear, he could hear everything being said, even in the back of the room. Things really got weird after he was finished.  The laptop was left on the table, and Mark’s image removed from the screen when other people used it to present their Powerpoints. However, once in a while, suddenly, the laptop started speaking, as Mark commented on something being said. The funny thing was that we all quickly got used to that situation, looking at and talking to a laptop as if it were a human being. Still, sometimes, Mark/the laptop would suddenly make a sound, and the whole flow of the conversation was disrupted, nobody quite sure what to make of it. A very strange and powerful experience of, literally, “extreme computer-mediated communication”!

Using Collaboration Patterns for Contextualizing Roles in Community Systems Design

On October 28, I presented my paper “Using Collaboration Patterns for Contextualizing Roles in Community Systems Design” at the Community Informatics Research Network  2010 Conference (CIRN 2010) in Prato, Italy. Here are the abstract of and link to the paper, as well as the presentation.

Abstract

Activation of collaborative communities is hampered by the communicative fragmentation that is at least partially caused by their distributed tool systems. We examine the role of domain, conversation, and functionality roles in modelling community activation. We show how collaboration patterns can be used to design appropriate socio-technical solutions.  These patterns contextualize the various types of roles by linking them to the (1) relevant usage context (2) communicative workflow stages and (3) functionality components across the tool system.

Presentation

Conversations in Context: A Twitter Case for Social Media Systems Design

On September 1, I gave the invited talk for the 5th AIS SIGPrag International Pragmatic Web Conference Track of the I-SEMANTICS 2010 conference in Graz, Austria. Here are the abstract of and link to the paper, as well as the presentation.

Abstract

Conversations are the lifeblood of collaborative communities. Social media like microblogging tool Twitter have great potential for supporting these conversations. However, just studying the role of these media from a tool perspective is not sufficient. To fully unlock their power, they need to examined from a sociotechnical perspective. We introduce a socio-technical context framework which can be used to analyze the role of systems of tools supporting goal-oriented conversations. Central to this framework is the communicative workflow loop, which is grounded in the Language/Action Perspective. We show how socio-technical conversation contexts can be used to match the communicative requirements of collaborative communities with enabling tool functionalities. This social media systems design process is illustrated with a case on Twitter.

Presentation:

Collaboration Patterns as Building Blocks for Community Informatics

From 4-6 November 2009, the 6th CIRN Community Informatics Conference was held in Prato, Italy. As in previous years, the conference brought together an interesting mix of researchers and practitioners from North and South, discussing ways to effectively use information and communication technologies to foster community building. This year’s theme was “Empowering Communities: Learning from Community Informatics Practice”.

I gave a keynote address at the conference. Title of my talk and the accompanying paper was “Collaboration Patters as Building Blocks for Community Informatics”. Below the slides of the presentation and the abstract of the paper.

Abstract

Community Informatics is a wide-ranging field of inquiry and practice, with many paradigms, disciplines, and perspectives intersecting. Community informatics research and practice build on several methodological pillars: contexts/values, cases, process/methodology, and systems. Socio-technical patterns and pattern languages are the glue that help connect these pillars. Patterns define relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at the right level of abstraction, which means that they are concrete enough to be useful, while also sufficiently abstract to be reusable. The goal of this paper is to outline a practical approach to improve CI research and practice through collaboration patterns. This approach should help to strengthen the analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation of socio-technical community systems. The methodology is illustrated with examples from the ESSENCE (E-Science/Sensemaking/Climate Change) community.

http://growingpains.blogs.com/home/2008/11/moving-community-informatics-research-forward.html

Optimizing Social Software Design with Conceptual Graphs

Today, I gave a presentation “Optimizing Social Software Design with Conceptual Graphs” at LIRMM, Le Laboratoire d’Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier:

Abstract

Collaborative communities are complex and rapidly evolving socio-technical systems. The design of these systems includes the communal specification of communication and information requirements, as well as the selection, configuration, and linking of the software tools that best satisfy these requirements. Supporting the effective and efficient community-driven design of such complex and dynamic systems is not trivial.

To represent and reason about the system design specifications we use conceptual graph theory. We do so because the knowledge representation language of choice must be rich enough to allow for the efficient expression of complex definitions. Also, since design specifications derive from complex real world domains and community members themselves are actively involved in specification processes, a close mapping of knowledge definitions to natural language expressions and vice versa is useful. Finally, the representation language must be sufficiently formal and constrained for powerful knowledge operations to be constructed. Conceptual graph theory has all of these properties.

We explore how conceptual graphs can be used to:

1. model the core elements of such socio-technical systems and their design processes.

2. specify communication and information requirements and match these with social software functionalities.

We illustrate these design processes with examples from a realistic scenario on building a knowledge-driven topic community on climate change.

Understanding Design: 150 Reflections on Being a Designer

I recently finished “Understanding Design: 150 Reflections on Being a Designer“, by Kees Dorst. It’s a delightful book with 150 single page stories that you can’t stop reading. The stories have been organized in four main themes (Inside Design, About Design, Being a Designer, Around Design), and cover everything from the philosophy and morality of design to very practical guidelines on how to do and teach design. A must for everybody remotely interested in this complex but so intriguing field.

Design for development

Richard Heeks and Bill McIver sent useful references in response to my post on the Another Perspective on Design-symposium.

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[Richard Heeks]

Just to follow Aldo’s original point, the whole area of “design for development” seems to be a growing one. Examples are the work of The Cardiff Group: http://www.thecardiffgroup.org.uk/ (which helps organise the Development Studies Association’s Design and Development group: http://www.devstud.org.uk/studygroups/design.htm), and Design for Development: http://www.designfordevelopment.org/. Up-and-coming are the outputs from the BGDD project – http://www.bgdd.org/Wiki.jsp – which is approaching the issue from a computing/interface design-for-development perspective.There are also a lot of organisations working more to help multinationals understand and design for emerging markets, e.g. CKS in Bangalore – http://www.cks.in/They, in turn, have been involved in one of the main design-and-development functions, the Doors of Perception events: http://www.doorsofperception.com/

Prof. Richard Heeks
Development Informatics Group
IDPM, SED, University of Manchester
Web: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/dig

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[Bill McIver]

See also:Low Technologies, High Aims

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: September 11, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/science/11mit.html?scp=5&sq=olin+college&st=nyt

Matriculation
Re-engineering Engineering

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: September 30, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30OLIN-t.html?scp=1&sq=olin+college&st=nyt

Outside the Box
By LISA GUERNSEY
Published: November 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/education/edlife/nicheintro.html?scp=2&sq=olin+college&st=nyt

The inaugural International Development Design Summit (IDDS) at MIT on 16 July – 10 August 2007
http://www.iddsummit.org/

Bill McIver,
Research Officer
People-Centred Technologies
Institute for Information Technology
National Research Council Canada

http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/personnel/mciver_william_e.html

Another Perspective on Design – Symposium

Yesterday, an interesting symposium was organised in Breda by COLIN (Creative Organisations Linked in Networks) , named “Another Perspective on Design“. Here are some notes I took during the presentations. They are not comprehensive, but should capture some of the highlights.

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Speaker: Mary-Ann Schreurs, chairwoman of the working group Design of the Eindhoven city council

• Design has enormous economic potential
  • One reason DAF trucks has become so succcessful is because of their truck cabins having been optimally designed for their human users.
• Designers bring together ideas from all disciplines, combine them into a form. Design is leading.
• Governments need to create the necessary conditions for design to have its effect.
  • For example, never enough workspaces for starting entrepreneurs!
• Innovation networks necessary
  • Alone it cannot be done, collaboration between many stakeholders is essential. Only organize those who are really willing.
  • Companies are proud of their products because they mean something to people
    • No longer make products just to own, but products that add meaning to people’s lives.
    • For example, children in hospital get badge, when moving around the kids see their favorite themes. projected on the walls, e.g. space travel. Result: faster recovery time.

  “Designer is a carrier of societal change”

• A design meeting was organized for city politicians: what’s in design for them? Some examples:
  • Participation is the magic word. One approach that has been shown to work in Eindhoven is the “virtual neighbourhood”.
  • Software for 3D design. Use it to show the effects of construction choices, costs automatically calculated. Design of houses much more tailored to needs of citizens, they co-own the design.
  • Designers living with homeless found out that they do not use the designed shelters if their dogs are not allowed entry, as these to them are “their family”.
  • The city council now better understands the power of design for the city. A range of aspects needs to be taken into account:
    • Esthetics
    • Economics
    • Societal
    • “Freedom”
      • Large companies often constrain the creative process too much. Technology should not lead but serve us. Make sure to liberate creative souls to work in the way they want/need.
• Eindhoven is going to change from a city that creates technology to a city where you experience it.

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Speaker: Conny Bakker, director of consultancy company Info-Eco, co-author of ‘Trespassers, inspirations for eco-efficient design’ and author of ‘Sustainable Technological Development’.

• Info-Eco: helps designers and entrepreneurs choose the most appropriate eco-design strategies for their products and services.
• For example: “peak oil”, oil shortage very soon becoming major problem
• Design can help to achieve hyperefficiency
  • e.g. Volkswagen has prototype car using 1 liter of gas per 100 km. Will be on the market in 2010
  • Zero emission house using an advanced pipe system.
  • Airquarium: inflatable building, can be transported easily, using air as construction material
  • XO laptop (One Laptop Per Child). Many efficiency features, needs only 2 W! Rwanda and Uruguay have already bought it, among other nations, positive experiences reported from the field.
  • Zooop electrical car can reach 180 km/h, what can we learn for mass car design?
  • Nokia Eco Sensor Cell Phone: is charged by body movements of user

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Speaker: Thera van Osch, economist and chairwoman of the Association for the Care Economy

• From knowledge economy to experience economy, in which empathy is important
• Does the economy determine design, or can design change the economy?
• Increasing monetization of everything, including design! Not good, inhibiting real innovation!
• We need to develop a paradigm of the caring human being
• Achieve balance between market economy and care economy
• Can sustainable design contribute to the economy in economical , social, and ecological sense?

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Speaker: Alex van Dierendonck, O2 Nederland

• User interface design & sustainability: involve the user
• O2: growing network of designers together involved in developing innovative sustainable solutions. O2 Netherlands, the Dutch branch, has been founded in 1993.
• Examples of innovative solutions
  • Bioresources, e.g. Treeplast (wood composite); look natural, partially also food.
  • Philips “Poor Man’s” Woodstove; very economical with fuel.
  • Formula Zero: contest for developing sustainable racing
  • S-House: biodegradable house.
• Focus on products doesn’t show the complex processes needed to get there!
• Together doing design sessions is an interesting added value of such a design network.

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Speakers: Stella van Himbergen, programme manager DDiD and Robert Nijhout, graphics design specialist who volunteered for the FairMail project

• DDiD: Dutch Design in Development, couples Dutch designers to small producers in developing countries.
• Stimulate sustainable economic development in developing countries.
• DDiD supports the whole process, is a matchmaker, works towards realizing fairer social and environmental values.
• Aims for unique product development
• Example project: FairMail, Peru
  • Municipal waste dump. Many people living and working there in very poor and unhealthy conditions.
  • FairMail organizes photography courses to the kids, by volunteers from all over the world. The photos are sold as postcards (“cards with perspective”) in Peru and the North, leading to sustainable income for the locals. Revenues are split by local community and the individual photographers. Part of the revenues are used for education and health insurance funds for the whole community. The good thing is it stimulates the economy of everybody, from the individual, through the community to the local economy.
  • DDiD provided templates and training (in, for instance, Indesign publishing software) to allow them to produce independently. E.g. photo processing training for the FairMail kids.
  • Good example of “social design” by providing the community with the means to themselves improve their own future.
  • Issue: how to “train the trainers” in order to scale up the impact of such programmes?