monimos mindtrek 2010 -
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TRANSCRIPT
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Co-designing a social media service for civic participation
- Critical issues and challenges
MindTrek, Tampere Oct 6, 2010
Teemu Ropponen (Aalto University)Pirjo Näkki (VTT)Asta Bäck (VTT)
Auli Harju (Uni. Of Tampere) Kari Hintikka (Uni. Of Jyväskylä)
Contents
• 3 views to participation• Case Monimos & its co-design process• Findings: critical issues and challenges
Case Monimos
• Can social media help immigrants in participating in the society and in collaboration with public sector?
• Shared case study of two research projects– Somus: Social media for citizens and public sector
collaboration– EPACE: Exchanging good practices for the promotion of an
active citizenship in the EU, (Ministry of Justice)
• ...in collaboration with the network of multicultural associations in Helsinki capital area (Moniheli)
Three views to participation
• Goal: Civic participation– deliberative process (public discussion), open and accessible
to the public– involving citizens in processes that deal with their everyday
life and environment• Process: Participatory design
– users participate actively as members of the design team– integrates the knowledge of different stakeholders in a
common design space• Result: Social media
– Process, not just tools, content, technology (Erkkola 2008)
– Produsage: open participation, fluid hierarchy, unfinished artefacts, common property (Bruns 2008)
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Monimos design process
• Community-driven participatory design• “Monimos team”: 10 immigrants, 2 Moniheli
employees, EPACE and Somus researchers/developers
• Working methods– 8 monthly workshops (face-to-face/online)– Open online collaboration: discussion + voting of
service ideas, features, layout, service name
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The Monimos project
Needs, problems, ideasWorkshops
Service conceptOwela discussion,Moniheli workshop
Service pilotOnline test,further development
2009 2010
Design and developmentw/ Monimos teamWorkshops + Owela
Public serviceContinuous development
Open co-design in http://owela.vtt.fi/immigrantmedia
www.monimos.fi
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Challenges
• Defining goal and vision• Inclusion and motivation• Interaction and working methods• Decision-making
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Defining the goal and vision
• Research goal vs. people's goal vs. organisation's goal alignment?
• Crystallizing from scratch?! A lot of time from “open scope” to 18 ideas, to 3 ideas, to one
• Despite vision being unclear, unstable and questioned – still people worried that too much time spent around this discussion
• High expectations
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Goal and vision
• Forming a plausible promise (Raymond 1999) (the outcome of goal and vision) was difficult in itself, and turned out to be:– “Monimos is a virtual meeting place for internationally
minded people and associations in Finland to enjoy diversity and promote active citizenship”
• Creating a plausible promise for the participants and important for the sake of communicating of the process and rationale as well as managing the expectations.
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Inclusion and motivation
• Supporting heterogenous group• Understanding ranging motives: “job”,
“association duty”, “personal reputation gain”, “fun”, “interest”– How much to expect people to participate?
• New people joining, a critical moment! – …sometimes slows things down, but also
energizes!
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Interaction and working methods
• Participation high-spirited and intensive (possibly a multicultural “upside” )
• Methods in workshops - not always culturally suitable, or implemented in a different way (e.g. people preferred talking over PostIt’s)
• Methods and tools are a form of power
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Interaction and working methods
• Common vocabulary & conventions vary – E.g. does feature priority voting have to be
“democratic” or is it “just” indicative
• Abstract and open tasks were difficult to get a grasp on between the workshops– Social media –like participation “affordances”
(think e.g. “like”) should be used more to get higher participation
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Decision-making process
• Which roles of individuals are present in people’s decision-making?
• Who owns the project? Researchers, participants, (funders)?
• Democracy, or co-owning, can hinder visionary work
• Decisions & design drivers need to be reminded often, to avoid repetitive discussions
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Conclusions
• Open process needs A LOT of meta-level communication and crystallization, as well as clear decision-making guidelines
• Social media- & produsage-like process – already starting from the design phase– needs to be taken into account in tool, method and
process selection & design
• Community-driven design is difficult FOR ALL PARTIES, agreement on open process necessary
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Thanks!
• Questions?• Have a look at:
– http://www.monimos.fi– http://somus.vtt.fi
• Contact: – [email protected] , [email protected]
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References
Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: from production to produsage. Peter Lang Publishing: New York.
Erkkola, J. (2008). Sosiaalisen median käsitteestä. Helsinki, University of Arts and Design. Medialab.
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The Cathedral & the Bazaar. O'Reilly. ISBN 1-56592-724-9.http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedralbazaar/cathedral-bazaar/.