Comments on: Designing the Democratic

By: uxdesign

uxdesign — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A “more democratically responsible user experience…” what an interesting, and I think useful, framing of the topic. “Out-voicing” by some polemic or aggravated group over other perhaps more civil but less aggressive ones is a real problem with user generated content, as it is with humanity in general, I’d say. Though not to acquiesce. Tribes that discourage voices are not unlike those that discourage votes: both are a bane to social health. And yes, IAs, interaction designers and UX strategists should be concerned about this, not least because we’re concerned with people (as in We The…), or because we’re often now in a position to influence human-human as well as human-computer interaction, but because the widest possible participation serves our media enterprise objectives as well.

Chris Wilson, in your later paragraph, seems to agree with Barry Schwartz, who say says our usual response, to generate rules and incentives fails us. I liken Wilson’s principled chaperons to Schwartz’ moral heroes: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

“Something in the air,” I suppose, as I just wrote “How Sociable Is Your Media?” last weekend, around similar ideas. “If people rule in your design process, then it is essentially a democratic project:” http://uxdesign.com/ux-theory/article/sociable-social-media/50

Principals of many kinds are essential to design, and probably always have been. Perhaps us veteran/designers give a little more thought to how design principals relate to democratic ones, but I hope not.

By: bertmulder

bertmulder — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The particiaption inequality in general is an interesting topic. There is some parallels between the ‘participation inequality’ online and actual political participation. In The Netherlands only 3% of the population is an actual member of a political party, and of that membership of the largest parties roughly a third of the members is active in politicis: 1% of the population. The number of politically active people in former Russia was about 10% of the population. That might point in the direction of the participation inequality as a normal ratio for social activities in populations.
But then the perceived participation inequality holds for Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia but is different for other social media such as Myspace, Facebook and Hyves. And then there are possible differences of online social behavior in very large populations (such as the worldwide community of internetusers) and smaller populations (national, city or neighbourhood). In our experiences in neighbourhoods (populations of between 10.000 and 20.000 people) we see different behaviour and are not certain which ‘participation inequalities’ will hold.
I think that, before making assumptions about a ‘participation inequlity’ online and in real life, we need to research both more carefully.

By: chakolo

chakolo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This would make for an interesting research project to test out further.

While I recognize the importance of contextual design it is very challenging for a broad audience such as on a global corporate website – best practice design and innovation (as defined by Western standards) are not optional. My experience has been that the content – messaging and language translation are more important than the metaphor.

The industry standards described in the article have in many ways leveled the field for how we interact online (at least in the business world). Emerging countries, companies, etc., looking to do business in the global market need to get up to speed in how that world works – this may sound like technological imperialism – but how do we do this without dumbing-down (my apologies for the pejorative) of the design to meet the lowest common denominator?

By: junaid

junaid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Great article necessitating the society’s influence on the changing perspective and use of the web.

Technologically advanced societies follow a typical pattern of change and growth. Initially, it will be solely technology that will drive what a user experiences. The features/ attributes of a product basically pick themselves primarily due to lack of options on what technology could provide them. The features that are going to be left behind for subsequent ‘versions’ to incorporate would again be a call for technology to take. With advancement in technology and due to the rising need of bringing in that extra to appear different, stay afloat and above the competition the layer of additional considerations would creep in.

Social media is still in its fledgling stage. There is a lot of excitement and effort underway at exploring what it can offer and the boundaries it can cross which the traditional web was not able to. It is now limited to a certain degree by imagination and to an extent, access and awareness of the right kind of technologies (in the lesser technologically advanced societies). To even recommend that a social media setting is not appropriate, a certain degree of maturity to incorporate the layer of additional considerations has to creep in.

One culture might define one set of best practices based on limitations exactly in the way a different culture defines it based on its attributes. Similar to the presence or absence of certain navigation elements on e-commerce sites (which have gained acceptance to a large extent), it would be very interesting to note what kind of interaction patterns people start associating with social media and how best practices emerge across cultures and find ‘universal’ acceptance.

By: jamiefromcleveland

jamiefromcleveland — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for the comments.

The theme I see running through them is one of “context.” Michael, Bert, Lori, and Junaid seem to have framed their responses and insights in terms of their respective ‘unique rosters of experiences.”

Michael, I liked your use of the word “tribes” because it’s a perfect descriptor for a group of like-minded people, a band of individuals together because of a position that may or may not be constrained by geographical border, nationality, race, etc. Given the social opportunities available through technology worldwide, “tribe” is particularly apropos—it all depends on the context. However, I purposefully moved away from the use of “rule” in my article because it inherently suggests power of one group over another, even in a democratically structured populace. Just because a majority emerges (however fair the process may be), it doesn’t mean the minorities’ interests should be dismissed. (That was what I hoped to convey in the article, at any rate.) And I’m not sure I understand your last sentence. It seems counter-intuitive—did I miss your point?

Bert, thanks for the stats. Perhaps the participation inequity you mention is contextual and can different for each group, given a specific networking/social site and how its users might be categorized. For example, what is the level of inequity within Facebook users when considering behaviors based on national boundaries versus behaviors of different age groups? Indeed we do need to do more research, but I think the studies and results will need to be contextualized in order to maintain validity.

Lori, it appears that the contexts of your business goals are a priority. (“Language translations are more important than the metaphor.”) It’s a design decision you’ve weighed, and that sensibility is what is key to a democratic responsibility. As to a “lowest common denominator,” why does the multicultural aspect have to be at a single level? Why not make several levels available (perhaps woven into a single website)? As the groups you identify emerge into the marketplace, they can learn to walk before they run. Their participation may hold value to you as much as you hold value to them. So for those strong in the global marketplace, wouldn’t an iterative strategy be reasonable in context of both current and future business relationships?

Junaid, I understand your point about patterns and early technology-centric user experiences. But I think in many respects, we have evolved enough such that cultures just starting to embrace technology don’t need to start from scratch and repeat those patterns. They have the many elements of a global experience to draw upon—they don’t need to repeat others’ growing pains. The growing pains they do experience, however, will likely be in context of their own users, economies, social dynamics, etc. That way, what they learn will be especially relevant to them. What might be interesting is watching those technologically-emerging groups quickly catch up to more advanced groups’ “fledgling stages” of social media. (In other words, emerging groups may have the advantage because they will be free of the technology-centric history the more advanced groups have lived through. As unencumbered newbies, perhaps they participate in social media so innately that they teach advanced tech users a thing or two!)

By: junaid

junaid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I totally agree with your comment that cultures have many elements of a global experience to draw upon and that they don’t need to repeat others’ growing pains. Which is why, I strongly believe, the rise of social media has been this rapid.

The growing pains this culture is experiencing are different from what has been experienced earlier mainly because of the extremely rapid rise of social media and the technologies supporting it. I believe that the primary factors holding back technologically advanced cultures from growing even faster (if that was even remotely possible) is the limit of human imagination and the overwhelming nature of this rapid rise – we have a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ situation right now and it requires that additional effort and interest to stay on top of it.

It would be interesting to delve deeper into what this would actually mean to UX and all of our methods, processes and best practices. I see us UX practitioners ideally placed to influence interaction patterns, interface designs and architect information in social media environments. We are in a position to drive social media best practices and what people start accepting universally as perhaps the ‘social media norm’. The good thing is that this cannot be a one-way design anymore and it will be the users who will easily have the biggest say on this (Two-way Design – Design 2.0).

On the flip side of this, we UX practitioners already have a tough time agreeing on a name for ourselves. These developments will just add to the confusion on what we should call ourselves with the social media tag in our job title. We already have a ‘Social Media Analyst’ role (http://tinyurl.com/djtsul) which has been gaining acceptance and it would be interesting to see more such titles gaining universal acceptance as the field matures.

By: jamiefromcleveland

jamiefromcleveland — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Two thoughts from Dave Malouf seemed relevant to this article and the comments, bulleted items from his Interaction 09 powerpoint “Foundations of IxD: A path to IxD critique.”

1.”It isn’t the power of our tools that matter, but it is knowing what to do with them.”

2. “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” –Ani Defranco

By: junaid

junaid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

An article – with a few more insights/ perspectives on Social Media and excerpts of our discussion on your article here – is at http://tinyurl.com/klyb8t

By: orthomentor

orthomentor — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Web is developing like a human, and when you think of where we are now, the buzz is “social, social, social.”
We not only have a new social space to explore, but also have a training job ahead of us. As we step into common
space, we see humanity with all it’s warts. Spammers and swindlers are lurking around every corner one traverses on the way to a goal. But the goals can be gold nuggets.

In order for the mechanism to work properly, it will need a little widsom from Abe Maslow. We will need to manage our
new social world, and good management requires mentoring. Maslow would look at the Web and apply eupsychian management principles. If we start with his #1 assumption that everyone in the group can be trusted, then we will obviously need more than
one Web. I think he would make two: the D-web and the B-web, along with a set of vocabularistic and reputation-oriented passports to the B-web. The rest would be left behind as noise and not drag down the B-web. Closest analog now is .edu.

Perhaps “eupsychianizing” could be added to democratizing!