Social Information Architecture Workshop

Social Information Architecture IA Summit 2007 Las Vegas, Nevada March 22, 2007

Today’s Agenda
8:30 Introduction to Social IA
10:15 Tagging and Folksonomies
1:00 Designing for Social Sharing
3:30 Presentations, Q & A
5:00 Wrap-up & Drinks

About the Exercises
We’ll break into small groups (5 or 6 people)
Work with the same group all day
Each speaker has different exercises
Speakers might influence each others’ exercises
Present in the afternoon

Speakers
Rashmi Sinha
Thomas Vander Wal
Gene Smith

Information Architecture is the
Structural design of shared information environments

Information Architecture is the
Structural design of shared information environments
Shared design of semi-structured information environments

Social information architecture
User actions create some or all of the structure of an information environment
Using the wisdom of crowds to solve the problems of IA
Find, use and interact in information environments

Why is social IA important?
Growth in online collaboration
Emergence of web as social infrastructure
Increasing interest in using social media for business purposes
Pressure to move beyond hand-crafted IA

Recent Trends
Mass amateurization
Mass collaboration
Online sharing
Explosion of web-based social technologies

Social Software Definition
Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication.
Wikipedia

More Social Software Definitions
Software that treats groups different that individuals
Stuff that gets spammed
“ people will bend communications tools to social uses”
Clay Shirky

Social Software Building Blocks

Wisdom of Crowds
Under the right conditions, groups are smarter than individuals
Conditions
Diversity
Independence
Decentralization
Aggregation

Architectures of Participation
Systems designed
For user contribution
Around the culture and economics of openness
For individuals, groups and crowds

Creators, Synthesizers and Consumers

A Digression…

Yahoo’s Popular Photos
Different actions lead to different patterns
Patterns are consistent (but subtle)
This is information architecture
Need to understand them if we are to create structure from them

Three ingredients for social IA
Capture User Actions
Aggregate and Display
Feedback

User Actions

User Actions
Things people do online that we can track
Building blocks
Popularity
Community
Reputation
Ignore higher goals & motivations

Del.icio.us

Amazon

YouTube

The Genius of Digg

Aggregation & Display
Bringing together user actions in a relevant way
Displaying them
Rules

Kinds of Aggregation (not an exhaustive list)
Listing
Ranking
Clustering
Collaborative filtering
Other algorithms

Listing (and prototagging)

Ranking
Count an action
Order them

NYTimes.com

Clustering

Collaborative Filtering

Other Algorithms

Interestingness

Feedback

A feedback loop is a system where outputs are fed back into the system as inputs, increasing or decreasing effects.
- Wikipedia

Positive Feedback
First, close your eyes
Listen for clapping
If you hear a clap, you must also clap
Try to clap within 0.5 seconds
Don’t stop until I say stop

Negative Feedback
First, close your eyes
Listen for clapping
If you hear a clap, you must also clap
Try to clap within 0.5 seconds
Once you’ve clapped, you can’t clap again for two seconds

Positive feedback
If someone immediately around you has their hand up, raise your hand
For now, ignore empty chairs

Negative feedback
If the person immediately in front of you or to your left has their hand, raise your hand
If they put their hand down, put your hand down

Feedback fuels system

Positive feedback in Digg

Democradig

Tagging Suggestions

“ There are obvious dangers in establishing a positive feedback loop where potentially unsuitable tags may be reused due to the tag’s initial popularity and subsequent exposure as a tag recommendation. This leads one to wonder whether it is preferable to have popular (but perhaps not intuitively obvious) tags, or to have a larger spread of relatively uncommon tags, possibly representing more accurate reflections or a wider spread of points of view”
Marieke Guy & Emma Tonkin

Places to Intervene (also not an exhaustive list)
Introduce delays
Modify the strength of feedback loops
Who has access to what information?
Adjust incentives and punishments
Change the system

Challenges
Spam
Gaming
Balance
Relevance
Unintended consequences

Design Principles
Allow for different levels of engagement
Monitor and tweak feedback loops
Trade-offs: transparency v. gaming
Digg started simple, became more complicated to deal with gaming (but also became less satisfying to use)
Participate in larger ecosystem
YouTube is viral
Design new actions, aggregators, display

Exercise

http://www.slideshare.net	24
http://v-writes.blogspot.com	12
http://nform.ca	9
http://mitaimon.cocolog-nifty.com	9
http://joannapenabickley.typepad.com	5
http://fx2020.blogspot.com	4
file://	3
http://www.eleganthack.com	2
http://synaxon.blogspot.com	2
http://jisi.dreamblog.jp	2
http://socialnets.wikispaces.com	1
http://cc2009.blogspot.com	1
http://beta.linkist.com	1
http://azam1.synthasite.com	1

Social Information Architecture Workshop

by gsmith on Mar 22, 2007

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

14 Embeds 76

Statistics

Social Information Architecture Workshop — Presentation Transcript