The document summarizes the agenda and key topics from a 2007 Social Information Architecture summit. It discusses how information architecture is being shaped by user actions on shared, semi-structured online environments. Recent trends like mass amateurization, collaboration and sharing are driving the need for social information architecture approaches that capture user actions, aggregate and display feedback to structure information.

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

2. 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

3. 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

4. Speakers Rashmi Sinha Thomas Vander Wal Gene Smith

5. Information Architecture is the Structural design of shared information environments

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

7. 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

16. 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

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

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

19. 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

20. Social Software Building Blocks

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

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

23. Creators, Synthesizers and Consumers

24. A Digression…

28. 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

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

31. User Actions

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

39. Del.icio.us

40. Amazon

41. YouTube

42. The Genius of Digg

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

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

46. Listing (and prototagging)

47. Ranking Count an action Order them

49. NYTimes.com

50. Clustering

51. Collaborative Filtering

52. Other Algorithms

53. Interestingness

54. Feedback

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

56. 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

57. 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

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

59. 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

60. Feedback fuels system

61. Positive feedback in Digg

62. Positive feedback in Digg

64. Democradig

66. Tagging Suggestions

67. “ 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

68. 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

69. Challenges Spam Gaming Balance Relevance Unintended consequences

70. 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

71. Exercise