Aesthetics: Assignment 2

Cooperation & Collaboration on the Web

The promise of the Internet as a tool to raise humanity's ability to cooperate, collaborate and solve problems is still far from reaching its potential. For those unacquainted with the power of social networks and online community to share resources and knowledge, the Web can appear like an unwieldy compendium of pages designed to be ends in themselves. Though the ability to access information is clearly a function of the web, what if we highlighted its ability to help us access each other?

Conversations on the Web

Over the past few years, the Internet has evolved to being called "Web 2.0," or "the social Web." This basically means that people are favoring interaction, participation, peer-to-peer exchange, and engagement over one-way communication flow. The platforms and medium of exchange vary widely, from blogs to social networks to music or image sharing:

Despite the growing trend towards peer exchange, the focus still seems to be on the content itself, and not so much on the people who create it. It tends to keep the web depersonalized and cold, dangerous and untrustworthy. What if we changed the perception? What if the mantra were:

"The Web is not a destination. It is an interface between human beings."

Trust, Transparency, and Authenticity

What is it that prevents us from wanting to connect with strangers via the Web in order to solve problems and take action together? Part of the beauty of the Web is that you can navigate your experience anonymously, using a made up screenname or an avatar. But, that same anonymity can be a roadblock to building trust and creating an environment where people are comfortable opening their resources to each other. So, how could an environment be created where the value of authenticity and transparency is immediately apparent, and individuals are motivated to collaborate on a globally distributed scale?

How unmediated can a mediated experience be?

In thinking about what it would take to design an interactive environment that facilitates trust-building, collaboration, and knowledge sharing, it seemed that a video-based solution could be effective. The Web can feel impersonal when the only information you have to go off is someone's professional profile or the constructed reality they create from a Facebook page or profile page on a social networking site. When you are speaking directly to that person in a live video dialogue, some of those constructed illusions fall away, and you are left with the actual person. Video based interaction on the Web isn't revolutionary - there are many neutral web applications for this, from Skype for one-to-one conversations, to Tinychat or Dimdim for group collaboration, to Cisco's Telepresence system for enterprise solutions. But, there are no good examples of a specific ecosystem designed for public video-based collaboration.

Potential Users

Not everyone wants to collaborate, so this environment is not for everyone. The mainstream mentality is still very much a top-down, command and control, hierarchical structure, where knowledge is proprietary and sharing is shunned. This environment is not for that mentality. It is intended for those who share the open-source mentality and spirit of sharing, learning, and developing together. Participants are comfortable streaming live video of themselves, using their real names, and making their skills, strengths, and social connections transparent so that they can be optimally utilized in the collective experience.

Proposal: Junto

Junto is an environment for open discussion, combined with a public backchannel. It’s not about being a platform – it’s more of a meme and a mindset of collaboration and cooperation. Junto was a club started by Benjamin Franklin for mutual exchange of knowledge and information and personal and business development. It is in that spirit that the community of people who believe “we can’t do it alone” would model the behavior online of what generative dialogue and open innovation looks like. The environment allows live conversations to occur publicly, and any other participant can listen in and learn what they are hearing.

Components

livestreaming video – The idea is to have the ability to host a dialogue, meaning 2 people. There is also the potential to include a format for group dialogues as well, that would expand to no more than 4-5 people in the video discussion during any one session. There would still be an unlimited backchannel of spectators. An additional option would allow other potential participants to be able to enter a “waiting area,” and enter the conversation when one of the other participants exits.

multiple spaces – The environment allows for unlimited discussions that could be occurring in parallel. There will be a directory available, searchable as a calendar and also by keyword, so that you are able to see what live conversations around a specific topic are in progress at the moment, as well as what conversations are upcoming. A global map view will be available with time zone charts so that participants understand the scope of who is present as well as activity status.

2 types of discussion – The host/facilitator can select one of 2 types of discussion to have – freeform or structured.

• freeform format – there is no time limit, it is just open-ended; good for brainstorming, idea generation, and hashing out perspectives and clarifying an issue
• structured format – this version is constrained, and intended to actually produce some type of “product” or piece of knowledge or task or actionable step at the end; the conversation has a limit of 20 minutes, and at the end a text box must be filled in that summarizes the takeaway of the discussion. this box will have a limited amount of characters that are able to be entered, which encourages the participants to be clear, concise, and to the point.

shared document – an area for participants to co-create text documents

shared whiteboard – an area for participants to co-create drawings

concept mapping – each conversation will have a mapper who is documenting the conversation on a concept map. the reason for using a concept map instead of just a word document is that complex issues often have many interrelated components and branches, and a concept map allows for visual representation of this. each “node” of information on the concept map can contain other metadata, which can be accessed by double-clicking on it, and another box of information will pop-up. that box could contain information like keywords, links to more in-depth info around the topic, names of people associated with the topic, etc.

public backchannel – as this is intended to be a public discussion, there should be an ability for an unlimited public backchannel. there would be a textbox available for the backchannel to enter in their comments or suggestions so that they are able to contribute to this generative discussion. the participants can join the backchannel directly through the site when they click on a conversation, or they can be imported in from twitter.

user profiles – participants can list their topic areas of interest, areas of expertise, and keywords for conversations they would like to participate in. they are also able to list what they can bring to the table in terms of an open collaboration process. meaning, they define the types of roles they feel best suited for, in order to be easily found and approached to join a discussion or project. users are able to create synapses to each other and build out their social network, as well as define the relationship to those people. the user’s network can then be viewed as a data visualization, and filtered by different criteria (keyword, role, location, etc.)

ranking participation in discussions – in addition to having a text box to fill out at the end of a discussion, users will also be able to evaluate each other on their effectiveness at engaging in collaborative, cooperative dialogue. the point of a junto is to be productive, and so behavior and participation that moves the conversation in that direction is rewarded. participants who are argumentative for the sake of arguing, disrespectful, or unable to support their arguments productively will not be ranked as highly. the public backchannel also has the ability to rank participants. these rankings will show up on the users’ profiles as a way for everyone to begin to establish a metric for evaluating each other’s expertise or value to a generative conversation.

Conclusion

The Junto environment is meant to be as simple as possible for facilitating generative dialogue and collaboration. There are plenty of other "collaborative software" features that could be added, but bloating the interface with tools is not the goal. The intent is to create the environment where the interaction can happen, and to open the API so third-party developers can create extensions off the platform - allowing for any type of extra tools to be customized by the user. The longer term vision would be an interface that consisted of floating video screens clustered around conversations and topics, making search and navigation both fun and multidimensional. The focus of the conversations is some type of content, of course, but the human-centered focus of the interaction design will highlight the fact that the web is comprised of people, not just information.

content inventory

CONTENT INVENTORY

1. Context: A set of tools to create a framework for thinking about media.

- Media Universe: RSS aggregator for all things media; a daily "media scanner"

- Media Lounge: a social network for students to connect, collaborate, and share resources.

- Media Wiki: a joint effort to compile a database of useful information, both scholarly/academic & practical

2. Information

- Resouces. All 3 tools above are resource centers. The social network allows students to post their own work/projects so the community can give feedback or collaborate.

3. Participation

- All 3 tools offer opportunities for participation; suggesting a site to be added to Media Universe, posting/commenting/sharing in Media Lounge, or building the database in the wiki.

4. Experience

I'm not sure what this means.

DREAM TEAM

Who would you like working with you ?

Chief Scientist:

Experienced with automatic structure/schema analysis and detection, search algorithms, natural language analysis, bayesian learning, Java, C++

Front End Developer:

Someone to develop interfaces

Back End Developer:

System Management

HCI Expert:

Experienced with HCI design principles

Whom would you like to work for?

? An innovation firm or futurist think tank.

With what artist would you like to collaborate?

- Stephen Wolfram: CEO and founder of Wolfram Alpha

- Nova Spivack: CEO and founder of Twine.com
- Justin Hall: developed Passively Multiplayer Online Games

- Living Capital Metrics

- Institute for Objective Measurement

- The Human Capital Institute

- Project New Media Literacies

Pitch to the Futurist Community

Hello futurists!

My name is Venessa, I'm a graduate student at The New School in NYC, pursuing an MA in Media Studies. I'm in the process of putting together a proposal to introduce an "Emergent Media & Futures Studies" curriculum into the program, and would love any guidance, feedback, or collaboration from the community here.

I've been thinking a lot about how to get Futures Studies to go 'mainstream,' and I'm hoping that this project will be able to act as a template to that end. I'm envisioning a three step process at our university:

1. Begin integrating futures material into current course offerings, and roll out a series of foundational futures studies courses
2. Combine this coursework into its own Certificate program (the school offers 12 credit certificates than can be taken as part of the MA or separately by the general public)
3. Launch a MA in Futures Studies

Now, it may take several years to get from step 1 to step 3, but I'm prepared for that. My main focus is how to launch step 1.

I think I'm sitting at a dynamic spot here at the intersection of media and futures studies. I've looked through all the courses offered within my program, and though there are plenty that cover 'new media', there are very few that look at social technologies and study the emergent behaviors (crowdsourcing, smart mobs, mass collaboration, social mobile gaming, social change possibilities via social networking and collaborative mobile technologies, emergent democracy, etc) that are arising from them, and thinking about their social/cultural/economic impacts and implications. To me this seems like an opportunity to fill those gaps.

My idea was to introduce a series of courses that would cover these topics, and then pull futures studies into it as well. What are the core concepts or coursework that should be pulled in? How can this information be integrated in a way that will create a foundation for transitioning into a full accredited MA in Futures Studies program?

As a supplement to this curriculum, I also want to roll out an open source web portal that will be used as a learning center/resource/hub for media students to understand the implications of accelerating change within context. Part of the curriculum will be for students to create media that conveys these concepts. I'm envisioning 3-5 minute videos, that give an overview of a topic, and answer the 'so what' question of why it matters. The videos would be available for anyone to reuse or share. There would also be infographics and other visualizations to show trends and make sense of big picture ideas. The reason I think it's potentially so powerful to launch this from within a media program, is because the content the students will be creating will in itself be promoting Futures Studies by displaying the validity of how introducing foresight and systems thinking can lead to creating more effective messages. I see it as being a positive feedback loop, with the input of foresight education reinforcing the output of media content. Content informed by foresight = interest in content informed by futures thinking = interest in futures studies. (at least that's my logic) I think a big barrier to the acceptance or dissemination of futures studies education has been its accessibility; creating digestible media to explain things will open the floodgates to interest and integration.

The website will also have an educator section, where this template I mentioned earlier would be located, as well as sample syllabi, modules, and course topic ideas, all available for professors to use. This section will be in wiki format, so new material can be added by educators anywhere. It'll be similar to the Foresight Education Project wiki, but with a media education twist.

I'd like the site to be open source, where anyone can contribute or partner up. I'd like to set it up as a foundation/non-profit, rather than a site specifically affiliated with The New School or any particular program. I'd hope to get support from various organizations, such as the WFSF, WFS, ASF, colleges and universities, and anyone else interested in promoting the diffusion of Futures Studies into traditional educational programs.

Intrigued?

What I'm working on now is how to put together the perfect "pitch", which would include:

- A clear, concise, and easily digestible answer to the question "What is Futures Studies?"

- Why integration of foresight education is critical

- Guidelines/framework for integrating futures studies material into current course offerings

- list of 'core' futures studies coursework to roll out (ie - a methods course, a theory course)

- sample syllabi, concepts

Anyone interested in collaborating with me this, or offering resources to point me in the right direction, please respond here or email me directly at venessamiemis@gmail.com. Thank you!

Design Process: Part 1

Describe in 2 or 3 sentences your design challenge or concept (event, experience, service, product).

My concept is to develop a resource center for graduate level emergent media education. It would be an open source project available online, and include papers, articles, links, images, and multimedia to be used as supplements to teaching. It would have a wiki, so documents could be updated and added to, and also include a social network, where educators around the country (or globe) could communicate, post articles, and share their own materials and practices with each other.

What is your communication goal? (to act, to learn, to experience, ...)

The goal is to provide a resource for professors so that existing emergent media courses can be made higher caliber, and to share information so that more of these courses will become available at other universities.

Do you have some initial ideas for exploration and choice of media? (Remember we are looking at the projects requirements not proposing solutions at this time.)

Emergent media is digital, so the internet is the landscape for exploration. I'm interested in how blogs and web video can be used effectively to produce messages and leverage influence, and how social networks and virtual worlds can be used for collaboration. I'd like to have a library of short videos outlining key concepts and implications of emergent media, and a collection of all the syllabi and course outlines from universities around the country that are available online. I also want to interview former and current students of the MA in Media Studies program at the New School, as well as faculty, to identify strengths and weaknesses of the current course offerings in this area and brainstorm new course possibilities.

Who is your audience (s)?

Graduate level professors interested in teaching emergent media courses.

What are the short and long term goals of you, your client and audiences?

The short term goal is compile as many quality resources together as I can in order to develop the curriculum, and to provide courses outlines and syllabi. I also want to compile a database of graduate educators and departments around the country who wouldbenefit from this resource.

The long term goal would be to build the website that would store all these resources, which would also allow users to upload their own content and edit or update materials, so it would be a collaborative knowledge center for educators.

Why will people want to watch/visit/interact with your media design? briefly address motivation and benefits.

Educators would have resources available for updating their courses, as well as ideas for new course offerings. Because users would be able to upload new material all the time, there would always be fresh, timely videos/images/text available for educators to bring to the classroom.

Research Proposal: Best Practices for Emergent Media Education

Problem:

Emergent Media education is a field that is both new, yet rapidly changing and evolving. A framework for education, combined with an online resource center should be created to help educators collaborate on establishing best practices for media literacy in the 21st century.

Proposal:

To develop a curriculum or "best practices" for graduate level Emergent Media & Future Studies education, that will be made available to share and annotate online.

Relevant contexts:

Technological development is accelerating at an exponential rate. In order for new media education to be valid, it will have to have the ability and flexibility to adapt strategies to rapid change.

The way we interact with each other via collaborative environments is still in development, and so our understanding of the societal and cultural implications of this are also evolving.

Being able to understand short and long-term effects of emergent media requires a level of future studies education - strategic foresight development, systems thinking, etc

Staying up do date on information to be integrated into the education will require a collaborative effort, not only interdepartmentally, but ideally on a national or even global level. Part of understanding the new media landscape is to use the tools of the environment.

Students need to be able to create media that illustrates their ability to communicate strategically, not just create aesthetic design.

Similar projects:

New Media Literacies Community Site - Project New Media Literacies (NML) is a research initiative funded in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program to explore how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise the publics’ understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.
(This site is geared toward youth education, not graduate level, but provides a tremendous amount of applicable content.)

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Education

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Competition:

I envision this to be an open source project, so there's not really "competition". Any similar or relevant material out there is a resource.

Approaches to design:

I imagine a social network like ning.com would be a good platform for building the knowledge network, combined with a wiki to build the database. And it will have to be pretty.

The Rhizomatic Underground

The following is a brief summary of the rhizome reading, followed by my takeaway:

- The term “rhizome” is used to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. (Wikipedia)

Characteristics of a Rhizome
1. Connection – any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything else
2. Heterogeneity – Because of its ability to connect anything with anything, it is by nature decentralized. Ability to connect diverse, dissimilar elements.
3. Multiplicity – It can’t be distilled down to a single source/root/location, as in a tree structure. Everything is woven together as a fabric. I imagine a social graph:
4. Asignifying rupture – You can rupture the rhizome, but you can’t destroy it! New pathways will be formed. This reminds me of tinker toys….you could pull this half apart…but just put a stick thingy in a new spindle hole, and the process begins again:
5. Cartography – the rhizome is map and not a tracing; it is open, connectable, detachable, with multiple entryways; it does not need to follow preset pathways
6. Decalcomania – there’s a mouthful. Constant adaptation via iteration.

Essentially, I feel that the point in the article was to introduce a different model of how we interpret processes. Human nature leads us to want to compartmentalize, organize, label, and structure. Because of our perception of the existence of time, we tend to do this in a linear fashion. We also look at things not only as they are located in time, but also in space. This leads us to the faulty thinking that things necessarily have to follow linear pathways in specific locations. The comparison is made to the roots of a tree. Instead, it would do us well to see processes as relational, interwoven, “proceeding from the middle”. Like the ants in my graphic above, you don’t know where they begin or end or where they’re going, and it doesn’t matter. The rhizome has the characteristic of pure potentiality; it can manifest in different ways, without being confined by the “rules” of various modes of operation. It encourages flexibility, adaptation, and creativity.

“The rhizome metaphor, which represents a critical leap in coping with the loss of a canon against which to compare, judge, and value knowledge, may be particularly apt as a model for disciplines on the bleeding edge where the canon is fluid and knowledge is a moving target.” (Wikipedia)

The notion of rhizome as process serves particularly well when attempting to understand and create new systems of collaboration, interaction, and interface….as with swarm architecture, where the e-motive house/hyperbody serves as a complex adaptive system, interacting with and responding to us, but also acting as extensions of ourselves. The pieces of the hyperbody all operate in relation to each other; monitoring, calculating, shifting and adapting based on incoming and outgoing information flow. We don’t visualize all flow in terms of “I perform this function/command, house responds with ‘x’”, rather we envision an evolving symbiotic relationship between us and it. For instance, imagine this:

In tomorrow’s home, all systems will operate on a single network. You’ll probably create an avatar to represent your home, fitted with a name & personality. He/she/it may appear on a screen on the wall when you come home, giving you a snapshot of the house’s status: temperature, energy usage, etc. It’s system will be linked to your phone too, so you can change the home’s settings and monitor activity from your handheld device. Since your phone is equipped with GPS, your house will also know when you’re on your way home, and can turn on your favorite radio station when you walk through the door, and perhaps draw a bath for you, at the temperature you find ideal. The walls will be covered with interactive wallpaper, so you can change the color or scene displayed based on your mood. The packaging on all the food in your fridge and pantry is RFID equipped, so your home can suggest recipes for dinner based on what you have in stock, as well as alert you when expiration dates are drawing near. Your house may also be linked to the grocery store, and will let you know when your favorite foods are on sale. The roof has solar panels, which move over the course of the day to absorb the maximum amount of sunlight. The windows are composed of electrified privacy glass, eliminating the need for blinds. The house automatically activates/disables this function in order to maintain optimal temperature within the house at all times. The windowpanes also capture sunlight and transfer the energy to photovoltaic cells, helping to reduce your electricity bill. Lights automatically turn on/off as you move through the house….

OK, I could go through each room of the house with this example, but I hope I’ve illustrated the idea of using the rhizome metaphor to understand the potentiality of interactive systems. Though there are deliberate exchanges between us and house, the house also functions as an outgrow of ourselves, perhaps challenging our beliefs in what we define as ‘self’ altogether…at the same time, house is interacting with itself, and perhaps with systems outside the immediate network. There’s no specific location of House…it’s a networked environment, its existence distributed. Its evolution is based on its ability to interact with other networks, and with us. Though this example is just about House, the same premise extends to all architecture, until we’re a part of a holistic, information-dense, and intelligent environment.

…and that’s why I want to live in the future.

Inspiration, My Design Personality

things that inspire me

my design personality

• i am practical. i like things that are simple, intuitive, functional, tidy, clean.

• i like to think, learn, explore, research, follow a trail and see where it leads. i prefer to be on the front end of projects.

• i like change. i expect diversions. i am adaptable.

• ideas make me thrive. i am conceptual. i like finding the connection between things.

• i like flow, in accordance with nature, human centered design, our created world as extension of self.

• i am critical. i think about how things could be better/easier/more beautiful.

• i'm future-focused. i imagine things unknown/undiscovered/not yet in existence.

media experience:

i'm interested in new media. i worked for social media company for a few years, blogging, interviewing, and doing research about how new and upcoming technologies are impacting the future of humanity. i'm not working in the media field now, but i am trying to get an internship at a design/innovation firm. i would also like to teach. (i just started my first TA position this semester, so hopefully it will be a good introduction and give me some experience).