1. 1
Co-designing a social media
service for civic participation
Case Monimos
Oct 22, 2010
Teemu Ropponen // SOMUS-project
Aalto University School of Science and Technology
Department of Media Technology

2. 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)

3. 3
Background: Social media
Social
media
Content
Communities
and networks
Web 2.0
technologies
Fun FreeEasy

4. 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)

5. 5
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

6. 6
The Monimos project
Needs, problems,
ideas
Workshops
Service concept
Owela discussion,
Moniheli workshop
Service pilot
Online test,
further development
2009 2010
Design and
development
w/ Monimos team
Workshops + Owela
Public
service
Continuous
development

7. Open co-design
in http://owela.vtt.fi/immigrantmedia

8. www.monimos.fi
8

9. Monimos value proposition
“Monimos is a virtual meeting place for
internationally minded people and
associations in Finland to enjoy diversity and
promote active citizenship”
9

10. Meaning that Monimos…
• Is a positive meeting place for developing associational
democracy through
– Knowledge sharing and problem solving
– Citizen participation and deliberation
– Combining fun and utility
• Networks the associations and people who share the same
interests and helps empower them to act on important issues
• Combines physical and online spaces as well as bottom-
up/top-down approaches
 Monimos is a vehicle for encouraging collective action
10

11. 11
Issues/findings
• 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

12. Combining Online & Face-to-face :
Monimos Club yesterday
12

13. Challenges & success factors
• ”yet another website”
• will it gain enough user base to fly
• Integration/immigration hot subject??
• From talk to action?!
• Communities tend to end up meeting F2F! 
• Top-down vs. bottom-up
• Can gov agencies follow and utilize the service
• Ownership of the service & vision
• Co-design has created a driving force – will it last?
13

14. 14
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

15. 15
Thanks!
• Questions?
• We dare you to participate!
– http://www.monimos.fi
– http://somus.vtt.fi
• Contact:
– Teemu.Ropponen@tkk.fi, Pirjo.Nakki@vtt.fi