1. 1
Co-designing a social media
service for civic participation
- Critical issues and challenges
MindTrek, Tampere
Oct 6, 2010
Teemu Ropponen (Aalto University)
Pirjo Näkki (VTT)
Asta Bäck (VTT)
Auli Harju (Uni. Of Tampere)
Kari Hintikka (Uni. Of Jyväskylä)

2. Contents
• 3 views to participation
• Case Monimos & its co-design process
• Findings: critical issues and challenges

3. 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)

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. 9
Challenges
• Defining goal and vision
• Inclusion and motivation
• Interaction and working methods
• Decision-making

10. 10
Defining the goal and vision
• Research goal vs. people's goal vs. organisation's goal
alignment?
• Crystallizing from scratch?! A lot of time from “open
scope” to 18 ideas, to 3 ideas, to one
• Despite vision being unclear, unstable and
questioned – still people worried that too much time
spent around this discussion
• High expectations

11. 11
Goal and vision
• Forming a plausible promise (Raymond 1999) (the
outcome of goal and vision) was difficult in itself, and
turned out to be:
– “Monimos is a virtual meeting place for internationally
minded people and associations in Finland to enjoy
diversity and promote active citizenship”
• Creating a plausible promise for the participants and
important for the sake of communicating of the
process and rationale as well as managing the
expectations.

12. 12
Inclusion and motivation
• Supporting heterogenous group
• Understanding ranging motives: “job”,
“association duty”, “personal reputation
gain”, “fun”, “interest”
– How much to expect people to participate?
• New people joining, a critical moment!
– …sometimes slows things down, but also
energizes!

13. 13
Interaction and working methods
• Participation high-spirited and intensive
(possibly a multicultural “upside” )
• Methods in workshops - not always culturally
suitable, or implemented in a different way
(e.g. people preferred talking over PostIt’s)
• Methods and tools are a form of power

14. 14
Interaction and working methods
• Common vocabulary & conventions vary
– E.g. does feature priority voting have to be
“democratic” or is it “just” indicative
• Abstract and open tasks were difficult to get a
grasp on between the workshops
– Social media –like participation “affordances”
(think e.g. “like”) should be used more to get
higher participation

15. 15
Decision-making process
• 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

16. 16
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

17. 17
Thanks!
• Questions?
• Have a look at:
– http://www.monimos.fi
– http://somus.vtt.fi
• Contact:
– Teemu.Ropponen@tkk.fi , Pirjo.Nakki@vtt.fi

18. 18
References
Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and
beyond: from production to produsage. Peter Lang
Publishing: New York.
Erkkola, J. (2008). Sosiaalisen median käsitteestä.
Helsinki, University of Arts and Design. Medialab.
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The Cathedral & the Bazaar.
O'Reilly. ISBN 1-56592-724-9.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedralbazaar/
cathedral-bazaar/.