This slidedeck is an exhaustive report consisting of research in sociological literature, user research in focus groups, competitive analysis of similar tools, and, designing for a client with no money and no technical ability. [Because this was a presentation, much of the information is supplied by the presenter. Critical information of the presentation has been added to the slide deck as 'Notes:']

1. - Designing a redirective workshop for redirective designers.
i561 - Team 2. Adam Williams, Eugene Chang, Kshitiz Anand, Sean Connolly

2. Big Picture
From the highest perspective, in the grandest terms, our client asked us
to design an online workshop for his new course - and new discipline - of
global redirective practices.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chelmsfordpubliclibrary/2210233729/

3. The Request
The workshop to be designed, should be “an electronic facility to be
created in order to encourage graduate research students world-wide to
tell each other about their projects, exchange information, make their
research available to their peers, share problems, issue invitations to
comment or collaborate.”
- Tony Fry 2008

4. The Request
Note: The entire ‘workshop’ desired is described in experiential terms.

5. Technical Features Requested
Our client was proactive and delivered the following request for
features:
User Profiles
Forums
Login / Registration
Moderator Controls
Ability to Scale
Chat
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakob/83393263/

6. Technical Features Requested
Our client was proactive and delivered the following request for
features:
User Profiles
Forums
Login / Registration
Moderator Controls
Ability to Scale
Chat
But note: do the above specs really deliver
an ‘environment that encourages users to
exchange information, share information,
and collaborate?’ Or do the above just make
it technically possible?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakob/83393263/

7. Technical Features Requested
Given the skillset of our team, we could build such a workshop from
scratch, appropriate and integrate a variety of available tools, or,
grab a fully developed online tool that delivers this function.
The question is, which approach? And, why?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakob/83393263/

8. The design question
When many viable options are available;
how do we decide which option most completely satisfies our
particular client, at this particular time, with these particular
immediate needs, and this particular vision for the future?

9. The design question
When many viable options are available;
how do we decide which option most completely satisfies our
particular client, at this particular time, with these particular
immediate needs, and this particular vision for the future?
Note: our particular client has no technical ability – not to
implement, develop, or upgrade – and has no staff, and, no money.

10. Collaborative Tools
For there is no dominant online collaborative tool to suit
this purpose.
No iPod
No Microsoft Word
No Google Search
No Facebook

11. Online Communities
Highly successful communities exist.
Yet technically similar communities fail to gain traction.
“At the time of this conference, the tendency of those involved
in building graphical virtual worlds is to create visually
compelling worlds that look good, but do a poor job of fostering
social interaction. Many of these systems have more in common
with lonely museums than with the vibrant communities they set
out to create.” (Kollock 1997)

12. Design Principles for Online Communities
Peter Kollock et al,1997
“The key challenges the Internet community will face in the
future are not technological, but rather sociological… This is not
to diminish the difficulties of creating new technologies, but
rather to emphasize that even these tasks will pale besides the
problems of facilitating and encouraging successful online
interaction and online communities.”

13. Design Principles of Cooperation between individuals
“If information about individuals and their behavior is shared among
the group, this encourages the development of reputations, which can
be a vital source of social information and control (institutional
memory).” (Kollock 1997)

14. Design Principles of Cooperation between individuals
“If information about individuals and their behavior is shared among
the group, this encourages the development of reputations, which can
be a vital source of social information and control (institutional
memory).” (Kollock 1997)
Note: So, instead of approaching this project with its technical needs
in mind, we approached from a more sociological / psychological
direction.

15. Design Principles of Cooperation between individuals
EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION (Axelrod 1984)
1ST - Must be the potential that interacting individuals will meet again
2ND - Individuals must be able to identify each other
3RD - Have information about how the others have behaved till now

16. Design Principles of Successful Communities
GOVERNING THE COMMONS (Ostrom 1990)
1ST - Group identity is clearly defined
2ND - Most individuals in community can participate in modifying rules
3RD - The right of individuals to create new rules is respected
4TH - The members particpate in moderating group behaviors
5TH - A graduated system of sanctions are used
6TH - Focus community on a particular interest group
7TH - Confront members with a specific crisis to build union

17. Encouraging Positive Actions from the Using Audience
(Kelly, Sung & Farnham 2002)
“There are 3 major questions facing designers of on-line
communities: how to get users to behave well, how to get users to
contribute quality content, and how to get users to return and
contribute on an ongoing basis”

18. Encouraging Positive and Return Interactions from the Audience
“While providing most of the standard services one expects from
an on-line community (such as discussion forums, homepage
building, chat, user reviews, etc) these [highly successful] sites
feature custom tools that have contributed greatly to the
success of the sites in a largely un-moderated capacity.
These tools include a built-in member status/reputation system,
a navigable member contribution history, tracking tools for
members usually only available to moderators… and a popularity
ranking system for all member-contributed lesson material.”

19. Repurposing Data Collection to promote sustainable community
USE DATA THAT ENCOURAGES PROPER PROTOCOL
“Community data is used to encourage its users to act in accordance
with accepted community norms, to make the community
environment self-policing, and to correctly identify continually
deviant users.”
Member identity: members are asked for real first & last name
Identity in Context: the absence of role playing and anonymity
within the community is a hugely important factor in creating
accountability, real social consciousness, and behavioral norms.
User Control of Resources: invested members tend to protect,
promote, and update their specific contributed resources in the
community, look for feedback, and ensure that the experience for
their public audience is a rewarding one

20. Status Metrics
“Community data is fed back into the site for three distinct
purposes: to increase social consciousness, to encourage and
reward user participation, and to increase the navigability of the
site.” (Sung, Kelly, Farnham 2002)

21. Status Metrics – outcomes
WITH STATUS METRICS
Members become aware of what counts as positive contribution
Low level point-rewards encourage newcomer use and return
High level point rewards encourage valuable user added content
Influence and prestige accord to most valued members
Since sites pays no one, sites take pains to let users know where and
how their content is being appreciated

22. Status Metrics – outcomes
WITH STATUS METRICS
Status metrics emerged as an entry point for new user engagement
Proper users add more content because the see how others value
viewpoint
Users provide answers because it is “their job” not because of
personal connection to the inquirers.
Metrics allow multiple viewpoints of same types of data, and have
thus become major facets of the emergent navigation scheme of
users.

23. Focus Group discussion on Online Collaborative work spaces
7 Graduate students
Experience in online collaboration

24. Online Collaborative work spaces - Dislikes
No standard method of tool use
No standard performance measure
Being forced to participate
No useful profile information
Real interaction has social cues and allows for informal interaction
Asynchronous content management

25. Online Collaborative work spaces - Likes
Searching through time (Eg Google Groups)
Organization of threads
Update emails / RSS
Usage history
User has a role in the process
Rate quality of posts
Quantity of posts

26. Online Collaborative work spaces - Likes
Provides a common ground for discussion
Contextual relativity – tools by need, finding contextually appropriate
solutions.
Having a task to perform
Easy access
Visible presentation of the dialogue
Sticky like (having a closure to a discussion, summarizing it and
putting in the lifecycle of the discussions.)

27. Comparative Analysis of Online Collaborative Tools
Note: After our research into the literature and after focus
group with appropriate high-level students in the niche field
of question, we now felt we were finally able to look into the
available tools and begin to assess what might fit our client’s
needs. So did a competitive analysis of…
Well, everything.

28. Google Groups

29. Joomla

30. Wordpress

31. Blogger

32. Media WIKI

33. phpBB

34. IRC

35. AIM

36. Basecamp

37. Twitter

38. Ning

39. Facebook

40. List-serves

41. Drupal

42. Comparing the collected online tools
After collecting 39 different online social tools, and, distilling those
into 19 exemplar tools, we matched those 19 tools up against
the pre-determined criteria that we extracted from both the
research and the focus group and the needs of our client.
The number of current online research tools that addressed the
needs of this collaborative workshop was…

43. None

44. Comparing the collected online tools
Note:
No tool currently available on the web satisfied all the
wishes and requirements of our focus group and
research. We take inspiration from this and understand
that there is a market opportunity for a concept that does
accomplish this.

45. Comparing the collected online tools
[Note:] However, a concept will not suffice in this project.
An additional constraint for our team is that our particular
client at this particular time needs a working prototype to
move forward with his endeavor. We have to make a
choice to satisfy his short term needs, but, to fully satisfy
his desires, it is also incumbent upon us to provide our
client with a vision for the long term, so that he can make
his own decisions over time as the technology tends to
improve and to achieve the full collaborative functionality
he desires for his students, his discipline, and his class.

46. Comparing the collected online tools
[Note:] Because we realize that the future direction of our
client’s vision will also impact what is the proper
technology and support he needs now, it was important
for us to manifest that future vision - that potential future
artifact that can unify all the requirements of a rich
collaborative artifact - and utilize that as an additional
constraint to the more precisely define what is the proper
technology to deliver to our client in the now.
These were our insights into defining that future object.

47. Collaborative Tool Requirements
To build collaboration, one must first have community
Primary function is an online collaboration tool
Must encourage coherent, asynchronous debate
Must encourage a ‘sticky’ final result of debate
Data collection of use must be reflected back to the audience

48. Collaborative Tool Requirements
Note:
1) The research shows that even real world collaboration is first built
on trust and that trust is the result of knowing about your potential
collaborators
2) The first requirement is that the tools primary function is that it is a
tool for online collaboration. Of all the tools studied, none seem to
be primarily built just for fostering a collaborative environment.
Even the best tools are really project management tools, focused on
delivery and timetables versus pure collaboration, or, they are social
networks with forum pages, or, content management systems
appropriated into a method of collecting content. The artifact itself
can be PART of these larger systems, and, that is likely. But to
encourage collaboration, the core of the artifact itself must be to
encourage collaboration. Nothing else.

49. Collaborative Tool Requirements
Note:
If you notice, points 1, 3, and, 4 are reminiscent of a 1) a social
network, 2) a forum, and 3) a wiki. And because some of the social
networking communities out there are already so strong, we can
focus on unifying these last two --

50. Concept Discussion
Social Google
Forums Blogs Wikis
Networks Docs
Fikis Legend
Increasing order of ability to change
content on online collabora>on tools

51. Fiki Brainstorming

52. Fiki Concept

53. Fiki facets breakdown
FIKI
The union of a "forum" and a "wiki", a Fiki is online collaborative tool
that encourages the nonlinear flexibility of collective debate and
brainstorming while simultaneously tracking, developing, and
organizing a temporally 'final' representation of the aggregate debate.

54. Fiki facets breakdown
NONLINEAR FLEXIBILITY
Design is not always logical.
A collaborative tool that encourages nonlinear flexibility is one that
accepts, tracks, tags, and coherently stores the wandering, chaotic
thoughts that enable the discovery of new insight and creation of
new artifacts.

55. Fiki facets breakdown
TEMPORAL FINAL
There is no final 'answer' to any Fiki debates.
However, there is at all times ("temporally") a coherent representation
of the aggregated, valuated pieces-of-debate that can be presented
as a linear fashion to the participating audience.

56. Fiki facets breakdown
VALUATED
In the Fiki, "valuated" refers to the ability of the community to choose
for itself that which is expressed in the final temporal representation
of any debate.
The community ranks highly those pieces-of-debate which it believes
most fully accords with its own values and beliefs.
Individuals, too; receive rankings from their peers, their activities,
and their contributions to the community

57. Fiki facets breakdown
PIECES-OF-DEBATE
Any text added to the community through debate may be parsed into
smaller pieces by any other users.
Paragraphs may be parsed into sentences.
Sentences may be parsed into phrases.
Phrases may be parsed into words.
Similarly, smaller pieces-of-debate may be refashioned into larger
semantic structure.
Both the micro and macro pieces may have their own individual
identity and valuation, as well as the complex identity and valuation
born of their union.

58. Fiki Concept

59. Three Additional Constraints for deployment
No cost / low cost
Community of technical developers
Low technical requirement for the client

60. Potential Technology: Features and Assessments

61. Potential Technology: the winners

62. Technologies assessment
Ease of Entry
Ease of Moderation
Collaboration Orientation
Transience of Records

63. Technologies assessment – positioning graph

64. Technologies assessment – positioning graph

65. The Winner
Ning

66. Deliverable
Set up a mock Ning group ourselves
Redefined the interface to make it a forum focused community
Redefined the interface according to usability
Still allow flexibility of the client
Still allow flexibility of individual users.

67. Login Screen for network

68. Home Page Screen

69. Personal Page

70. Forum Page

71. Layered Discussions

72. Most Active Groups Screen

73. Individual Group Screen

74. Features Customization Interface

75. What do We Deliver?
A list of the available technologies
A list of the modern literature
A strategic design vision for the future experience
A working prototype for the client
A working, functional prototype that is the best
deliverable for this particular client, with these particular
needs, at this particular time, and with this particular
vision for the future

76. Global Redirective Practices
Any questions?

77. APPENDIX A - LITERATURE REVIEW
ON BUILDING VIRUTAL COMMUNITIES AND ON ONLINE
COLLABORATION
Kollock, P., University of California, Los Angeles. Design Principles for Online Communities 1996
Kelly, S., Sung, C., & Farnham S. (2002). Designing for Improved Social Responsibility and Content in
On-Line Communities. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.
Jensen, C., Davis, J., & Farnham, S. (2002). Finding Others Online: Reputation Systems for Social
Online Spaces. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.
Farnham, S. (2002). Predicting Active Participation in MSN Communities. Its All in the Conversation.
Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2002-36.
Davis, J., Farnham, S., Jensen, C. (2002). Decreasing Online Bad Behavior. In Extended Abstracts of
CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.
Davis, J. P. (2002). The experience of bad behavior in online social spaces: A survey of online users.
Internal paper.
Swinth, K., Farnham, S., & Davis, J. (2002). Sharing Personal Information in Online Community Member
Profiles. Internal paper.
Farnham, S. D., Chesley, H. McGhee, D., & Kawal, R. (2000). Structured On-line Interactions: Improving
the Decision-making of Small Discussion Groups. In Proceedings of CSCW 2000, Philadelphia, December.

78. APPENDIX A - LITERATURE REVIEW
ON BUILDING VIRUTAL COMMUNITIES AND ON ONLINE
COLLABORATION
Davis, J. P., Zaner, M., Farnham, S., Marcjan, C., & McCarthy, B. P. (2002). Wireless brainstorming:
Overcoming status effects in small group decisions. Paper submitted to journal Computers in
Human Interaction.
Grudin, J., Tallarico, S, and Counts, S. (2005). As Technophobia Disappears: Implications for Design.
Group 2005.
Farnham, S., & Turski, A. (2002) Social Network Project: Applications for Online Communication and
Information Navigation. Internal paper.
Farnham, S. (2002). Visualizing Discourse Architectures with Automatically Generated Person-Centric
Social Networks Paper presented at CHI Workshop 2002: Discource Architectures.
Farnham, S. D., Chesley, H. McGhee, D., & Kawal, R. Structured On-line Interactions: Improving the
Decision-making of Small Discussion Groups. In Proceedings of CSCW 2000, Philadelphia, December 2000.
Jensen, C., Farnham, S., Drucker, S., & Kollock, P. The Effect of Communication Modality on Cooperation
in Online Environments. In Proceedings of CHI 2000, The Hague, Netherlands March 2000.
Smith, M., Farnham, S., & Drucker S. The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces. In Proceedings
of CHI 2000, The Hague, Netherlands March 2000.

79. APPENDIX A - LITERATURE REVIEW
ON BUILDING VIRUTAL COMMUNITIES AND ON ONLINE
COLLABORATION
White, S, Gupta, A., Grudin, J., Chesley, H., Kimberly, G., Sanocki, E. Evolving Use of a System for
Education at a Distance. 1999
Kollock, P., Smith, M., University of California, Los Angeles. What Do People Do in Virtual Worlds? An
Anlalysis of V-Chat Log File Data 1998
Kollock, P., Smith, M., University of California, Los Angeles. Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation
and Conflict in Computer Communities 1996
Eighmey, J., & McCord L. (1998). Adding value in the information age: Uses and gratifications of sites
on the world-wide web. Journal of Business Research, 41(3), 187-194.
Rafaeli, S. (1986). The electronic bulletin board: A computer-driven mass medium. Computers an
d the Social Sciences, 2
Braina, M. (2001, August). The uses and gratifications of the Internet among African American college
students. Paper presented to the Minorities and Communication Division, Association for Education
in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, DC.
Angleman, S. (2000, December). Uses and gratifications and Internet profiles: A factor analysis. Is I
nternet use and travel to cyberspace reinforced by unrealized gratifications? Paper presented to the
Western Science Social Association 2001 Conference