Tugging at the Seams: Understanding the Fabric of Social Sites
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Presenter: Clare J. Hooper (University of Southampton)
Social networking websites are becoming increasingly popular, yet it can be difficult to understand how people use these spaces. We present a systematic deconstruction method which grants insight into the nature of a given experience, and show how aspects of social networking functionality might be reconstructed in different contexts. Providing social material in new contexts would include more people in interactions which are currently limited to the web.
The slides for this talk are here: http://community.anitaborg.org/wiki/index.php/Image:ClareHooperGHC09Presentation.ppt
Juli James, GHC 2009 Live Notetaker
How we can understand social sites and user experiences?
The digital divide - a whole load of advantages that groups are not accessing or taking advantage of. Possible solution: can we provide this benefit (access to social technology) to these marginal(ized) groups.
How can we understand online social experiences to build and understanding of the "social fabric." (example: Facebook includes ambient communication.)
Experience deconstruction: Pulling apart experience to figure out the essence of an experience. (example: Deconstructing Christmas crackers. What is the nature of the experience of Christmas crackers - a shared experience - can we emulate this experience with "digital crackers"?)
The deconstruction process: Formalizing deconstruction - pull apart an experience to reconstruct it with deeper understanding.
Example - Microblogging on Facebook. Questions: What are the elements of this experience? Properties of micoblogging: What do you see, how do you submit your status?
Literal effects: concrete elements Abstract effects: emotional, intellectual, shared experience
What are the key effects? Describing the abstract experience in a neutral sentence.
Then, move to rebuilding/reconstruction.
The deconstruction process gives a logical way to understand and reconstruct user experience.
How do we broaden access to online social tools? Pervasive technologies, multimodal messaging? Must provide access in a sensible, meaningful way.
Evaluation: Working with IBM and University users for provide experiences and contexts to gather artefacts.
Questions:
Have you applied this technique to other areas? Answer: Yes, related to social networking. Survey to evaluate microblogging, photosharing and public messaging (response to a person but everyone can see it @replies and wall posts). Gave some insight to the deconstruction process.
Interested in applying techniques to understand what users are doing when something seems nonsensical (example: when friends use Facebook to reply to Twitter posts).
