Post on 21-Nov-2014
description
Redistributing Leadership in Online Creative Collaboration
Kurt Luther (Carnegie Mellon)Casey Fiesler (Georgia Tech)
Amy Bruckman (Georgia Tech)
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7Renae Robert
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Leadership andOnline Creative Collaboration
• Leadership essential to successful online creative collaboration
• But leadership is hard, and many leaders aren’t effective– Newgrounds: leaders overburdened, only 20% of
collaborative animation projects completed [Luther et al. 2010]
• How can we support leaders of online creative collaboration?
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Preview
• Background: Why online leadership is hard• Theory: Redistributing leadership• Design: Pipeline (collaboration tool)• Case Study: Holiday Flood• Implications for theory and design
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Challenges for Leaders
• Many responsibilities– Planning, problem solving, clarifying, etc.
• Challenges of distributed collaboration– Leadership at a distance
• Challenges of creative collaboration– Subjectivity, originality, ownership, completion
• Lack of technological support– Example: Newgrounds “collab threads”
[Becker 1984; Hinds & McGrath 2006; Luther & Bruckman 2008; Yukl 1997]
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Dealing with the Challenges
• How Newgrounds collab leaders manage the challenges– Simplify projects
• Top-down leadership styles• Minimize interdependence
– Work very hard
• Still, many leaders become overwhelmed, collabs fail[Luther & Bruckman 2008; Luther et al. 2010]
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Research Question
How can we ease the burden on leaders of online creative collaboration and help them organize more successful, complex, creative projects?
Design a technology, Pipeline, that helps leaders redistribute leadership to (1) other members and (2) the technology itself.
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Distributed Leadership
• Leadership roles can be separated from leadership behaviors [Thorpe et al. 2011]
– Only formal leaders hold leadership roles– Any member might perform leadership behaviors
• Leadership can be distributed in traditional orgs [Bolden 2011], online collaborations [Zhu et al. 2012]
Design implication: Help non-leaders perform some leadership behaviors
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Distributed Cognition
• System-level view of cognition– Cognitive processes can be
distributed across social groups, artifacts, time
• Systems of humans and artifacts fly airplanes [Hutchins 1995], fight vandalism in Wikipedia[Geiger & Ribes 2010]
Design implication: Technology itself could perform some leadership behaviors
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Pipeline
• Web-based collaboration tool for creative projects
• Augments, rather than replaces, existing communities– Newgrounds, Georgia Tech, etc.
• Released as free, open source software
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Pipeline features
User profiles
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Pipeline features
User profilesProjects
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Pipeline features
User profilesProjectsTasks
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Pipeline features
User profilesProjectsTasksDiscussions
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Redistributing leadership toother members
Trusted member system
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Redistributing leadership tothe software
File managementActivity feeds
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Studying Pipeline Usage
• Case study: Holiday Flood (HF)– 6-week Newgrounds art collab
• Data sources– Pipeline server logs (1100+ events)– Discussion on Newgrounds forums (140+ posts)– Interviews with 5 most active members (10.5 hours)
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Leadership in Holiday Flood
• Five behaviors for managing the work [Yukl 1997]
– Planning– Problem Solving– Clarifying Roles & Objectives– Informing– Monitoring
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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12 DrummersDrumming
11 Pipers Piping
10 Lords Leaping
9 Ladies Dancing
8 Maids Milking
7 Swans Swimming
6 Geese Laying
5 Golden Rings
4 Calling Birds
3 French Hens
2 Turtle Doves
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
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Planning
• Task system helped HF’s leaders develop and share “action plans” with members
• Pipeline’s tools encouraged leaders to plan a more complex, ambitious collab– Multiple phases, deadlines– High interdependence
“Holiday Flood was all planned and plotted. It’s the reason we needed Pipeline. I doubt it would have worked out any other way.” –Renae
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Poster
Gabriel Gabriel Robert Robert Renae (final)
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Problem Solving
• Dealing with emergencies, unexpected situations requiring immediate attention [Yukl 1997]
• In HF, Pipeline provided awareness, access to resources to help leaders and non-leaders solve problems– Poster: Multiple members iterate
on big task– Emergency drummers: Replacing
a drop-out days before deadline
ZaneZansorrow’s last-minute contribution “saved the whole project, basically.”–Gabriel
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Informing
• Gathering, sharing relevant info with members [Yukl 1997]
• Pipeline’s activity feeds offloaded some informing tasks (e.g. group awareness) from HF’s leaders
• Feeds redistributed informing to members, not just software
• Human informing provides motivation, not just information
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
Informing was “a clear sign that the leader is very much motivated with the project.”–Robert
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Implications
• Implications for theory– Distributed leadership and distributed cognition
provide complementary perspectives on designing for redistributed leadership
– Leadership in online creative collaboration can be redistributed to encourage more successful, complex, creative projects
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Implications
• Implications for design– Assume influential formal leaders, but help them
redistribute leadership beyond themselves– Beware of unintended human costs of redistributing
leadership to software – Support a variety of leadership styles
Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications
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Thank You
• Co-authors: Amy Bruckman, Casey Fiesler• Pipeline developers: Boris de Souza, Chris
Howse, Kevin Ziegler, Joe Gonzales• Georgia Tech ELC Lab• CMU Social Computing Lab• Pipeline users, beta testers• Newgrounds community• NSF CreativeIT-0855952
Try Pipeline!http://pipeline.cc.gatech.edu/
Fix Pipeline!https://github.com/kluther/Pipeline/