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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)

Contents

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

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)

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)

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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

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The Monimos project

Needs, problems, ideasWorkshops

Service conceptOwela discussion,Moniheli workshop

Service pilotOnline test,further development

2009 2010

Design and developmentw/ Monimos teamWorkshops + Owela

Public serviceContinuous development

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

www.monimos.fi

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Challenges

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

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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

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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.

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Thanks!

• Questions?• Have a look at:

– http://www.monimos.fi– http://somus.vtt.fi

• Contact: – Teemu.Ropponen@tkk.fi , Pirjo.Nakki@vtt.fi

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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/.