Social platform design

WorkshopBy Patrick Savalle, Innovation-specialist at Sogeti More information: InnovatieenInspiratie@sogeti.nl

Mass-collaboration

A new way of collaboration has emerged

it is called ‘Social’ and it ‘works’

Social in tags, an ‘extensive’ definition

Crowd sourcing

Wisdom of the crowd

StigmergyDecentralised

User generated content

Web 2.0

Organical

Mass-collaborationNetworked

Bottom-up

Communities

Crowds

Asynchronous

Social as implemented by NatureNature is the ultimate architect,

biological life is the ultimate technology

Part of the new science of ‘complex self-organizing systems’.

Structure of stigmergy:• A platform• Signals (the state of the platform)• Agents or actors leave of change signals• Predictable reactions on these signals

Examples of stigmergy:• Ants and social insects• Road / traffic• All over nature and organisms• …

StigmergyNature’s way of setting up

mass-collaboration

Social is collaboration based on stigmergy or ‘platform-communication’ that enables mass-collaboration between people that don’t need to communicate or synchronize directly and can be anywhere on earth. Social complements the machine-model (bureaucratic) of collaboration.

Social The intensive definition

(in the context of human collaboration)

Social behavior• ‘Crowd-effects’• Flocking• Social ‘reflexes’• Mathew's-effect or cumulative advantage• Conformity• Collective intelligence

Social design, a new discipline

Visual design – the look and feel of the device or platform

Interaction design – the way users interact with the device or platform

Social design – the way the device or platform lets users interact with each other, controlling social effects that result from this interaction

Based on social science, the psychology of crowds. Related to PR / propaganda, crowd-control sciences.

The optimal crowd by design

Crowds influence their members. By means of peer-pressure, flocking-behavior, conformity, etc.

The optimal crowd is • Diverse• Independent• Decentralized• Aggregated

The social designer needs to avoid • Informational cascades• Conformity• Inbreeding

The social platformBy definition of TeamPark®

Function of the social platform

Social is not based on direct communication, planning, fixed workflows or central command…

… it is based on trails and signals left in the environment, the collaboration platform

Activity-streams, persistent conversations and bookmarks, explicit social structures, collaborative documents. Things co-workers can stumble upon, triggering collaboration. Self-organizing mass collaboration. Totally decoupled and ‘unorganized’.

The platform facilitates mass-collaboration

Form of the social platform

Most known in its software-form.

… social platforms can be physical as well as virtual, ants use a physical platform, Facebook a virtual

Hybrid-forms are also possible (desirable). Mobile-technology for instance can be used to combine physical with virtual (online) elements.

What is a social platform?

What makes a platform social?Evaluate using the ‘S.O.C.I.A.L.’ acronym

Activity

Presence

Identity

Relations

GroupsReputation

Sharing

Conversation

Challenges

Stimulating

A social platform has the right mix of interaction stimuli

Presence – who is online? Where are my friends?

Identity – look who I am, rich profiles, my content

Reputation / karma – my value to the community based on ratings

Relations – my social network

Conversation – what are people talking about

Activities – what is going on right now

Groups – free forming, self-organizing groups

Sharing – common content, information, knowledge

Organic

A social platform allows its communities to form their own structures, to self-organize

Free grouping – people can form, join and leave groups themselves, easily

Organic groups – the system automatically forms groups based on the social

graph

Free tagging – people can tag all content, building a folksonomy

Automated SNA – allow people to travel en utilize their social networks easily

Collaborative

A social platform has a sensible mix of stigmergic and social collaboration & communication tools

Social network – making true flows of communication explicit, helping in finding

expertise and people

Social bookmarking – brute force collecting, weighing and filtering of information

Blogs – for broadcast communication used for opinion-building and knowledge-

sharing

Forums – for discussion and persistent conversations

Wiki – Stigmergic knowlegde base

Wall-to-wall, activity-streams, whiteboards, etc.

Intelligent

A social platform has an effective set of collaborative filters and aggregation mechanisms, harnessing the wisdom of the crowd, suppressing ‘noise’, identifying ‘quality’

Good reputation system – being able to recognize topic expertise and experts

Weighed aggregation – showing only the best quality on the front-/aggregation-

pages

Passive and active collaborative filtering – to identify quality

Voting / rating – user reputation building and content filtering (quality indication)

Adapted“Your” social platform is adapted to your crowd (employees or customers), processes and tools

Linked

A social platform should offer its users to connect to their external social networks and content

External networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, MSN, etc.External content – Blogger, Flickr, Youtube, slideshare, mindmeister, etc.External activity – Twitter, Yammer, etc.News aggregation – RSS, etc.

The social organization(extra)

The the current ‘industrial’ modelLimiting communication and formality

The industrial model is based on direct, synchronous communication and standardized workflows. The organization adopted a fixed structure and way of working.

> Synchronous communication <> Standardized workflows and work dispatch <> Standardized functionprofiles <> ‘machine-bureaucracy’ <

Social in synergy with functionalSome tasks are best performed ‘the old way’, some best the social way

‘Intelligent Design’Adapt social initiatives to workforce, processes and technology for quick-start

1. Make inventory of the wishes, talents, social

communication- en collaboration habits and

(im)possibilities of your employees

2. Identify the misplaced, underperforming and hidden social processes and the social hubs in your current, functional organization

3. Select or construct social concepts and

means which fit your people and processen and bring them alive

1+2+3 = optimal social germs