I recently read an inspiring article by Jeffrey and Shaowen Bardzell from Sept/Oct issue of interactions magazine. The first part of the piece examines the nature of avatars, or digital representations of self. The authors point out that avatars are increasingly important as the interface element through which users interact in online applications, ranging from profiles on Facebook to 3D characters used in virtual worlds like Second Life. Drawing on Goffman and Turkel, the Bardzells make some strong points about the relationship between avatar and user identity. Specifically, they recommend that designers understand avatars as subjectivities as opposed to representations: “A representation is a static signifier… a subjectivity, in contrast, is a living force, an agent that both acts in the world and is constituted in the world through action.” The authors continue:
“In this view, avatars are not images or characters radically separated from the “real” players; they are aspects of players’ real-life identities played out on virtual stages, not unlike the way the same people might “perform” at frat parties or wedding receptions or in classrooms and restaurants.”
This distinction has profound implications for the design of social software. Designing a social tool following the representation model is a relatively straight-forward, but ultimately limiting approach. Essentially, it involves providing a finite set of fields that users can fill in to describe themselves. However, if we wish to create an application that really resonates with users and becomes part of their social life, it must provide a space for more fluid and dynamic types of identity performance. The choices designers make about the structure of the platform will influence the subjectivities that users develop and experience: “As interaction designers, we might ask how the stages, or interactive ecologies, we create regulate or encourage identity performance.” Since I don’t play many videogames, the only avatar I have much experience with is my Facebook profile. I wonder, in what ways does Facebook enable or constrain different types of identity performance?
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As a new President takes office, the online world is full of speculation about the future of Internet policy in America. Hopes are high, given that President Obama is considered to the most tech-savvy political candidate to date; in fact many are touting him as the first politician to really get the nature of web 2.0. A recent memo from John Horrigan of the PEW Internet project offers Obama some thought-provoking suggestions for technology policy that are motivated by an interesting analysis of the evolution of internet use.
Specifically, the memo highlights the role of user innovation in continually shaping the nature of the web and its importance to society. According to Horrigan, as late as the 1990′s, the internet was primarily conceived of as a vehicle for one-to-many communication, similar to traditional media systems like television. This shifted dramatically during the 90′s as many users began to actively converse with one another in dial-up online communities. The phenomenon of many-to-many communication was taken to the next level with the emergence of blogs around 2004; millions of users were suddenly broadcasting their own perspectives across the web. Horrigan suggests that the latest evolution of the trend is the mass collaboration enabled by broadband and mobile internet access.
Horrigan argues that the throughout its history, the web has come to be defined by “user co-creation“. In his words, “turning users loose to find ways to use communications capacity is the animating principle for innovation in the digital society“. Coming from the user-centered design tradition, this principle is not new to me. However, I find it interesting to imagine how this consideration might influence the formation of technology policy. In my discipline, we believe strongly in giving users a central role in the design of products and systems through methods such as ethnography, participatory design, and usability evaluation. But of course, every design is constrained and influenced by the organizational, political and economic systems that it inhabits. What would it mean then to apply a user-centered philosophy to the formation of these meta-structures?
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As is often the case regarding new technology, early research about social networking sites (SNS’s) has tended to lean towards either one of two extremes. On one side, utopist techno-enthusiasts predict that SNS’s will enable a more connected, democratic, and productive society. And on the other end, alarmist critics assert that MySpace is eroding the social morality of the Generation Y. For me, both perspectives often seem out of touch from the actual experience of using applications like Facebook or LinkedIn. In contrast, Ellison, Stamp & Steinfiel’s recent article in interactions presents a positive, but realistic description of online social networking that particularly resonates with my own experience. Based on their study of Facebook among college students, the researchers from Michigan State summarize of a few of the most salient aspects of social networking.
SNS’s are built around the idea of connecting and communicating with “friends”. Some critics, such as Christine Rosen, have argued SNS’s “dilute and debase” the term friendship, because they encourage users to add people to their friends list who are really only casual acquaintances. Ellison et al point out that the ability to maintain connection with acquaintances is fact one of the biggest benefits of using SNS. These acquaintances, also called weak ties, are the former friends, friends-of-friends, and other random people that one meets socially and would generally lose contact with. SNS’s make it easier to keep track of these individuals, since adding someone on Facebook is much easier (i.e. less socially awkward) than approaching them in person and requesting their contact information. In the authors words, SNS’s “lower the barriers to social interaction and thus enable connections between individuals that might not otherwise take place… With minimal effort and the thinnest of information, a profile can be located and a connection created.”
These connections may never develop into close friendships, but that does not mean they are not beneficial. On the contrary, sociologists have found that valuable information, such as a new job opportunity, is more likely to come from a distant acquaintance than a close friend. Maintaining a wide network of diverse acquaintances is thus a key to increased social capital; Robert Putnam calls it “bridging social capital” and Mark Granovetter calls it “the strength of weak ties”. Ellison et al.’s survey of college students found that using Facebook did in fact “allow individuals to manage a wider network of weak ties and thus increase bridging social capital.” In addition to providing an easy way to communicate with weak ties, Ellison et al. points out that Facebook’s news feeds feature helps keeps users peripherally aware of their acquaintances activities: “Through status updates and feeds, SNSs enable individuals to broadcast both major life changes and ephemeral activities to their broad network, allowing others to engage in lightweight social surveillance.” This effortless “social surveillance” can often spark new social opportunities. For example, when one notices that an old friend has suddenly moved to the same town, it can provide an opportunity to reestablish a connection.
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