Wanted/Needed: UX Design for Collaboration 2.0

There is plenty of hype about “Collaboration 2.0” at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year’s Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network (“putting the water cooler inside the computer”) there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What’s missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there’s no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it.

Clarke, Matthew C. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Social Networking

The Complex Dynamics of Collaborative Tagging  

The debate within the Web community over the optimal means by which to organize information often pits formalized classifications against distributed collaborative tagging systems. A number of questions remain unanswered, however, regarding the nature of collaborative tagging systems including whether coherent categorization schemes can emerge from unsupervised tagging by users. This paper uses data from the social bookmarking site del.icio.us to examine the dynamics of collaborative tagging systems. In particular, we examine whether the distribution of the frequency of use of tags for 'popular' sites with a long history (many tags and many users) can be described by a power law distribution, often characteristic of what are considered complex systems. We produce a generative model of collaborative tagging in order to understand the basic dynamics behind tagging, including how a power law distribution of tags could arise. We empirically examine the tagging history of sites in order to determine how this distribution arises over time and to determine the patterns prior to a stable distribution. Lastly, by focusing on the high-frequency tags of a site where the distribution of tags is a stabilized power law, we show how tag co-occurrence networks for a sample domain of tags can be used to analyze the meaning of particular tags given their relationship to other tags.

Halpin, Harry, Valentin Robu and Hana Shepherd. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Web Design>Taxonomy>Collaboration

Five Things Your Clients Should Know

What follows is a list of the five things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them.

Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>Collaboration>Freelance>Web Design

The Wisdom of Community

The web, with its low barrier to entry and permeable social boundaries, is the ultimate medium through which to explore the finer points of the wisdom of crowds. You’re surrounded by online examples: Google’s search results. BitTorrent. The “Most E-mailed” stories on your favorite news site. Each is powered by wisdom gleaned from crowds online. You need a few things to enable online crowds to be wise.

Powazek, Derek. List Apart, A (2009). Academic>Web Design>Collaboration>User Centered Design

Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The Next-Generation Internet’s Impact on Business, Governance and Social Interaction  

Coming after decades of increased capacity and expectations from the desktop at the network’s edge, the burgeoning acceptance of the cloud as a way of doing business raises a number of interesting and important questions for the broader public. What control do we have over our identities, security, and privacy? How will it change economic and business models? What are the implications for governance and cyber-security?

Lasica, J.D. Aspen Institute, The (2009). Books>Web Design>Collaboration>Social Networking

There's Nothing Rapid About Rapid eLearning

Rapid eLearning has seen a 7 or 8 year maturation that sometimes amuses me quite a bit. Why? Because many of the young developers have probably never had the experience of working within a large multimedia development team consisting of designers, storyboard teams, Flash developers, and creative artists. They are reduced to storyboarding in PowerPoint or Post-its, developing in Captivate or Articulate, and using iStockPhoto to fill in for their illustrative work.

Lloyd, John. Velocity Made Good (2009). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration

Discovering Magic

Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that.

Jones, Glenn. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Collaboration

Experience Themes

When a screenwriter can summarize a story in one sentence, he has a compass that can guide him throughout the writing process. Cindy Chastain chronicles how we can translate this approach to help us remember the quality and value of the experience we intend to deliver.

Chastain, Cindy. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Collaboration

The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging: Sin 7, Being Inattentive

One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Collaboration