Social Media Participatory Design and Cultural Engagement Jerry

Social Media, Participatory Design and Cultural Engagement Jerry Watkins ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove, Australia November 2007 By Alvin John

Presentation Outline Overview of Participatory Design Australian Museum Stories experiment Critique of the paper GUEPS and CDs

Participatory Design (PD) originated in Scandinavia in 1970 s User-centered design approach: • involves users as much as possible so that they can influence it • integrates knowledge and expertise from other disciplines than just IT • is highly iterative so that testing can insure that design meets users’ requirements

Background Experiment conducted at the Australian Museum to investigate the potential of social media based communication strategies Australian Museum Established in 1827 and oldest institution in the country Heritage has a collection of 14. 5 million specimens Attracts web visitation rates exceeding 1. 5 million per month Museum authorities Shifted focus to quality of experience offered Explore social media as a medium to interact with communities of interest ▪ Youths ▪ Informal learning groups

Experiment Participatory Design (PD) was chosen as the strategic methodology to guide the social media experiment PD was extended to museum exhibition design library website design PD methodology was broken down into three phases for the museum project Phase 1: Due Diligence Phase 2: Iterative Design cycles Phase 3: Desired Performance

Participatory Content Creation Method

Phase 1: Due Diligence Working party formed Author as the designer/researcher Museum’s Head of Audience Research Head of Web Services

Phase 1: Due Diligence cont’d Phase 1 had three steps: 1. Organizational observation ▪ 2. Domain review ▪ ▪ ▪ 3. First hand experience of culture and working practices Reviewed current best practices by cultural institutions Attracted by digital story telling genre – participants write and produce autobiographical “mini-movies” Chose to try “do-it-yourself” digital narratives Initial project strategy ▪ ▪ Use museum staff as participants in the first cycle of prototyping Develop skills in creative storytelling Project was christened “Australian Museum Stories”

Phase 2(a): Prototyping Workshop Design Social prototyping experience Experiment conducted with online audiences, rather than physical visitors Initial phase was designed ▪ to skill museum staff in social media production techniques ▪ in-house training program 2 -day workshop Focus on three main areas: ▪ Creative teamwork ▪ Creative development ▪ Multimedia production First workshop in June 2006 ▪ Eleven participants assigned to four teams Second workshop in November 2006 ▪ First workshop was sufficiently positive ▪ Fourteen participants assigned to four teams (2 teams of three, 2 teams of four)

Creative teamwork Teams consisted of: The writer The creative producer The editor The executive producer

Creative development Micro-documentary – a creative non-fiction piece (preferably informal tone) Teams start with a tentative story idea, genre definition, required sources checklist Executive producer leads creative development exercises Team members required to generate by the end of the day existing content original content final scripts storyboards

Multimedia Production Second and final day of workshop Editing and postproduction at the Powerhouse Museum’s Soundhouse Vectorlab facility Participants given crash course on Sony’s Vegas video editing suite Tasks: Record voiceovers Edit micro-documentary according to storyboard End product – Presentation of playable microdocumentaries in full screen and web-ready codecs

Phase 2(b): Evaluation techniques instituted: Output analysis ▪ Produced nine artifacts from eight groups over two workshops ▪ Varied audiences interested in different subjects In-workshop survey ▪ Self administered questionnaire ▪ Indicated a high level of satisfaction with social prototyping experience (24 out of 25) ▪ Organizational pressure may be a factor (internal audience)

Phase 2(b): Evaluation cont’d Post-workshop surveys ▪ Discussion group approximately three months later ▪ Sessions based on ideas of “Future Workshop” ▪ Involved complete a self-administered survey ▪ How stories created could be used by museum ▪ Reflections on any perceived organizational barriers Focus groups ▪ Four focus groups conducted in February 2007 ▪ Capture reaction of external potential target audience ▪ ▪ Parents of under-5 s Parents of under-16 s Science teachers Culturally active seniors ▪ Positive reaction to more informal style of museum communication ▪ Negative reaction to the quality of micro-documentaries

Phase 2(c): Strategy First iterative design cycle concluded in March 2007 Parties involved in discussion: Workshop participants Senior management Critique the current design, conduct of workshops, evaluation protocols to make improvements

Phase 2(c): Strategy cont’d Outcomes of the strategy meeting Production quality ▪ Improve quality of audio and video created Genre and format ▪ Micro-documentary format was a success ▪ Include other genres like linear micro-documentary and online interactives for the museum’s forthcoming Web 2. 0 website upgrade

Phase 2(c): Strategy cont’d Second iterative design cycle ▪ Continue cultural engagement through social media ▪ Establishment of a core in-house team to continue and sustain creative social media production ▪ Conduct pilot projects with external communities associated with the museum ▪ Wide extensive use of the micro-documentary format ▪ Creation of vodcasts and podcasts by external biodiversity groups, students of secondary schools ▪ Powerful way to summarize results of studies and disseminating to the wider audience ▪ Online distribution ▪ Introduce blogs and wikis

Summary Participatory Design application extended to this experiment was a success Incorporated users into decision making process With social prototyping in an iterative design cycle, Australian Museum teams designed new tools, techniques and genres of mircodocumentaries for communication strategies

Critique of the article Positive results with application of Participatory Design Not so positive Working party intervention might be a little too much for the first iterative cycle of PD – more structured than usual Not a lot of detail about questionnaires and surveys administered Not a typical experiment with hard data tabulated and arriving at a conclusion – different style (PD approach)

GUEPS and CDs GUEPS Explaining Mental model CDs Visibility Consistency Progressive Evaluation

Questions