assignment :
To explore the role of audience in designed interactive systems, do research on interactive communities and audience contribution. Your assignment is so understand these three community types:
- forums/bulletin boards
- WIKIs
- blogs
- read: the WIKI handout from "The Wiki Way", and this web article: Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website, and this Wikipedia entry on the "Neutral point of view" (all by week 3)
Your work is to be completed by week 03 (other than the blog)
Find a forum on a topic of interest to you, and make some postings to it
- there are design forums (designforum.aiga.org/, forum.howdesign.com/), technology forums (slashdot.com), and thousands of others. find one or more and use it both as a reader and poster
- make sure you get some reactions to your postings
- what do you think makes forums and the postings within them work, or not work?
- who just reads (these are called "lurkers") and who posts?
- how does the design of the forum influence the discussions?
- what makes a forum successful? What is success?
- what are forums good for, what are they bad for?
- what do you think of moderation? Is it necessary?
Explore the world of wikis and form an opinion about where wikis fit in the design world.
- read this article on using wikis in the (software) design process
- do research on the wikipedia on design topics - how are the entries?
- make a contribution to the design encyclopedia wiki - this can be a new entry, or a modification of the old one. the contribution can be as simple as correcting a typo or fact, or as complex as writing a whole new entry on a topic of interest to you.
(we)blogs :
Each student will create their own blog and update it at least once a week for this term (up to week 12).
Use www.blogger.com to create the blog, setting it up to post to your mdp web space. Put a link from your home page to the blog.
- blog about your work in the MDP. remember blogs are not diaries, but a public forum to put your ideas out there. Example topics: your work in design communication, thesis ruminations, documenting your research and reactions on an insprining designer or book, etc.
- you should find other blogs that relate to your topic, and add links to them on your blog to create an extended blog-sphere.
- post ideas, images, references, links, inspirations, correspondence in your blog
in the days before the week 3 class, post your conclusions and reactions regarding audience contributions to designed systems--this is your "paper" for this section of the course. This paper should address many of the topics listed in each section on the week 1b page that describes interactive communities.