glocalisation · 2006-03-08 23:17

glocalization
danah boyd

ugly word – shoving the global and local together

we can now cross space and time, engage with them like they’re next door

but most people are concerned with things that are local to them

culture
values, norms, atifacts that influence worldview
embedded in objects and technology

people are in multiple culture groups
eachgives sense of aesthetics, values

cultural norms evolve over times
and evolve symbols

vacations show an entirely different culture – and make you see the strangeness of the things you thought were normal

mass culture never happened
people create smaller communities in large communities

how you design technology is influenced by these

2 early types of social software:
generic platforms – usenet, IRC, mailing lists
communities – WELL, Barbelith

now we’re building a new level

taking the platform social software and letting you modify it

specialised environments have got much much larger

craigslist, flickr, myspace

passionate designers & users
integrated feedback loop
organic growth
public personalities
emergent culture

everyone on myspace has one friend – Tom (one of the founders)
helps, apologises

the culture can be alienating – such as myspace’s design

customer service is not segregated – users help users, users talk to the team
sites updated constantly

embedded observation
living inside the culture they helped to frame
nudge the culture; not controlling it

very similar to what ethnographers do

many companies do user studies – but these are focussed mainly on one instance of a technology
surveys and interviews
often just funnelled into marketing rather than design
and if in design, are often boiled down personas

problems – passionate designers are hard to come by
not a job, a belief system
but can’t be maintained…

how do you balance this out?
creators get tired
harder – how can you scale?
cultural diversity
linguistic diversity

newer users may not have the same goals
even conflicting

design decisions stop really bad behaviours but limit new good behaviours
can’t design for 50 million users

can’t always understand the cultural behaviours

designing through embeddeness
passion is EVERYTHING
protect from burn-out
diversify your staff
enable and empower, don’t control – can only help frame it, don’t expect the same goals, you are a host
do not overdesign – cannot design for perfection
integrate designers and customer support – not separate – customer support queues are really important
stay engaged with the community – no documentation normally, hard to pass off to new designers
document cultural evolution

why public community sites?
they are not homogeneous
barriers arise
people are more drawn to those like them
most people go online to talk to their friends already (mainly)

opportunity for accidental interactions
“familiar strangers” – Stanley Milgram

moments of something in common, and that something being relatively rare

language
culture is embedded in language
e.g. youth language – personalising their words , morphing language for self-expression. boundary control opportunity.
cannot machine translate

language isn’t a reason to communicate in itself

linguistics need context

language norms of the developers are unlikely to look like their users

obsenity is cultural

economic issues
whose definition of morality are you working with?

empower people to
personalise and culture-ise
control access of their expressions
be cultural spokespeople

let users manage private, public and opportunities for synchronicity

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