Making Representations Matter: The Practice of Shaping Participatory Media Artifacts

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Making Representations Matter The Practice of Shaping Participatory Media Artifacts

Al Selvin

Knowledge Media Institute The Open UniversityMilton Keynes, UKandVerizon Telecom & Business ITWhite Plains, NY USA

http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/selvin

Knowledge Media Design Institute6 August 2010, University of Toronto

Involving participants in the creation of media artifacts

What is participatory media?

• Unfolds in real time

• Involves direct contact between people

• Getting “hands” on and in the media artifacts is central

The term is also used to apply to asynchronous media such as wikis, but those are not my focus

What is participatory media?

• The person(s) orchestrating the participatory event, responsible for its success

• Concerned with the quality of the representation and the participants’ relationship to it

• Making choices about how and when to shape, intervene, and act

What is a participatory media practitioner?

. . . requiring skill and craft. . . combining aesthetic and

ethical concerns. . . are not well understood

Considerations for participatory media practice are common to many forms of professional practice involving representations

My research has focused on participatory hypermedia practice . . .

The role of practitioners in collaborative, real-time shaping of a visual hypermedia artifact

Open University Scenario Building

NASA Process Modeling

Workshop Mapping

Dimensions of participatory media practice

My specific focus

Situated practitioner experience

Expert practitioners in project settings(NASA e-Science meetings)

Melissa

Research settings (1)

Workshops held at NASA AmesAnd Rutgers University in 2007

Participants and practitioners had varying levels of experience with the tools


Shaping form

CEU analysis

Narrative description

Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Characterizing the representational characterof the whole session

What kind of shaping took place?

Analytical tools

Shaping form

CEU analysis


Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Mapping the coherence, engagement, and usefulness dimensions of each timeslot to build up a signature for the session

Aids in identifying sensemaking episodes

Analytical tools

Shaping form

CEU analysis


Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Rich description of sensemaking episode

Analytical tools

Shaping form

CEU analysis


Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Micro-moment moves and choices during the episode

Analytical tools

Shaping form

CEU analysis


Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Characterizing the practitioner actions during the episode in aesthetic, ethical, and experiential terms (informed by theoretical framework)

Analytical tools

Shaping form

CEU analysis


Grid analysis

Framing analysis

Increasing theoretical sensitivity

Analytical tools

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ames Group 1 C

E

U

Ames Group 2 C

E

U

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ames Group 3 C

E

U

Ames Group 4 C

E

U

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Rutgers Group 1 C

E

U

Rutgers Group 2 C

E

U

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Low Medium High

Numeric rating Color



1 2 3

Ames RutgersGroup 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 1 Group 2

Coherence 2.2 1.5 2.3 2.7 3.0 2.9Engagement 2.7 2.0 2.6 2.9 2.9 2.9Usefulness 2.0 1.4 2.2 2.8 2.8 3.0Overall 2.3 1.7 2.4 2.8 2.9 3.0

Good places to look for discontinuities & sensemaking moments

Good places to look at how (relative) equilibrium was fostered and maintained

Comparing across sessions

Comparing Shaping Themes with Questionnaire Results

Shaping Index scores

Rank in "how good was the session"

Software proficiency rank

Facilitation proficiency rank

Hab Crew 83 1 1 1

Remote Science Team 78 2 1 2

Rutgers Group 2 70 5 4 3

Ames Group 4 66 3 6 5





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Themes in the Shaping Index 5. Degree of practitioner adherence to the intended method during the session 6. Participant adherence/faithfulness to the intended plan 8. Practitioner willingness to intervene – frequency and depth of intervention 10. Degree of practitioner-asked clarifying questions to participant input11. Degree which practitioners requested validation of changes to representation 13. Degree of intervention to get participants to look at the representation14. Degree of collaboration between multiple practitioners (if applicable)15. Degree of collaboration/co-construction between practitioners and participants17. How “good”/successful was the session? 22. How much attention to textual refinement of shaping23. How much attention to visual/spatial refinement of shaping24. How much attention to hypertextual refinement of shaping25. Degree of ‘finishedness’ of the artifacts

Comparing Shaping Themes with Questionnaire Results

Shaping Index scores

Rank in "how good was the session"

Software proficiency rank

Facilitation proficiency rank

Hab Crew 83 1 1 1

Remote Science Team 78 2 1 2







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Software proficiency not as good a predictor of shaping skills or session success

Software proficiency not as good a predictor of shaping skills or session success

Facilitation proficiency apparently correlated with high shaping index ratings

Facilitation proficiency apparently correlated with high shaping index ratings

Facilitation Proficiency Score Rank

Hab Crew 38.0 1

Remote Science Team 33.0 2

Rutgers Group 2 29.5 3Ames Group 1 24.0 4Ames Group 4 20.0 5

Rutgers Group 1 20.0 5Ames Group 3 18.0 6Ames Group 2 10.0 7

Categorization of sensemaking triggers

Category Types of TriggersSessions Affected

Pertaining to representational structure

Incoming input doesn't fit structure; no place to put/contain current input

AG2

Current container (representation structure) not really working

Hab

Pertaining to volume or type of participant input

Too much too fast (too much coming in at once, too much going on)

AG1, AG4

Ambiguous input from a participant RG2

Someone going off in another direction than intended with so much energy that cant' be stopped

AG3

Pertaining to information/subject matter

Needed information is missing RST

Realization that a helpful construct or material is somewhere else

Hab

Pertaining to intended process/plan

Participant expresses confusion as to purpose RG1

Participant expresses unhappiness with what other participants are doing with their ideas/input

RG2

Seeing things go off course; "veering off" AG2, AG3

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Ethical dimensions of practitioner actions in response to triggers

Category Type of Response Result

Direct collaboration between practitoners and participants

Collaborative navigation to find item of interest (Hab)

Ran out of time (with recovery)Negotiation/agreement on placement of an item (Hab)

Direct intervention aimed at participants

Acknowledging diverging participant concerns, but directing focus elsewhere ("this is what the focus should be -- this not that is what we're doing") (AG2)

Discussion and representation diverge from each other, no

longer referring to representation

Clarifying purpose, giving direction/expected behavior (RG1)

Back in the swing of things

Process call and offer of alternate solution (RG2)

Decision to delink then strong visual validation (RG2)

Direct intervention for purpose of practitioner action

Holding forward progress until new strategy is in place (AG4)

Stopping forward progress and asking for help; stop-and-think to recover (AG1, AG4)

Indirect intervention

Independent investigation (RST)Acceptance of imperfect data,

decision to move onMeta-comment capturing interim resolution (RST)

Making silent meta-comment on map (AG3)

Ran out of time (without recovery)Changing/blurring roles

Aiding and abetting (caught up in the subject matter itself instead of standing above/apart) (AG3)

Non-intervention Stunned silence (AG3) 25

Aesthetic dimensions of practitioner actions in response to triggers

Category Type of Response Result

Direct contribution to shaping

Collaborative navigation to find item of interest (Hab)

Ran out of time (with recovery)Negotiation/agreement on placement of an item (Hab)

Decision to delink then strong visual validation (RG2)

Back in the swing of things

Intended to help participant shaping

Process call and offer of alternate solution (RG2)

Clarifying purpose, giving direction/expected behavior (RG1)

Independent investigation (RST)Acceptance of imperfect data,

decision to move on

Acknowledging diverging participant concerns, but directing focus elsewhere ("this is what the focus should be -- this not that is what we're doing") (AG2)

Discussion and representation diverge from each other, no

longer referring to representation

Creating space for remedial shaping to take place

Holding forward progress until new strategy is in place (AG4)

Back in the swing of thingsStopping forward progress and asking for help; stop-and-think to recover (AG1, AG4)

Partially having to do with shapingMeta-comment capturing interim resolution (RST)

Acceptance of imperfect data, decision to move on

Making silent meta-comment on map (AG3)

Ran out of time (without recovery)No aesthetic dimension

Aiding and abetting (caught up in the subject matter itself instead of standing above/apart) (AG3)

Stunned silence (AG3) 26

kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/hyperdiscourse

compendium.open.ac.uk/institute knowledgeart.blogspot.com

This research is part of…

Exercise: facilitate participatory shaping of a representation

• What did you do to strengthen the coherence (clarity, organization, expressiveness) of the representation as it unfolded?

• What did you do to foster participant engagement with the representation? How, when, and why did you intervene to gain a greater, or different kind, of engagement?

• How useful was the representation to fulfilling the goals and purpose of the session? What choices did you make to increase the value of the representation for the participants (and for the session)?

Reflection after the exercise

Making Representations Matter: The Practice of Shaping Participatory Media Artifacts

Technology

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