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Ch3_pt3

Page history last edited by Nina Simon 14 years, 4 months ago

The Difference Between Networked and Social Experiences

 

    The difference between stage three and stage four lies in the extent to which the institution serves as a platform that mediates direct social engagement among users. Visitors have access to the same user-created content on both stages, but only on stage four can they access the unique users behind each creation. Whereas on stages two and three, individuals' profiles are for their consumption alone, on stage four, they are accessible by other visitors. For example, imagine coupling the Facing Mars entry turnstiles with a system that offers each visitor a sticker as they walk through indicating whether they chose yes or no. Now, if visitors wear the stickers, they not only see the aggregate responses of visitors-to-date, they can also walk up to individuals in real-time in the exhibition and say, "Hey, I chose yes too!" or "Huh.  I chose yes and you chose no.  What makes us different?" This is an experience that cannot happen based solely on the LED aggregator (stage three). It also cannot happen based solely on people making selections privately for themselves (stage two).

    As another example, recall the loyalty wall at Tina, We Salute You, a coffee shop in which patrons record their beverage consumption by drawing on the wall. This scheme is somewhere on the border of stage three and four. The fact that the stars go on the wall networks the impact of the loyalty cards. Like admissions stickers piled up on a specific spot on the way out of a museum, the accumulation of everyone's stars in one place has an additive effect that makes more customers aware that there is a loyalty system and that there are many people using it. Incorporating individuals' names (and their unique handwriting and star-drawing flair) adds a touch of stage four to the experience. You may not be able to directly connect with a person on the wall, but you have access to a tiny bit of their personal profile--their first name and a sense of their coffee-drinking habits.

    There's a familiar fundraising concept of incremental gifts pushing the needle towards an ultimate goal. We typically think of making donations as a private act, unless you are operating at the major gifts level. It's not surprising that Web 2.0 services have developed ways to move from this basic, networked fundraising tactic to one that is more socialized. For example, Kickstarter.com allows people to propose projects and invites others to fund them in variable increments (as low as $1). For any project, users can see the list of people who have backed it and then can click through to those backers' profiles to see what other projects they are supporting. In this way, Kickstarter creates a light social network of people and projects. If I back a project and Clarice backs it too, I might also want to back the other projects Clarice supports. This kind of interaction happens frequently among tight social groups, but sites like Kickstarter make it possible to socially network your actions based on affinity with people you otherwise don't know.

    And here lies the delicate distinction between stage three and stage four experiences. On stage 3, I might get the recommendation automatically from a site that "if you like this, you may also like that." Those recommendations may be driven by individuals' other profiles. But I don't get to make the link explicitly through those other profiles, as they do on stage four.

    This may seem like a very small difference, but it has significant impact on user experience. Consider Amazon.com. Amazon uses an algorithm based on "users like you" to recommend items to you for purchase. Amazon also provides user reviews of items on every item page. The algorithm is stage three; the reviews are stage four. Which do you find more valuable? I prefer the reviews, because I can make an assessment of how relevant each user's opinion is to my likely experience with the product. I can also form relationships over time, following a reviewer I trust from item to item, seeing how they weigh in. Socially networked experiences are superior to networked ones in cases where the individual taste of different users has bearing on a personal decision. You may not need the stage four experience if you are reading visitors' memories about a historic event or enjoying an exhibition of visitor-submitted toys. But you may want to have access to or at least awareness of the individuals behind opinionated content about which exhibits are most inspiring, educational, or dull.

    Socially networked experiences allow you to have access to the people behind their products, which naturally leads to the opportunity for direct social engagement with these people. In some venues, that can happen in real time. One of the best illustrations of a stage three experience that could easily shift to stage four is in the Free2Choose exhibition at the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Free2choose is a very simple exhibition. It is one room, with a long, semi-circular bench with cushions and room for about 30 people to comfortably sit and stand. Every few feet on the bench, there is a small box about the size of a lightswitch with two buttons on it, one red and one green. The visitors on the bench face a large projection screen. The screen plays an interactive show that invites visitors to vote on a variety of issues related to human rights. The setup is always the same. A one-minute video clip presents the issue (for example, whether students should be allowed to wear headscarves to school). Then, a screen pops up with a statement like “Students should be allowed to wear religious symbols in school.” Visitors see a ticking countdown and are told to vote by pressing either the green or red button on one of the small boxes. Green indicates yes; red, no. At the end of the voting countdown, the results are shown, both for “Visitors Now” and for “All Visitors” (meaning all visitors to date).

    Free2choose is a walk-in exhibition—visitors can freely enter and leave at any time. Each issue takes about 90 seconds between the setup video and the voting, and the entire loop takes about 20 minutes. I spent over an hour in Free2choose on a Sunday afternoon, and while it was not as busy as the rest of the museum, it had 20 to 40 occupants at any time. People stayed through several topics, many as long as ten minutes. The show content was compelling, but the voting was what really energized people.

    What did people like so much about the voting? Pressing the buttons was not particularly thrilling, and I never saw kids playing the usual bang-on-the-buttons game. The thing people liked was seeing the results. Every issue cycle was the same: visitors would watch the video in silence, and then as soon as the voting opened, a murmur of conversation would run through the room. It increased to a loud buzz when the results were displayed, and then cut off when the next issue video began.

    What was so interesting about the results? When you take a poll alone, there’s no suspense about how you voted. I vote yes for headscarves, and then I see that 65% of other visitors over time agreed with me. But Free2choose was more like being part of a deliberating jury than acting as a solo judge. In Free2choose, I voted yes for headscarves, saw that 65% of all visitors agreed with me, but also saw that only 40% of the people currently in the room agreed with me. When the results of the room differed greatly from those of “All Visitors,” the surprise was audible. I was in one group where 100% of us voted that Protestants should be able to parade through Catholic areas in Northern Ireland, and we looked around with curiosity and complicity when we saw that only 60% of “All Visitors” agreed with us. Every group was different, so every outcome was different.

    Free2choose is powerful because it introduces social tension. When I voted in the minority, I felt that I was in the minority not just conceptually but physically, in that crowd, in real-time. Because the room was often full, I found myself looking for people “like me" in the crowd. But I had no way to identify them in the faceless group of button-pushers.

    And that’s where the social dimension of Free2choose (and of all stage three experiences) falls short. There is no component to the Free2choose exhibition that highlights the specific selections made by individuals in the room, and no vehicle to incite conversation among differing groups. Yes, there was lots of talking in that room—but only in whispers among familiars. At one point, I was standing next to a group of British people who voted that flag-burning should be illegal. I had voted the opposite. We were standing close enough—a few inches apart—that I could “spy” on them as they hit the button, but I was not comfortable asking them about it or having a discussion about why.

    How could Free2choose bridge this social gap to encourage visitors to talk with each other directly about the issues? Here are some design suggestions that could foster stage four or five engagement:

    •    Voting could be (more) public. There could be spotlights in the ceiling that would illuminate different areas of the room in different colors of light corresponding to those who had selected red or green when the results are shown.

    •    Instead of voting in place, visitors could be directed to vote by moving to one side of the room or another.

    •    After the results are up, the screen could instruct visitors to find someone in the room who voted differently from them, or just to ask their neighbor what they think about the issue and or the results.

    •    The game could instruct people to share voting stations and to use a brief discussion to come to a consensus vote. As it was, there were too few stations and people awkwardly looked on as others used them.

    There are many other options. They aren’t hard to implement and they needn’t dramatically change the exhibition, but they could dramatically change the social experience. Free2choose is a perfect example of the limits of a stage three experience. Even though you are densely packed in a room with other people expressing your opinions about important issues, you don’t turn to your neighbor and start talking. The social stigma is too great, and the tools don’t help you cross those barriers. You vote and see the results (stage three), but the voting mechanism is not a social object that mediates and motivates engagement with others (stage four). And so, even though you are all together in the same room, grappling with tough issues, you will never launch into group discourse (stage five).

    Not all people would want to go to the next level and have a conversation with strangers, but it was clear that some visitors did want to talk about the results (based on their conversations with companions) and were absorbed by the overall experience. And in an international city like Amsterdam, in a museum focused on one girl's extreme story that has touched the whole world, it seems to me there is an enormous opportunity to go to the next level and facilitate cross-cultural discussion. Why do you oppose flag-burning? How is it related to your nationality, your age, your gender, your experience? I was aching to ask these questions. It would have made for an extraordinary and unique museum experience in line with the overall mission of the Anne Frank House.

    As it stands, I had an interesting time comparing the results from different groups in my head. But I didn’t understand why those groups were different, and I didn’t gain more insight about how different people think about complicated issues related to human rights. I wanted more than just a fun interactive—I wanted to understand the other people in the room. And I don’t think I was alone in that feeling. Perhaps we should have put it to a vote.

 

 

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Comments (1)

hadrasaurus said

at 8:26 am on Nov 6, 2009

Very good. You rang all three bells - good premise (ding), good example (ding), good expansion for other institutions/readers (ding).

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