Platforms for Co-Creation

     Like collaborative processes, co-creative projects can be highly resource-intensive for institutions, and, as we've seen, can require different overall staff skill sets and institutional goals to succeed. Is there a way to build mechanisms to support co-creation on a more flexible basis? (Consider BOLD for key questions that you frequently employ to guide reader expectations. SB)

     Just as there are ways to design collaborative platforms that can support ongoing and flexible collaboration by visitors and community members, there are also ways to develop platforms to support open co-creation.(Would delete this sentence. SB)

Free-range participant constructions, inside the institution - Ontario Science Center (suggested subhead, SB)

To some extent, this happens in the Weston Family Innovation Centre at the Ontario Science Centre, where the institution provides materials for visitors to build their own creative expressions. Some of these are in the context of more directed activities (described in the section on contributory platforms), but there are also highly open-ended parts of the Centre in which the museum provides little more than tools and intriguing raw materials, with no instructions about how visitors should engage or what goals they should attempt to achieve in their work. These components of the Innovation Centre run on a steady stream of materials donated and salvaged from waste distribution facilities. But they are also enabled by staff who encourage visitors to think for themselves, be respectful of others, and experiment joyfully. 

     The designers of the Innovation Centre were very careful to delineate the open-ended co-creative stations in ways that encourage preferred user behaviors. For example, an electronic take-apart station features tools like screwdrivers, scissors, and pliers, as well as many small parts and sharp objects, but this station is designed in a way to encourage visitors to face inward towards the tools rather than wielding them in higher traffic areas or carrying them to other parts of the room. Also, by separating this station and having it face inward on itself, the designers encourage visitors to spend as much time as they like exploring and experimenting without being overly distracted by the many other sounds and moving lights in the gallery. There are many small design touches like this that help visitors naturally gravitate towards participating alone or in groups, for a short or long period of time, despite the overall lack of instructions and fixed experience paths.

Collaborative production game, outside an institution - SFO (suggested subhead, SB)

     One of my favorite co-creative platforms is a non-museum project, a "collaborative production game" called SF0. SF0 is a game in which people create and perform creative tasks in the urban environment. Tasks tend to be short, evocative, and a bit transgressive, such as "distract the mailman," "reverse shoplifting (insert an object into a store)," or "create a permanent and visible neighborhood tattoo." Some are personal, like "make a sound portrait of yourself," and others encourage people to explore new places or learn new skills. Task-fulfillment is managed online, with people uploading images and text explaining their approaches to the challenges. The players are the game creators (designing the tasks), the players (performing the tasks), and the score-keepers (assigning points to others' documentation of their task-fulfillment). They are also the audience for each others' tasks and attempts to complete the tasks. 

     All of this is managed through a website at http://sf0.org, which was created by SF0's initiators, a group of three young game designers who call themselves Anti-Boredom. When Anti-Boredom described the origins of SF0 to me, they explained that in college, they had spent a lot of their free time designing complicated puzzle games throughout the city of Chicago. While they knew that people enjoyed playing the games, they realized that the real fun, at least for them, was in making up the puzzles and game challenges. So they decided to develop a game that would let people make their own games, and SF0 was born. As artist Greg Niemeyer put it, "If there is such a thing as open source games, sf0 is a beautiful version of it."

     Like all the successful platforms we've looked at, the SF0 game has several very specific design elements baked in that reflect the values and goals of the project and the community of participants. From the beginning, the designers combined open tools with capricious fiats. Anyone can submit a new task for consideration, but the tasks are reviewed by a mysterious internal board which decides which will be available and what their point value will be ("Scores for tasks are assigned based on a complicated algorithm developed by the military.").  Each task has a basic description, a base point value, a level, an associated group, and a number of participants.

     The designers explicitly and unapologetically encourage collaborative multi-person tasks and award these more points because, "real people working together is a wonderful thing."  SF0 also includes a group structure in which players affiliate with each other under broad and absurd names like "nihilistic intent" and "aesthematics," which very loosely relate to particular types of tasks. The groups are mostly  a design technique to help players self-identify relative to the game and to connect their personal experience to that of other players "like them."

     Finally, the levels parse tasks and players, helping people find tasks that are suitable for them and letting advanced players enjoy some exclusive tasks and content. The designers' comment about this is a straightforward commentary on motivating deep participation: "These tasks aren't available until you reach a certain level because SFZero wants all players to experience character-building and forward progress."

     Beyond these designer-specified elements, there are also components of SF0 that have been intentionally designed to encourage particular kinds of co-creation by players. Tasks are clearly split into those that have been completed and those that are in progress, and higher status is given to completed projects. This both incentivizes sign-up, as it is easy to click and say that a project is in progress, but motivates people to carry through to completion, or praxis, so that other players can see what they have accomplished. Once a task is completed, it can receive votes and comments, which add to a player's points for completing the task. While the designers assign each task a fixed number of "base points," individuals can award each other bonus points by voting for their tasks, which is comparable to flagging favorites. The more tasks you have completed, the more points each of your votes is worth.  In this way, a player may receive "15 + 89" points, which means they were awarded the base 15 points for completion, plus an 89 point bonus awarded by the community.  Clearly, community-proferred points have a greater impact on overall score than the base, designed value.

     Because SF0 is so heavily community-directed, the community of players feel an incredible sense of ownership over the game. This can lead to a kind of cliqueiness, where advanced players create increasingly esoteric tasks that are appealing to them but may be overwhelming to new players. To mitigate this, the SF0 designers try to manage community relationships to welcome new players and encourage experienced players to be community leaders in their own right. 

     In their guide for new players, the designers make several statements to help newbies feel comfortable not just performing tasks but creating them. They wrote: "Don't be intimidated by the task completions of other players. No task is ever completed so well that it doesn't need to be done again by you, in a novel way." They encourage new players to "friend" other players whose work they like or who might be good collaborators for them. And they also try to lower the barrier to task creation, giving several reasons that new players might like to create tasks: "Think of interesting things you've always wanted to do, or things you'd like to see someone else do, or personal actions or experiences you feel other players would enjoy doing or having. SFZero is at its best when you're not only playing it, but also creating it. Plus, think of how excellent it will be when a stranger completes your task!"

     When considered from the perspective of managing a healthy community, SF0's wacky and sometimes blatantly capricious design scheme makes sense. The design team effectively says to players, "we love you and want you to enjoy taking this wherever you want. We are going to give you more features that you want. But we are also going to retain some controls that you may or may not care about that we think help keep the game thriving." Perhaps the strangest of these controls is the "era" system, by which the designers periodically reset the game (about once a year), zeroing out players' scores, changing the slate of tasks, and introducing new technical and game-related features. The designers explain the eras this way: "Every so often, the game is reset, to make room for new tasks and new players (or old players who have nowhere to go but up to the top of the Tower). And to make it important to do those little, special level 1 tasks again. At the start of a new era, everyone's score is reset, and all active tasks are retired. New (or not-recently-active) tasks are added to the list. Era changes bring significant changes to the game's mechanics, updates to the super-custom SFZero software, and adjustments to way the game's meaning is articulated. Previous changes include player-submitted tasks, teams, new forms of group membership, and various changes to the voting mechanism."

     While it might be incredibly frustrating for some players to zero out their scores, the SF0 designers make clear that the era changes are in pursuit of something more important: the continued improvement and evolution of the game. Because SF0 is managed online, the community relationships and dynamics are quite different than in programs like Youth Exploring Science or institutions like the Wing Luke. The SF0 designers can adopt roles that are mysterious, even mythic, and that enhances the experience for co-creators. In some ways, the kooky elements of SF0 help co-creators feel empowered to make their own suggestions and lead the game in the directions of greatest interest to them. SF0 is a true community of game creators, and, like the Wing Luke Asian Museum's exhibitions, its projects are developed by, for, and with its constituent community.

     Despite all of this, as of the end of 2009, Anti-Boredom is working on a new version of SF0 that eliminates scoring and the mysterious “game masters behind the curtain.” Designer Ian Kizu-Blair explained to me that they have had to devise progressively elaborate scoring and vetting mechanisms over the eras to keep the game evolving in a fair, peaceable, and fun manner, and that they felt that this type of game would reach a wider audience in a simpler, more transparent format. In this way, the Anti-Boredom team is stepping back from being mythic community managers to a new role as streamlined platform designers, valuing openness and simplicity over mystery and complexity.

(This case study seems way too long. Suggest cutting in half. What is the difference between this and any game? Why is it part of participatory museum development book? What is the volume of participation? Not sure why this is included, except as example of co-creation process that has evolved and been sustained over time. Need to hear more of its significance from your perspective. SB)

Radical Trust (suggested subhead, SB)

     What does it take to design a successful platform for co-creation? In many ways, it's identical to what is required to develop good collaborative platforms, with one significant difference: you must be fundamentally motivated by a desire to serve the needs and goals of the community with which you work.  Many people working in the world of the participatory web talk about the concept of "radical trust" and the idea that institutions and project leaders must trust the users who work with their platforms to do so in a respectful and appropriate manner. Radical trust has been extended to mean everything from trusting users not to use profanity to trusting their ability to perform complex creative or technical tasks to trusting their ability to engage with other users in positive ways. Co-creation projects are, in many respects, the ultimate version of radical trust. To execute a successful co-creation project, you have to not only trust the competencies and motivations of your participants but deeply desire their input and leadership. I suspect this is the reason that there are so few co-created projects in the museum (and organizational) space; it requires an institutional mission that is totally in service to community goals. ( This is a great summary paragraph that I would enjoy seeing as conclusion to many of the sections. It goes beyond the example to speak more particularly to what you value and observe in the case studies. That is key ingredient to stimulate dialogue with the reader--for you to risk noting what is significant. SB)

Continue to the next section, or return to the outline.