Your Web 2.0 Soup is served!!! Users, hurry up and grab a spoon ;-p

A useful analogy of the social milieu of Flickr could be being similar to a bowl of soup. In this analogy the bowl itself is represented as the Web, where the soup’s broth comprises of the entire Flickr community in which each member adds their own distinct flavour. The user’s contribution can be viewed as the force that moves the spoon, where the spoon itself represents the users ideas and messages. As users participate, the spoon mixes together all the ingredients in the bowl, aggregating together the constituents of the soup, constructing trails that direct back to them whilst overlapping with trails that lead to other users.

Web 2.0 is all about offering other users opportunities to grow'n'learn.....So.. . ..Share your Design Work

As Web 2.0 users become increasingly responsible for performing tasks once relegated to designers,it encourages designers to function more as creative interlocutors. And in such a role facilitate the exchange of ideas and information between one human need and another. This person is the producer,director, the organizer-navigator…Creative interlocutors are: programmers, producers, inventors, researchers, teachers, scholars, and volunteers’ (Traub & Lipkin in Heller 89). Below, I have offered a slide-show of some samples of my Design work, in the effort that it may ignite the spark of ideas of other users. . .

Cool Slideshows

Cool Slideshows

In response to such a refocus, designers must learn to collaborate. For the act of designing has been transformed from an individual endeavour into a group effort. As learning through collaboration rather than competition, fosters an environment where exploration, analysis and risk-taking are encouraged (Burns in Heller 2001 102). This mode of Design fosters an interdisciplinary team dynamic, since designing for interactivity is about working with others (Niederhelman 17). Web 2.0 services call for a mode of Design that encourages collaborative methods of working, between teams of designers and non-designers, and between various design specialties – where the primary focus is on critical listening and communication skills (Nowacek in Heller 191). It appears that another emerging role for designers within this user-generated medium is this role of critical observer. As Charles Leadbeater remarks, History tells us the inventors (designers) are often very bad at guessing how technologies will be used, and further concludes that, consumer contributors are vital to innovation, for disruptive innovations which upset traditional markets and business models often start in the margins of a sector, with innovative users with distinct needs (Leadbeater 2006, 28-29).

Share Your Photos Y'all!!!

As a designer acting a user, it was important to promote the need to be community active (figure 39), as user participation has become the new vehicle for designers to enrich the understanding of Web 2.0 audiences. This should be an objective for any designer acting as a user; this should be the objective for every ordinary Flickr member.

As ‘Interaction is a cyclic process in which two actors(users) alternately listen, think, and speak (Chris Crawford in Shedroff 142), the role of a designer in a user-generated medium is to uphold the conversational and participatory nature of the community. They can achieve this be being community active in their own designated groups (figure 40, 41, 42), and being visible in accumulated community resources.

To view more of my photo-collections, plz follow the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing-sandcastles/

My procedures for doing Qualitative Research on Web 2.0 services

The steps undertaken to establish an online presence included:

• Creating a user account for a Web 2.0 service

• Generating content within its user page

• Enrolling my accounts into Web 2.0 search databases

• Making informative contributions to the service’s public library so that other users can benefit and can deviate to my user page

• Communicating with other users of the service by offering opinions, joining user groups, and participating in communal discussions.

• Becoming community active by establishing trails to resources of information within the service, and offering links to contacts in other Web 2.0 services.

• Promoting a convergent use of Web 2.0 services by interlinking the content amongst my various user accounts.

It was important to establish a sense of connectivity with resources found in various services, as the features of Web 2.0 services promote the circulation and re-circulation of online content. In my qualitative research as a user, it was a goal to create opportunities for open dialogue with other users to as certain emerging user needs, and as a designer, co-develop appropriate design directions through this exchange. In linking my online activities and resources in my various user pages, the probability of this occurring became highly likely.

The main Web 2.0 services I participated in are:
• My Blog (http://www.chasing-sandcastles.blogspot.com/), which is a form of an online diary,

• My Wiki (http://chasing-sandcastles.pbwiki.com/), which are online places where people can easily add and edit content, and are therefore often used for collaborative writing (Kloos 2006 8).

• Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing-sandcastles/) which is a photo-hosting service which manages content through folksonomy

• Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/chasing_sandcastles), an online bookmarking service which heavily relies on a user self-tagging system.

• DeviantART (http://chasing-sandcastles.deviantart.com/) Which is a image-hosting service where users upload their art, for critiques and opionions from the DeviantART community.