Only when users and designers collaborate within the Web 2.0 environment, can design directions be attained thru consensus

With an increased focus on user participation, a role of a designer in this user-generated medium should by one of “conversational leader” (Leadbeater 20). The user experienced gain in Web 2.0 is based on a system of reciprocity (Leadbeater 20). Designers should actively engage in establishing values and norms, they should continue to forge pathways to there network of peers, and offer these users access to their resources.

A metaphor I like to use in regards of how user participation in Flickr enriches it's service is, Flickr being a blank canvas in which users become the artists in painting a communal experience. Each new contribution of content, becomes a new colour in the awaiting masterpiece, where their user interactions within Flickr, becomes the force behind a new stroke of the brush on the canvas, melding the colours, creating vibrancy and creating depth. And Flickr says, PAINT ON!

Designers in a User-generated medium must offer Users trails to their Resources. . . Cos Sharing is Caring Y'all!!!

Above is my Showreel of the scenes I had inbetweened as an intermediate IB at DisneyToon Studios Australia.

The advent of Web 2.0 services can be viewed as extending a familiarity of the importance and value of graphic design across disciplines (Gromala 55) as a designer acting within such a community can assist in a role of “creative interlocutor”. Traub and Lipkin describe a creative interlocutor as a navigator of associative trails of thought and resource, who enables others to freely and creatively manage their human interests. This individual is one who is integrated: his creativity functions as part of an organic part of society, and he acts to connect for the common good…In doing so, he enables others to further their creative potentials (in Heller 82).

To view my Show-reel as an IB trainee, plz click on the link below:
http://chasing-sandcastles.blogspot.com/2006/10/disney-ib-showreel.html