Quora and the social semiotics of Q&A
February 2nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The buzz about Quora:
In recent weeks, Quora has rapidly become the shiny new object du jour, and has grabbed the attention of technology writers and the digital elite. Sign-ups are rising meteorically which has a lot of people asking, what makes Quora superior to existing online Q&A and reference sites?
Using a semiotic square to understand the online information landscape:
I threw together the simple semiotic square above to help explain why Quora may well succeed. As this analysis indicates, Quora has managed to foster a burgeoning information community that reconciles openness with authoritative quality of content; an opposition that has been a challenge for earlier entrants in the Q&A space. Quora achieves this partly by helping users frame question intent while effectively signifying member subject authority.
Better Q&A through exclusion:
Quora offers much richer Q&A content than competitors through the types of users the service attracts. Quora is decidedly sparse in its layout and offers no obvious “getting started” welcome mat for new users. This absence of explanation (contrast Quora’s homepage to Posterous, for example) likely deters the web’s hoi polloi and favors digerati. The interaction design follows the visual paradigm of social platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, familiar territory for the types of users Quora tacitly aims to attract.
How Quora signifies authority and accountability:
As with other online Q&A sites, Quora lets users up-vote content they deem high quality and trustworthy. But unlike these sites, user identity plays a much greater role in the Quora experience. Yahoo! Answers, for example, uses avatars, made-up user names, and limited profiles. Contrast this with Quora’s lengthier member profiles that are typically tied to social graphs (the site encourages you to integrate your Facebook and Twitter accounts with Quora). Users are thus motivated to provide thoughtful Q&A as their reputation is on the line. In short, real-life identities and social graphs become symbolic stand-ins for offline credentials.
Good syntax keeps the bar high:
Grammatically correct questions promote quality of responses. As a post on Quora notes, “clear questions address the ‘broken windows’ mentality: if people see sloppy, incoherent or half-formed questions, they will tend to the same in responses (consciously or not).” With Quora, questions are not owned by askers. Questions can be edited by the community, promoting a higher quality experience compared with other Q&A sites.
Four Degrees of Cognitive Surplus
September 4th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
A little sketch I threw together in OmniGS on my iPad to capture a key theme from Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus.
Design Frameworks: History and Usage
August 4th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Here’s a great resource from Hugh Dubberly for those of you who are obsessed with design frameworks, their history and usage. Hat tip to Jessica Striebich for sending this my way. Enjoy.
Social Media and Mobile Fundraising for Haiti: A Behavioral Economics Perspective
March 2nd, 2010 § 3 Comments
Accompanying Prezi can be viewed here.
Much has been written about the success of mobile giving following the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010. The Red Cross has received considerable praise for its partnership with mGive. To date, mGive has processed over $37 million in donations to Haiti according to the Denver-based nonprofit’s blog. This far surpasses previous mobile fundraising efforts following natural disasters, including the $190,000 the Red Cross raised through mobile giving after Hurricane Ike in 2008.
The convenience of donating through mGive was an obvious boon to the Red Cross fundraising effort: A donor simply texts the word “Haiti” in a cellphone text message to the number 90999, which automatically adds a $10 pledge to their phone bill. As mGive’s website claims, donations can be completed within 10 seconds. And beyond convenience, mGive effectively reframed and decoupled the transaction. Since the loss of $10 would be realized at a later date and was bundled with the mobile phone bill (a service that most people consider an indispensable utility), the transaction didn’t count as a charity withdrawal in one’s schema of mental accounts.
But why did mobile giving catch on this time around?
With the loss of over 230,000 lives, the human toll resulting from the Haitian earthquake ranks it the deadliest natural disaster of the past century occurring in the Western Hemisphere. Undoubtedly, this magnitude of human loss and suffering helped spur donations. Couple this sobering reality with endorsements from the White House and various celebrities and you can easily see why the Red Cross partnership with mGive was deemed a legitimate and worthwhile cause.
As I’ve illustrated in the Prezi above, social networking sites also fueled the success of the Red Cross campaign. Within hours of the earthquake, the Red Cross tweeted: You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti.”
This text meme quickly took root in social networks. According to web analytics firm Sysomos:
There were 2.3 million tweets about “Haiti” or the “Red Cross” from Jan. 12 to Jan. 14, and nearly 150,000 tweets that included “Haiti” and “Red Cross.” Of the 2.3 million tweets, 59% were retweets. There were also 189,024 tweets that included “90999.”
This is clearly an unprecedented case of the effects of social media on fundraising. But in addition to rapidly getting the word out, I would argue that social media also played a significant role in fueling what behavioral economists call “image motivation.” Image motivation refers to an individual’s tendency to be motivated by how others perceive them. Applied to altruism, this phenomenon explains the social currency of “looking good by doing good.”
Social Media, Image Motivation, and Giving
In their 2007 paper titled, “Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially,” Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha, and Stephan Meier examine the effects of image motivation and extrinsic rewards on giving. They find that the desire for social approval means that:
Conditional on prosocial activity yielding a positive image, people will act more generously and prosocially in public than in private settings.
We can assume that in the case of the Red Cross mobile giving campaign, image motivation was perpetuated through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Tweets and status updates that spread the word about texting “HAITI to 90999” more than served the purpose of notifying others; these short strings of text provided a means of image motivation. As word of the cause quickly disseminated from social media influencers to the masses, donating to the cause became an established norm within social networks. Social reputation was now at stake.
Ariely, Bracha, and Meier demonstrate that in addition to improving participation, image motivation in social settings also increases the amount people donate. They conducted an experiment that simulated making a donation to the American Red Cross through a combination of keystrokes in a software program. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: (1) A private group, where the amount donated was only known by the participant and (2) A public group, where the participant had to publicly reveal to other participants what they donated. Participants in the public group donated significantly more to the Red Cross: the average number of clicks, at 900, was nearly double the average of 517 clicks for participants assigned to the private group. (Ariely, Bracha, and Meier then go on to investigate the interplay between extrinsic rewards and image motivation.)
What might this teach us about future fundraising efforts?
In their 2004 paper, “Public goods experiments without confidentiality: a glimpse into fund-raising,” James Andreoni and Ragan Petrie examine the group dynamics of image motivation in fundraising. Andreoni and Petrie found that:
Identity and information can matter. Knowing only the distribution of contributions, but not the identity of the givers, has no discernible effect. Knowing only the identity but not the individual contributions has a modest effect of increasing donations. However, knowing both who is in your group and what each is choosing [to donate] can significantly increase giving . . . the combination of information and identification tends to increase contributions. Information and identification together result in 59 percent more giving to the public good over the baseline of the typical public goods experiment.
Along with Ariely, Bracha, and Meier’s findings above, this implies that fundraising efforts that make use of social media benefit from making it easy for donors to share the amount they contributed with their social network friends and followers. In the case of the Red Cross campaign for Haiti, $10 provided an agreeable anchor point that allowed people to give within their means — skip Starbucks for two days and you’ve made up the loss. Without this anchor point, the mGive transaction would have lacked a social norm within social networks and may not have been passed along to the degree it was. I wonder what this might have looked like had people been able to broadcast how much they gave above and beyond the $10 anchor point, or alternatively, how many people they shared news of the cause with.
I think what we can learn from this is that it is incumbent on fundraisers to understand the principles of image motivation within social networks when organizing efforts that utilize social media. Further, as mobile fundraising continues to gain momentum, fundraisers should look to smartphone apps like Causeworld and The Extroardinaries for a glimpse as to where mobile-social giving is headed. These apps feature novel approaches toward signaling image motivation in social networks while on the go.
Designing for life after chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
December 16th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
For over six months, I was a warrior. From one infusion to the next, there was always another battle. Then came the end of chemotherapy. Driving home from my last appointment, I had to pull over. I was having a panic attack. What next? I was now a warrior without a war. It was just me. And the rest of my life. —Joan, Cancer Survivor
I just wrapped up a project for Memorial Sloan-Kettering as part of a seminar in Service Design taught by Mark Jones of IDEO. Joining me on the project were three of my colleagues from the Institute of Design: Jessica Striebich, Nikhil Mathew, and Julia (Joohyun) Lyoo.
While this presentation represents preliminary thinking toward providing a service design solution, there exists an undeniable void with regard to codified psychosocial care during and following chemotherapy. It’s also undeniable that many of the analytical tools and algorithms used to aggregate and analyze online sentiment can very practically be applied to tracking and visualizing a chemotherapy patient’s emotional journey.
It’s my hope that our thinking on low- and high-tech continuity of psychosocial care aids efforts at MSK and other cancer centers . . . drop me a line if you should happen upon this and find our thinking useful for similar projects.
In Memory of Pam Taucher: Inspiration for Cancer Care Service Design
November 5th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Two years ago today, Pam Taucher passed away following a long fight with breast cancer. Pam was my mother’s best friend and colleague and was like a close aunt to me. Her infectious sense of humor and lovingly brutal honesty are what I cherish on days like today.
I recently interviewed my mother toward better understanding what Pam went through as she received chemotherapy. This little piece of unedited, raw ethnography was conducted for a service design project I’ve embarked on for Memorial Sloan Kettering’s new Brooklyn chemotherapy clinic. With help from some extremely gifted colleagues from the Institute of Design, my hope is to learn from Pam’s experience toward creating a new approach for continuity of care following a course of chemotherapy. And who knows, maybe sharing raw footage like this will help someone on a similar quest.
We love you Pam, ashes scattered in the digital ether.
Subtle hints at Apple’s tablet ecosystem and the future of print media
October 19th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Last week, Apple made a policy revision to the App Store that will now allow developers to sell additional content through free apps. This change may seem subtle to the casual observer, but as Brian Chen of Wired points out, this seemingly minor change actually points the way to Apple’s broader potential to save the newspaper and publishing industries:
Picture a free magazine app that offers one sample issue and the ability to purchase future issues afterward. Or a newspaper app that only displays text articles with pictures, but paying a fee within the app unlocks an entire new digital experience packed with music and video. This is an example of the “freemium” model that Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson explains in his book Free . . . It’s plausible to imagine that a freemium strategy would be much more effective through a tablet app than a website. If the tablet is indeed designed like a 10-inch iPod Touch or iPhone, as insiders have described it, then publishers developing apps will be able to take advantage of features such as the accelerometer, GPS, live video streaming and multitouch to innovate the way they engage with their audience — and, ultimately, persuade them to pay.
As I’ve said in the past, freemium and content convergence are Apple’s doorways into redefining the print industry while simultaneously giving the tablet form factor a unique place in people’s lives (well beyond what the Kindle and Sony Reader have achieved). This is another great example of Apple’s platform thinking at work — they are poised to create new economics for the newspaper and print industries through a retail, distribution, and hardware ecosystem. Such an ecosystem certainly makes Microsoft’s Courier tablet demo look like a lonely piece of hardware.
But this much is obvious.
What has yet to be seen is whether newspapers and publishers can complete the picture with innovative content partnerships and build sustainable business models for the tablet ecosystem. Simply going the route of the Dallas Morning News and Amazon revenue-sharing model will be unsustainable for newspapers. Remember what James Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News said in his testimony to Congress about the fate of the newspaper industry (quoted by Malcolm Gladwell in his review of Chris Anderson’s Free):
They [Amazon] want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue, I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.
And herein lies the most difficult part of getting this right. With music and film, Apple’s iTunes created a new marketplace and service ecosystem around content that is in ever-increasing demand. That is to say, music and movies didn’t have to be reinvented to develop the iTunes experience — they just needed to be digitally rendered, distributed and delivered. But in the case of newspapers and publishers, the experience needs to be entirely re-imagined before people are willing to pay a premium.
Otherwise, we’ll just continue to consume the smorgasbord of free content at our fingertips.
Streams with banks vs. Waves without shores
October 15th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Many in the tech press are wondering whether Google Wave will achieve mass adoption. And while I haven’t yet been granted a golden ticket to try the beta, I’m already skeptical of whether this platform will find a place in my lifestream. I think the biggest issue I’ll have with Wave is that it strives to be synchronous while at the same time having few design constraints. Let me explain . . .
I find utility in Twitter, Yammer, and Facebook as both synchronous and asynchronous platforms. At times, I’m actively engaged in streams of data from these services. At other points in time, I momentarily dip into the stream or receive push notifications of certain types of information. And all three of these platforms have inherent technical or behavioral constraints, which is actually what makes them so useful: Throughout the day, I snack on bite-sized Tweets and bit.ly links from people involved in my interests. At work, I tap into Yammer to get a brief glimpse of what colleagues are tackling. And Facebook, while not as constrained as Twitter, provides me with a ready stream of social snacking. All three of these platforms combined with MMS, Skype, and good old telephony are always at hand with my iPhone.
So while constraints have helped make platforms like Twitter useful for me, Google Wave’s lack of constraints and demand for synchronicity may ultimately make it useless. Lev Grossman said it well in his recent review of Wave:
Wave operates in real time, it demands immediate attention like an IM or a phone call, or for that matter, a crying baby. When Wave is up, it’s hard to focus on anything else. That isn’t a defect, but it does narrow the scope of its usefulness. Getting more information right away isn’t always the most efficient way to work.
I suppose only time and experience will tell whether Wave is a useless firehose of distraction or a useful collaboration and aggregation platform. So I best get back to finding myself one of those golden tickets.
Microsoft reinvents the Trapper Keeper with Courier
September 23rd, 2009 § 1 Comment
The fanboy web is abuzz with the above conceptual video that demonstrates Microsoft’s proposed Courier in action. The Courier is a notebook-style tablet computer with gesture and handwriting recognition that uses the familiar activities of paper-based note-taking and scrap-booking as metaphors for how one would use the device. With all the speculation surrounding the forthcoming Apple tablet, some have suggested that Courier is a reminder that we shouldn’t take our eyes off Microsoft’s secretive work in the sub-laptop arena. But aside from the very well-produced concept mockup demonstrated here, what fascinates me about Courier is that it is built on a very different design metaphor compared to supposed mockups of the Apple tablet. That is to say, Courier emulates using a notebook . . . or dayplanner . . . or Trapper Keeper.
But is this the right design metaphor?
One could argue that this is the perfect blend of the familiar and the new that could open up a new category of mobile computing. But on the other hand, this could be limiting. Where the Courier demo excels at demonstrating the device’s exceptional on-the-fly note-taking and inspiration-gathering capabilities, it seems ill-fitted for media consumption. I can’t imagine using the device for entertainment content.
And herein lies a clear indication of how Apple and Microsoft will compete in the sub-laptop arena: Apple’s tablet will likely major in entertainment (no duh) while Microsoft will stake out mobile business and academic utility.
Stay tuned to see how this plays out. For now, I’ll take one of each.
