I'm a serial open course dropout, but Jim's course on digital storytelling sounds like too much fun to pass up. Is it really a course? Sounds like more of an experience. A festival.

[Whatever it is, I'm in.](http://ds106.us/) It starts January 10, 2011 (despite the claim on the course website that we must travel back in time to start the course). I really don't know what to expect as part of this - I'm sure it's going to be noisy, messy, chaotic, interesting and fun. What more could a person ask for? I know I'm way out of my league - seeing the work that the previous (and current) students have produced. *gulp*

car culture is awesome, and so completely enriching to society as a whole.

via @bikebikeYYC

A friend just sent me a link to this interesting bike safety light backpack - looks like a display mounted on the backpack, capable of displaying symbols to show what you’re doing, in addition to providing visibility. Looks cool, but I’m not sure I’d want a glowing green bullseye on my back…

I’d seen something similar recently - a bike-mounted laser bike lane marking system by LightLane Bike. It’s still just a prototype under development by Altitude, Inc., but it looks really promising.

Lin, Hui., Fan, W., & Wallace, L. (2007). [An empirical study of web-based knowledge community success](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4076736). Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. pp 1530-1605.

on web-based knowledge communities:

>A Web-based knowledge community can be viewed as a website, a web-based information system, and a community. It is a new form of communication whereby community users share knowledge for mutual learning or problem solving and conduct social interactions. As a website, system quality is important to ensure user satisfaction and participation. As a Web-based information system, information quality is a key component as the purpose of a WKC is knowledge acquisition and exchange. Without high quality information, users are less likely to feel satisfied with the community and to continue using it. Information quality and system quality together form usability factors as in Preece's community success framework.

Juristo, N., Moreno, A.M. & Sanchez-Segura, M. (2007). [Analysing the impact of usability on software design](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0164121207000088). The Journal of Systems and Software. 80. 1506-1516.

some basic stuff for the background section on wtf do I care about design/usability in the context of community interaction.

on interface usability and functionality:

>As a result of this analysis we are able to demonstrate that usability really is not confined to the system interface and can affect the system's core functionality.

Harper, F.M., Xin Li, S., Chen, Y. & Konstan, J.A. (2007). [Social comparisons to motivate contributions to an online community](http://www.springerlink.com/index/43m3303081659655.pdf). Persuasive Technology. pp. 148-159.

on designing software to encourage contribution:

>...designers of Web sites can hope to affect the volume of user contributions through design. They might take action to change the costs of the contribution by making contributions easier to make.

on providing comparisons of levels of contribution, compared to peers:

Bishop, J. (2007). [Increasing participation in online communities: A framework for human-computer interaction](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0747563205000956). Computers in Human Behavior. 23. pp. 1881-1893.

lots of blah blah and lit review, but some interesting stuff buried in the blabbidyblab...

on designing for perceived affordances:

>Developing systems that offer perceived affordances is another way of encouraging participation in online communities, as is engaging an actor in a state of flow, whereby they will experience intemperance or even deference. However, this may mean that individuals will act out less positive desires, such as vengeance, and flame other community members that offend them.

Preece, J. (2001). [Online communities: Usability, Sociability, Theory and Methods](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.124.7623&rep=rep1&type=pdf). In R. Earnshaw, R. Guedj, A. van Dam and T. Vince (Eds) Frontiers of Human-Centred Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environments. Springer Verlag: Amsterdam, 263-277.

article sets out some areas of future research etc... but spends some time talking about design, usability and sociability.

on online communities and impact of software design:

>online communities evolve and change constantly depending on their membership. What may be important early in the life of a community may not be significant later on. Success is determined by three key factors: usability, sociability and their affect on the interactions of community members. Developers have little or no control over community members, except in some e-commerce communities where interaction is strongly managed. However, developers can do much to set the tone of a community by designing or selecting software with good usability and developing suitable sociability.

De Souza, C.S. & Preece, J. (2004). [A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0953543804000232). Interacting with computers. 16. pp 579-610.

really fascinating paper on semiotics, software design, and human experience. talks a bit about the distinction between human-computer interface and human-human (mediated by computer) interface.

on software design and community success:

>well-designed software can make a successful community even more successful. Understanding the impacts of software design on the evolution of online communities is therefore an important part of building technology to support social activity online.

Krejins, K., Kirschner, P.A., & Jochems, W. (2002). The sociability of computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Educational Technology & Society. 5 (1). pp 8-22.

an interesting article, despite the insane use of acronyms to describe every fracking term in it…

on social affordances in software design:

Social affordances are properties of CSCL¹ environment that act as social-contextual facilitators relevant for the learner’s social interactions. When they are perceptible, they invite the learner to act in accordance with the perceived affordances, i.e., start a task or non-task related interaction or communication.

Beenen, G., Ling, K., Wang, X., Chang, K., Frankowski, D., Resnick, P. & Kraut, R.E. (2004). Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. CSCW ‘04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. 6 (3) pp. 212-221.

the paper describes 2 experiments to redesign web based software to increase meaningful contributions from community members.

on software design to encourage meaningful community contributions:

it is an important and difficult challenge to design technical features of online communities and seed their social practices in a way that generates ongoing contributions from a larger fraction of the participants.