Social Computing Systems Design and Analysis

KSE652Uichin Lee

Sept 10, 2013

Review

• Elizabeth Churchill’s guidelines• What’s social-technical gap• What to do with social-technical gap?• First order approximation & guiding questions• Social computing systems research: caught-in-

the-middle

Introduction to Online Communities; and Encouraging Contribution

Uichin LeeKSE652 Social Computing Systems Design

Sept. 10, 2013

Online Communities

• Any virtual space where people come together with others to converse, exchange info or other resources, learn, play, or just be with each other

• Examples– Usenet– Yahoo!– Ravelry (fiber art community)– Product support communities (Linksys)– Wikipedia– Facebook…

• Breaking barriers of time, space, and scale that limit offline interactions..

What Does Social Science Tell Us?

• How to make thriving online communities?• Economic and various branches of psychology

– Offering generalizable theories of individual motivation and of human behavior in social situation

• (Relevant theories + experimental evidence); translated into specific claims about design choices – How to get a community started?– How to motivate contributions?– How to coordinate those contributions?

Critical Design Challenges

• Starting a new community (critical mass)• Attracting and socializing new members

– Selectivity (open source projects vs. Google)– Initial observations/interactions

• Encouraging commitment– Commitment means feelings of attachment or

connection to the group, organization, or community– Leave/join is quite easy: no contracts; no space/time

boundaries;

Critical Design Challenges

• Encouraging contribution– Inequality: power-law distribution of contribution

• Regulating behavior– How to prevent negative behavior (e.g., trolling,

spamming)– Challenging due to anonymity, textual

communication, easiness of join/leave– Can overcome challenges since interaction archival,

access control, and analysis (reputation, ranking) are possible

Sociotechnical Systems Design• Framing design options as choice architect• Design options

– Community structure (e.g., size, homogeneity, hierarchy)– Content, task, and activities – Selection, sorting, highlighting– External communication (e.g., im/exporting, shared identity)– Feedback, and rewards/sanctions– Roles, rules, policies, and procedures– Access controls (e.g., human test like CAPTCHA)– Presentation and framing– Interaction design (HCI class; leave this out in this class)

• Social engineering and paternalism? Moral arguments should be directed to goals (not about design choices)

Mining Social Science

• Helpful– Identify problems or challenges– Provide ideas for solution to the problems– Provide prediction about likely consequences of various design

decisions• But limited

– Maybe incomplete (offering no guidance on some important design choices)

– Maybe incorrect (subject to revision based on new data from new experiments)

– Creativity/care required to map general theories to the particular context of online communities

Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities

Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick

Original slides are based on Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick‘s tutorial in CHI 2012 http://www.slideshare.net/paulresnick/contributions-andstartuptutorialkrautresnick

Online Communities Face Challenges Typical of Off-line Groups

• Community start-up• Recruit, select and socialize members• Encourage commitment• Elicit contribution• Regulate behavior• Coordinate activity

But anonymity, weak ties, high turnover, & lack of institutionalization make challenges more daunting online

Reasons To Care• Overall goal. Creating sufficient volume of contribution of the resources

the group values to provide benefits to group members and others who rely upon the online community

• Different communities require different types of contribution– Social support forums: Conversational acts, empathy, offers of help– Recommender systems: Votes, opinions, comments– Facebook: Invites, accepts, wall posts, pictures – WoW guild: Time, particular skills– Threadless: T-shirt designs– OSS: Patches, code, translations, documentation– Wikipedia: New articles, facts, copy-editing, administration work, cash

Under Contribution Is Rampant• Across many Internet domains, a small fraction of

participants contribute the majority of material– Code in open source projects– Edits in Wikipedia– Illegal music in Gnutella– Answers in technical support groups

• Often leads to a power-law/Zipf curve distribution

• In many cases uneven contribution leads to an under supply of needed content. E.g., – Assessments and content in Wikipedia – Reviews of art movies in MovieLens

Wikipedia Stubs & Unassessed Articles• Many Wikipedia articles haven’t been assessed for quality or

importance• 58% of important ones are of low quality

Naïve Task Analysis of Online Contribution

To get people to contributed needed content :

1. They need to understand what is wanted theories of persuasion and goal setting

2. They have to be motivated to provide it theories of motivation1. Extrinsic motivations2. Intrinsic motivations3. How social situations influence motivation

3. They have to be competent to provide it

Requests & Related Approaches

Request Focused Attention on Needed Contributions

• Make the list of needed contributions easily visible to increase the likelihood that the community will provide them

Identify Who Should Make The Contribution

• Request help in a chat room• “Can you tell me how to see someone’s profile”

– 400 Chat rooms– DV=Time to response

• People are slower to respond when others are present• Diffusion of responsibility is reduced when people are called by name

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Others present

Tim

e to

res

po

nd

(se

con

ds)

No name Name

Group size

Email Request to Contribute to MovieLens Quadruples Ratings

• In week after email reminder, contributes quadrupled, to ~ 20 ratings/person from ~5.4

• Is this sustainable?

Ask: Explicitly Asking for Needed Contributions Increases Likelihood of Getting Them

• News site with a “Leave a comment” form at the end of each article

• Fewer than 0.1% leave comments

• Experiment to estimate the value of explicit requests– No ask: “Leave a comment” form at

end of article– Immediate: Pop-up “Leave a

comment” when user opens article– Delayed: Pop-up “Leave a comment”

on closing article

Delayed

Immediate

No ask

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Comments by Type of Request

Number of comments

(Walsh & Lampe, 2012)

Ask Someone Who Is Willing & Able to Help: Intelligent Task Routing (Cosley, 2007)

SuggestBot Suggestions

help Wikipedia users find pages to edit based on their past contributions

SuggestBotSuggestions

help Wikipedia users find pages to edit based on their past contributions

Suggestions Quadruple Editing Rates

Goal Setting Theory• Goals motivate effort, perseverance & performance

– Trigger for both self-reward (e.g., self-efficacy) & external reward (e.g., money, reputation, promotion)

• Goals are more effective if– Specific & challenging rather than easy goals or vague ‘do your best’– Immediate, with feedback– People commit selves to the goals – because of importance,

incentives, self-esteem, …– People envision the specific circumstance & method they will use to

achieve them

• Design claim: Providing members with specific and highly challenging goals, whether self-set or system-suggested, increases contribution.

Experiment Showing that Goals Work:

• Send email to ~900 MovieLens subscribers– Gave non-specific, do your best goal or specific, numerical contribution

goals – Assigned goal to individual subscribers or a nominal group of 10

subscribers (the “Explorers”)

Goal Experiment Results

• Results– Specific, challenging goals increased contribution– Group assignment increased contributions

In-game Goals in WoW

• In WoW players receive extra powers each 10-levels implicit goals setting• Ducheneaut, N., et al.(2007). The life and death of online gaming communities: A look at guilds in world of warcraft. in SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. San Jose,

California, USA.

Weekly minutes playing World of Warcraft, by level

Featured Status in Wikipedia as a Challenge

Wikipedia edits before and after reaching featured status (on front page)

Design Claims Re: Goals• Providing members with specific and highly challenging

goals will increase their contributions. • Goals have larger effects when people receive frequent

feedback about their performance with respect to the goals.

• Externally imposed goals can be as effective as self-imposed ones, as long as the goals are important to community members

• Time-delimited challenges enhance the effects of goals• Combining goals with appeals to social identity enhances

their effects

Motivations for Contributing

What Motivates Contributors?• External personal value

– Reinforcement– Pay– Privilege…

• Social utility– Reputation– Identification with the group– Reciprocity– Altruism…

• Intrinsic value of task (e.g., fun, curiosity, challenge)

These are leverage points for interventions to increase motivation

Value-Expectancy Model Provides Leverage Points for Reducing Social Loafing

individual effort

individual performance

individual outcome

individual motivation

group performance

group outcome

individual utility

6 6

3, 4

4

5

3

individual effort

individual performance

individual outcome

individual motivation

group performance

group outcome

individual utility

6 6

3, 4

4

5

3

Value-Expectancy Model Provides Leverage Points for Reducing Social Loafing

Liking for group membersIdentification with groupHistory of interaction with group

IdentifiablyFairness of reward distribution

Number of othersOwn competence Own unique skillsGroup’s incompetence

Frame request consistent with users’ values

Create incentives user valuesExtrinsicIntrinsic

People Differ in Motivations to Volunteer

• Design claims: matching experiences with motivations increases recruiting, retention

Clary, E. and Snyder, M., (1999). The motivations to volunteer: Theoretical and practical considerations. Current Directions in Psychological Science. p. 156-159.

Variety of Motives to Participate in Online Communities

Category Description ExamplesTo get new ideas.To learn about new things.To find out how to better grow flowers in my garden.To learn about new technologies for my businessTo share my knowledge of woodworking with others.To share my successes and failures with home-schooling with othersA way for me to express my anger to others who will sympathize with me.To talk out my problems and get advice.I can easily let out my emotions here and others will understand.To support others going through a rough time.To let others know that I have gone through it too.To “hang out” with people I enjoy.To socialize.To talk with people with the same interests and values.To chat with people with similar interests.To find others like me.Because it is fun.I enjoy reading and posting in the community.I like talking about baseballBecause I love woodworking is my true loveThe interface is easy to useThe search function is really cool.

Exchange Information

Obtain and transfer information about a topic, educate about a topic, learn new things.

Social Support

Obtain and give emotional support.

Common Interest

Love of the topic of the community

Technical Reasons

For entertainment

Usability

Companion-ship

To make friends

Recreation

Ridings, C.M. and Gefen, D., (2004). Virtual community attraction: Why people hang out online. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. 10(1): p. np.

Motives Differ by Group Type

• Information & social motivations dominate • But motives differ systematically across groups

– Health & professional groups seek support– Hobby groups seek friendship

CommunityType

PROFESSIONAL 53% 11% 22% 10% 3% 1% 0%HEALTH 38% 17% 38% 4% 3% 0% 0%HOBBY 52% 29% 2% 9% 3% 2% 3% INTERESTS 53% 26% 0% 9% 4% 3% 4% SPORTS 58% 18% 4% 11% 2% 0% 7% PETS 48% 36% 3% 9% 3% 2% 0%

Total N 257 124 56 45 16 9 9Percentage 50% 24% 11% 9% 3% 2% 2%

Motivational CategoryCommon Interest

Companion-ship

Info. Exchg OtherRecreation

Social Support

Technical Reasons

Leverage the Variety of Motivations

• Don’t assume everyone has the same motivationFrame the request to match individual motivations• E.g., Ads for recycling site for those with altruistic versus

financial motivations

Altruistic framing for less financially motivated

Monetary framing for more financially motivated

Assess Motivation from Sending Site

Craig's List Mturk0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

Items Donated by Framing and Source

Altrustic frame Financial frame

Source of participants

Item

s Don

ated

WikiProjects Use Collaborations of the Week (COTW) as Time-Delimited Goals

40

A COTW announcement in a project page

An example template identifying an article as a COTW

Get designated to good status in a defined period (e.g., a week or a month)

Goal has much larger effect on group members

41Pre-Collaboration Collaboration Post-Collaboration

Edits per person on the collaboration articles

Non self-identified members

Self-identified group members

Goals and Identity

• Design claim: Goals have a more powerful effects when achieving them benefits a group the target identifies with

• Association for Psychological Science Wikipedia Initiative appeals to PhD psychologists with this technique– Students motivated via extrinsic incentives

(grades)

Imagine you wanted labels for web images. How can you motivate people?

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations• Individual motivation influences behavior through external motivators

(e.g., rewards, incentives, reputation) and intrinsic motivators (e.g., fun & curiosity)

Increase contributions by manipulating extrinsic incentives & intrinsic motivations– Extrinsic motivators: Offer rewards as incentive (e.g., money,

reputation, perks, grades)• Larger rewards induce more contribution than smaller rewards. • Luxury goods create better incentives than money as rewards for more

difficult tasks. • Rewards of status, privileges, money, or prizes that are task-contingent but

not performance-contingent will lead to gaming by performing the tasks with low effort.

• People won't game the system for private verbal reward – Intrinsic motivators: Make the task fun or intrinsically interesting

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Typical Task: $.03

Financial Incentives on Threadless

Incentives vs. Reinforcements

• Incentives are promises given before the behavior to cause people to produce it

• Reinforcements are rewards given after a behavior that make it persist

Social Incentives on Amazon

Reinforcement: Barnstars

Design Claims Re: Incentives & Reinforcement

• Incentive Effects– People do more of the behaviors that they anticipate will be rewarded. – Task non-contingent rewards will not create incentive to do more of a

task or exert more effort in doing it – Larger rewards induce more contribution than smaller rewards – Small gifts create more effective incentives than small payments

• Reinforcement effects– Rewards delivered in response to behaviors cause people to do more of

those behaviors – Rewards work better as reinforces if they are delivered right after the

desired behavior – Rewards generate more consistent performance over time if they are

unpredictable

Intrinsic Motivators

• Intrinsic motivation is the process of working to achieve the rewards that that come from carrying out an activity rather from as a result of the activity.

• Comes from the pleasure one gets from the task itself or from the sense of satisfaction in completing or working on a task.

Redesign the task to make it more fun or interesting

ESP Game To Label Images

• Example of playing the game• Taboo words

Truck

Red school bus

Red school bus

Red

How would you make a contribution task more fun?

What Makes a Contribution Fun?

Flow Criteria Principles of game design

Concentration Games should require concentration and the player should be able to concentrate on the game

Challenge Be sufficiently challenging and match the player’s skill level

Skills Support player skill development and mastery

Control Support players sense of control over their actions

Clear Goals Provide the player with clear goals at appropriate time

Feedback Provide appropriate feedback at appropriate times

Immersion Players should experience deep but effortless involvement in the game

Social Interaction Games should support and create opportunities for social interaction

Mapping flow to principles of game design (from Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005)

Lessons from game design

Support Opportunities for Social Interaction

Make tedious tasks fun via social interaction

Gamification• Applying game-design thinking to non-game applications • Is the effect via fun (internal motivation) or incentives (external motivations)?

Design Claims Re: Trade-offs Btw Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation

• Adding a reward to an already interesting task will cause people to be less interested in the task and to perform it less often.

• While tangible rewards reduce intrinsic motivations for interesting activities, verbal rewards enhance intrinsic motivation.

• Verbal rewards will not enhance intrinsic motivation and may undermine it if they are judged as controlling.

• Verbal rewards enhance intrinsic motivations most when they enhance the target’s perceptions of competence