Culture * values norms and artefacts * not just language/ nation states * embedded in objects Make the familiar strange people make own communities - style-based subcultures Numerous cultures affect your life - your tech holds onto your cultural norms Usenet you couldn't modify blogging systems allow it specialised environments have got larger becasue mroe flexible and more online Craig's list Craig was there - customer service rep Flickr Stewart and Caterina welcomed you - Stewart believes in it MySpace Users got a friend - Tom posts messages - apologises, tracks them and feeds back All grew organically public personalities that give the flavour of the site passionate users - there for hours Quirkiness and culture customer service is the developers design through embedded observation aware of what is going on inside - engaging in flow with the users understand culture and evolve design - nudge it but don't try to control it HCI doesn't have a way to deal with large-scale groups surveys do little - at best personas boiled down as caricatures customer support are glorified therapists - need to be in design process people grow tired of communities - how do you sustain when founders get tired pasion means overwork scale is hard lingusitic and cultural diversity need collectiosn of people within the sub-groups dealing with porn, hate speech and problematic behaviours disheartening designers often being 1. passion is everything 2. protect from burn-out 3. diversify your staff 4. enable and empower - frame don't control 5. do not overdesign - don't be utopian update whenever anything happens 6. integrate designers and customer support make them converse and read support queues 7. stay engaged 8. document cultural evolution say how your tech decisions affected culture Why do people do this public stuff? *people talk to friends *shared interests *dating synchronicity *collision becasue of photos of the same thing familiar strangers * co-commuters on the bus who never talk, but meet out of context and have a connection and speak *go talk to every 10th person * hard people go online to find interesting and crazy people can't communicate without shared language youth language: * creating slang through misspelling * boundary control to lock out parents * your words are foreign to people too using nigger (nigga) little negro - portuguese nigga - appropriated as black culture nigga in asian gang assume langauge norms of developers Dude as one word cultural symbols: what is obscenity? "I know it when I see it" girl nipples on mainstream newspapers in brazil UAE women worried about hotpants etc computer systems that track down porn - silly, but culturally encoded some states will blok your site if they find it offensive design fro glocalization empowerr users to personlize and culturalize * hackable let them control access of their expressions * control who can see them and who they want to see be cultural spokespeople *let users modify the system and shape it *friendster stopped the community from doing things let users manage private, public and opportunites for synchronicity Dare: lots of asian users; don't understand * hire people who can trying to hide from adult culture - not searchable hiding names on purpose don't want to be formalised they know the culture predators on myspace - do you hear from predators? no older men you don't know? oh, we delete them tension between community and creators don't force, flow *rat out the dorky kid - users will block each other how can they do that in a useful way? in schools - marked on myspace can find out who is not liked 1.7 million photos a day - how do you keep porn out? how do you stop porn moderation becoming a game? create their own spaces - give them porn spaces that are shut off Heather Gold asked someone who was posting offensive photos and why doing it? MySpace memorials people write to the dead person in their comments maintaining memories cultural differences beyween cyworld and myspace who has managed scale well? 58 million users is bigger than most of the web was maintained well until parents got involved flickr and craigslist good too highlighting users creates competition - can be good or bad encourages floods - boingboinged or slashdotted MSM points to a person and they get swamped careful what you point attention at Dare: users meeting each other - should we formalise * let it be organic