User Interface and Community

An investigation of how form affects discussion and community in online communication spaces. This research was facilitated by a Sarai Independent Fellowship for the period December 2004 to August 2005.

Pre-Proposal: Initial Discussions

Summary of initial discussions over email with the folks at Sarai, when applying for an earlier two month fellowship that I eventually did not get. This was written in August 2004, months before terms like “Web 2.0” and “Long Tail”, which describe similar ideas in greater detail, came into popular use.

Proposal: The Medium is the Community

With the advent of social software for the Web—prominently in the form of weblogs and social networking services—we see the Web change form from an information publication space to an interactive communication space. This results in the overlap of what were previously distinct research areas: how the medium affects the message, and how user interface affects usability in computer software. Previous studies by experts have covered online media, online communities and user interfaces, but the new overlap of all three is relatively unexplored. I intend to study this overlap, of how user interface shapes the communities that form in online communication spaces.

Post 1: Introduction

An introductory post to the Sarai Reader List. Includes an example illustrating the purpose of the study.

Posts 2 & 3: The URL as User Interface

A case for why the URL is a critical component of User Interface on the web, showing the role of the URL in (a) being human readable, (b) being an archival path, and (c) revealing server architecture.

Posts 4 to 8: User Interface on LiveJournal

Postings made between May and August 2005, on how LiveJournal’s user interface shapes the community that forms there.

Final Posting: What Ails the Sarai Reader List?

Final presentation at the Sarai Independent Fellows workshop in the form of a presentation, contrasting traffic on the Reader List with that on LiveJournal. Additional discussion followed on-list.

Presentation: What Ails the Sarai Reader List?

Slides from my final presentation at the Sarai Independent Fellows workshop in Delhi, August 2005.