A5StormDrain

A5StormDrain

To-Do

1. Please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members — discuss the answers between your group members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
2. Choose a web site and claim it as yours by editing the list on the Meta-Design Sites page (first come – first served)

Describe your understanding of meta-design in your own words (not copying a paragraph from a paper or a website)

Meta-Design is a design methodology which takes people from all disciplines and has them collaborate on a project to accomplish the previously impossible. One designer creates a seed and everyone else is able to collaborate and grow the seed however the group sees fit.

Setting: you are talking to another student who is interested in design; how would you explain to her/him the strengths and weakness of meta-design as a design methodology

Meta design has many strengths that other design methods don't have. The biggest one, like we said in the definition of meta design, is the fact that anyone who is interested can contribute. Through the internet, people can create websites and forums where a community of people get together to work on problems or share ideas. Since anyone who can access the internet can be a part of these communities, the ideas that are shared come from people with potentially vastly  different backgrounds and cultures. In the design process you could have a programmer who really understands how to write code and has a pretty full understanding of what is needed for the project. Since anyone can give their input, some stay at home parent might have an idea that the programmer would never have thought of that they can easily offer. Going directly from there, another advantage of meta design is the potential for anonymity through the internet. That stay at home parent might never be listened too if people knew they were a stay at home parent, but on the internet, they can be anyone. There is no room for potential discrimination just because everything is based on the ideas, not who the person is.

As a general example, when designing something using the user centered design methodology, the user is considered, but not all the users are going to have input. With meta design, a large group of the users can all contribute  to the ideas of what they want and can help shape the product to exact specifications they want.

Using Apple's iPod as an example, the following is a list of weaknesses of meta-design:

Lack of interest. Users may not want to contribute. They may not want to design their own iPod. They may have better things to do. They may just want to pay Apple $200 and trust that the months of Apple's effort resulted in a solid product. Along those same lines, users may not be interested in designing their own iPod for free. Meta-design assumes users have an unconditional interest in designing the product.

Lack of expertise. Users may not know how to contribute. They may not know the first thing about designing an MP3 player, from circuitry to user interfaces, and may be better off leaving everything to Apple's expertise. The only customization users may care about are simple aesthetic decisions like what color the product will be.

Lack of continued support. Users may not remain interested in performing the daily maintenance. Users may not be interested in fixing bugs or improving performance for the latest version of the iPod. They may enjoy the initial design, when new features are added rapidly, but once the product takes shape they may not be as interested in the daily maintenance it takes to maintain a good design as they once were.

(Source: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/Interact-2007.pdf)

Which Web site did you select?

Scratch

Analyze your chosen web site from a meta-design perspective:

Scratch is a site which allows the users to create and share their own interactive stories, games, art, etc., using the tools which are given to them by the creators of Scratch. This site is an open forum for people from all walks of life to contribute their art and artistic vision, and is clearly an example of meta-design. Expounding on the idea of a growing seed, the designers of Scratch have "planted the seed" by creating the site and providing tools which are easy enough for anyone to use, and the users are growing the site by populating it with their content. This site is open to a variety of users, and is built upon user interaction and participation; what is especially notable about the site is that it allows for any kind of user to participate and doesn't require participants to have any specific skill set or knowledge in order to contribute. The tools Scratch provides are easy enough for any designer to learn, and there are video tutorials and other "help" options in case a user needs help in the design process.

Although Scratch is a platform for anyone to share their creations, there are some constraints to this site that make it less effectual than other more developed meta-design sites. In the ideal meta-design site, users will not only populate the site with their own content, they will participate in re-designing and interacting with other users and their designs as well. Scratch has a wealth of varied content that has been contributed by users, but feedback from other users and interactions between users seems limited. There is a forum for discussion, but once users have posted their content on the site they receive little feedback from other users. This problem seems to be user-driven, since the designers of the site allow for others to "like" a user's content and it allows comments to be added after a project has been posted, but these functions haven't been explored or developed yet.

Please provide the names of your group members who contributed to this answer.

Matthew Thurston, Jennifer Carlson, Michael Odbert, Terry Smith, Tyler Howarth