A5TeamCacti

A5TeamCacti

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 places an emphasis on allowing users to effect and change the experience after it has been created. Rather than designing a strict experience, the goal is to facilitate user control and modification after release. The use-case for an application, while probably known at creation, can shift or be misunderstood by initial designers. By allowing manipulation of the system these changes can be made by collaboration within the user base.

As was presented in the reading, users are more likely to be happy with a system they have influence over and helped design. By allowing all users to have some stake in the state of the system, many potential frustrations are avoided. This is the goal of meta-design, to allow and support the user in collaboratively changing the system to improve it.

The fundamental point is designing for design (implied by the use of "meta"). The original design work is done to allow and help further design to take place organically among users.

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

Strengths:

If article or pieces of information are missing from initial design, then the user can edit and add crucial information.

Users can become the designers shaping the web page to their own personal needs, make the website more appealing to its own users.

Gives users active rolls allowing them to explore their creativity.

Weaknesses:

No vetting or evaluation process before changes are made. (ex, no fact checking pre-edit on wikipedia, every must be fixes later)

Non-trained users won't be able to integrate the years of study made on good design
Weaknesses:

This requires your users to be somewhat technical savvy.

It depends on the users to generate the content. So it requires motivation as well as knowledge.

A lot of work is required from the designers to develop an application that is intuitive enough for people to modify.

Requires a creative idea initially, so that people will have a reason to use it. Example: wikipedia...if people were not interested in wikipedia, it would be a worthless tool because no one would be using it.

Which Web site did you select?

Wikipedia

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

Wikipedia follows Meta-Design very well. It is under-designed and it is up to the users to design and add information to the site.  The site does not have a predetermined set of possibilities but the evolution is up to the users. Wikipedia's users are all meta-designers because they use their own creativity and knowledge to add to the site and expand on its even expanding wiki pages.  Wikipedia also follows the seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding (SER) model. Wikipedia started small and through the reseeding or the many users Wikipedia has grown into a huge database of data that anyone can access and changed.

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

Zachary Clark

Thomas Cavalier

Luke Mattingly

Jacob Burton

Aaron Stockton

EVERYBODY ELSE ADD YOURS AS YOU EDIT