Democratic Interfaces - Decision-Making Tools for Online Communities

Thumbnail Image

Files

optika_id_990_fatland_eirik_2007.pdf (6.59 MB)

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.

Authors

Date

2007

Department

Media Lab
Medialaboratorio

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

MA in New Media
Uuden median maisteriohjelma

Language

en

Pages

107

Series

Abstract

’Democratic interfaces’ presents a design exploration into mobilizing the potential of the Internet for enabling newand more inclusive forms of democracy. Drawing on online deliberation research, the thesis argues that successful online democracy will need to facilitate open and informed discussion (deliberation) as a prerequisite for democratic decision-making. The potential for deliberative democracy on the Internetis explored through proposed user interface designs for online deliberation software:WebTing, a tool to facilitate democratic assemblies for online communities; and the citizensconstitution.org website, a campaign for a more inclusive constitutional process in the European Union. Further proposals are annotated as a pattern language and documented as they appear in the design process. The outcomes of this thesis work are relevant for the design and study of communtiy-enabling software, and in particular online deliberation and discussion software. Methods used are characteristic of interaction design, including information-gathering, sketching, prototypingand usability evaluation. Particular attention is paid to the challenges of designing community-enabling software, and to the normative influence of user interface design on user behaviour.These considerations suggest a need for new design methods independent of the HCI tradition, focused on user-to-user rather than user-to-system interaction, and on a prescriptive rather than reactive design practice.

Description

Supervisor

Kommonen, Kari-Hans

Thesis advisor

Botero, Andrea

Keywords

Online deliberation, social software, e-democracy, virtual communities, interaction design

Other note

Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201312108082

Collections

[master] Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu / ARTS