Browsing by Author "Traci Rider"

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Mediated Communities : A Case Study on the Relationship between User Interfaces and Online Communities
(2021) Bulous, Najla; JMark Scearce; Traci Rider; Derek Ham; Jedidiah Gant
Creatives face a unique challenge in using social media platforms to find online communities that facilitate learning, critique, and the sharing of work. “Mediated Communities” aims to better understand the relationship between user interfaces and online communities of practice through secondary research and a qualitative case study on the ‘Blender Discord’ group on the social media platform Discord. Members of the ‘Blender Discord’ server were surveyed and the resulting data analyzed. Since social media platforms have different user interfaces, a better understanding of how user interfaces use social affordances to influence online communities can help creatives pick platforms that are better suited to their needs. In addition, “Mediated Communities” details the author’s process and reflections on designing a case study around an anonymous online community of practice. This work shows that studying online communities in conjunction with their host platform(s) is valuable and can lead to new insights. It was developed and conducted as a part of the Masters in Art + Design program at NC State.
Mediated Communities: A Case Study on the Relationship between User Interfaces and Online Communities
(2021) Bulous, Najla; JMark Scearce; Traci Rider; Derek Ham; Jedidiah Gant
Creatives face a unique challenge in using social media platforms to find online communities that facilitate learning, critique, and the sharing of work. “Mediated Communities” aims to better understand the relationship between user interfaces and online communities of practice through secondary research and a qualitative case study on the ‘Blender Discord’ group on the social media platform Discord. Members of the ‘Blender Discord’ server were surveyed and the resulting data analyzed. Since social media platforms have different user interfaces, a better understanding of how user interfaces use social affordances to influence online communities can help creatives pick platforms that are better suited to their needs. In addition, “Mediated Communities” details the author’s process and reflections on designing a case study around an anonymous online community of practice. This work shows that studying online communities in conjunction with their host platform(s) is valuable and can lead to new insights. It was developed and conducted as a part of the Masters in Art + Design program at NC State.
The Social Design Toolkit
(2021) Pinkston, Russel P.; Traci Rider; Lesley-Ann Noel; Christian Doll; Tania Allen
Designers are instigators of change, and the decisions they make can impact people’s lives in unexpected ways. The ideology behind social design is that designers have a social responsibility to create positive change by prioritizing people in their decisions. However, the commercialization of design practice often puts several degrees of separation between the people who design products, the people who make them, and the people who consume them, leading to design which elevates the designer’s process above people’s needs. There are several human-centered methodologies in existence across a range of disciplines (from cultural anthropology to design thinking), but these usually operate independently of one another, and each has its own unique constraints. The Social Design Toolkit offers a hybrid workflow called participatory design thinking that provides opportunities for these methodologies to overlap, placing human experience at the core of every design decision. Herbert Simon defines design as “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon 111), and social design is a holistic way of embracing cultural difference and reducing the social gap between the creators of culture and those who experience that culture. It is through this that we make design accessible and strengthen its output for everyone.
The Social Design Toolkit
(2021) Pinkston, Russell Paul; Tania Allen; Christian Doll; Lesley-Ann Noel; Traci Rider
Designers are instigators of change, and the decisions they make can impact people’s lives in unexpected ways. The ideology behind social design is that designers have a social responsibility to create positive change by prioritizing people in their decisions. However, the commercialization of design practice often puts several degrees of separation between the people who design products, the people who make them, and the people who consume them, leading to design which elevates the designer’s process above people’s needs. There are several human-centered methodologies in existence across a range of disciplines (from cultural anthropology to design thinking), but these usually operate independently of one another, and each has its own unique constraints. The Social Design Toolkit offers a hybrid workflow called participatory design thinking that provides opportunities for these methodologies to overlap, placing human experience at the core of every design decision. Herbert Simon defines design as “courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon 111), and social design is a holistic way of embracing cultural difference and reducing the social gap between the creators of culture and those who experience that culture. It is through this that we make design accessible and strengthen its output for everyone.