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How can we design for a community based on a collaborative activity?

In few words: through the the process of co-design of its activity (and the characteristics that allow it) like a complex collective service.

1. Activity of a community and Activity System

In order to completely understand the characteristics shared by the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities, it is possible to use a theory developed for the study of the human activities: the Activity Theory. Once we understand the activities carried out by the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities, we can understand how the develop and behave, and the characteristics that generate them, since they form from the development of one or more activity.
The Activity Theory emphasizes the situated nature of the human action, evidencing that the objectives and the development of the action, within the general scope of the activity, are continuously constructed and negotiated according to the local conditions. The social mediation that lays at the base of the activity translates itself in a continuous process of learning and creation of knowledge.

In the Activity Theory, the Activity System represents the unit of analysis for the study of the human behavior, leading to a “conceptual map” that evidences the main places around which the human cognition is distributed and through which the human action is mediated. The model of the Activity System, the unit of the dynamic analysis of the human activity, describes the main elements through which the human action is mediated, i.e. the artifacts (the instrumental mediation) and the community (social mediation) with which the subject, an individual or a collective one, interacts according to rules, implicit or explicit ones, and a division of labor, i.e. the organization of roles and tasks.

The Activity System is an instrument useful to describe human actions, and can be used at different scales: the activity of one single person, the one of a group, the one of a community, the one of a society. Moreover, the single human action is not perceived like a discreet and isolated unit, but it receives a meaning from being part of a collective Activity System socially and historically generated; in its turn the individual action contributes in a bottom-up way to the continuous creation and reproduction of the Activity System.

The Activity System represents then a systemic instrument of analysis of the complexity of the human activities. It is not a static truth, but it is in continuous movement and transformation as the single elements evolve and as the activity is negotiated over time.
These transformations are due to the fact that the activities are not isolated units, but are more like nodes inside networks formed of other interconnected Activity Systems. In fact, an Activity System is not isolated, but interacts with a network of other Activity Systems.

2. Activity and the structure of the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities

Therefore the Activity Theory, through the model of the Activity System, can be used in order to analyze and to describe the behavior of the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities. Given the particular nature of these Communities, we should add the description of the structure of the community to this model. The Open Peer-to-Peer Communities in fact are not characterized by hierarchies, but that does not mean that there are no strong positions. But as an hierarchy relies on power (a top-down relationship), an Open Peer-to-Peer Community relies on reputation (a bottom-up relationship), that show the direction and the actions that could be more interesting to the community, giving place to an horizontal network-based layered structure.
Many researcher¹ have noted that the Open Source Communities (and therefore also the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities) organize themselves with an horizontal structure characterized by a gravitational center around which there is a “gravitational force” that moves the participants towards the center or outside the community: this force is reputation² and not power. We have then an horizontal (not a hierarchy) network-based organizational form, similar to the one found by Lave and Wenger³ in the Communities of Practice and called Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP).

Therefore, the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities have a radial structure, where there are different levels, characterized by a different amount of reputation and engagement. A determined role can correspond to a determined level (one role can be accessed only if in possession of one determined amount of reputation), or a same role can be seen with a centripetal structure based on the reputation (there are several levels of reputation inside of the role, characterized by different amount of engagement and different duties).
It is therefore useful to reason in terms of reputation and engagement levels: going towards the center the participants increase their reputation and engagement. They move towards the center as their engagement increases their reputation, and they increase their engagement in order to maintain or to increase their own reputation. In this way we have a positive feedback that pushes the participants to engage with crescent intensity.

3. Open Peer-to-Peer Communities described with an Activity System

Using an Activity System (and integrating it with a description of the reputations levels found in the community) it is possible therefore to describe one Open Peer-to-Peer Community; here we have an example:

Table 1.

BBC Action Network
Example of one Open Peer-to-Peer Community described through an Activity System (Source: Menichinelli 2006)
activity	to give instruments and informations useful to citizens for organizing campaigns of public pressure in order to improve their local conditions
subject	BBC, citizens who wish to resolve some local problems, local institutions
object	useful informations for the organization of campaigns of public pressure
results	to let citizens citizens who wish it the organization of campaigns of public pressure in order to inform society on local problems
artifacts	website (information, personal space for every citizen, search engine of other citizens)
rules	don’tcarry out political campaigns or commercial ones, don’t insult
community	British citizens, local institutions
division of labor (roles)	webmaster, coordinator of campaigns, organizer of group, public relation, coordination of the new members, treasurer, mentor
reputation levels	core group: BBC active participants: citizens who try to organize campaigns peripheral participants: citizens who are in search of campaigns already formed

2. Activity Systems and Service Design

The main importance of the activity, in an Open Peer-to-Peer Community, can give a useful role to the designer, thanks to some reflections carried out in the service design field, based around the study of the services as interactions before and the study of the services as interactions between Activity Systems then.

A service in fact can be seen in many ways: like a performance, a process and an interaction, visions that bring to light its nature of human action and therefore of intangibility. If we look at them as interactions, their design therefore becomes traditionally the design of the interactions that occur between a customer and the company, subdivided in front office (the part of the agency with which the customer interacts) and back office (with which the customer does not interact).
Interactions therefore as the place of encounter between the customer and the company, the fundamental point in order to understand the quality of the service (service encounter), and where therefore the designer should address its attention⁴.

According to Pacenti, the most important thing in the strategic design of a service is in fact the “platform of interaction” between the service and the customer. The platform of the interaction is the context (the architecture of the system) where the interaction between service and customers finds its place. In the construction of the platform we have the values proposed from the company, (materialized in its offer), and the co-production of such values by the customer, that participates with his engagement, knowledge and resources. The platform of interaction is the place where the offer of the service and the participation of the customers meet within a shared context of values.

Considering services as interactions, we can find another study that can be really useful for designing for an Open Peer-to-Peer Community: Daniela Sangiorgi⁵ has connected service design with the Activity Theory, resolving a lack of an interpretation model of the service that holds in consideration its main elements that influence the perception and the behavior of the participants to the interaction. An interpretation model that can be used to consider high social complexity that characterizes a service.

Therefore, a service can be described as an activity formed of a sequence of service encounters (or interactions), that can be described as systems of situated actions co-produced in the encounter between the customer’s Activity System and the enterprise’s Activity System (or, more in general terms, between all the participants of the service). The activity, therefore, can be seen like a network of interactions between participants, and can be considered as a service, and as such can be designed. In fact a service is made of a network of interactions between several participants, which assume the roles deriving from the division of labor.
For service design, therefore, the design object coincides with the same Activity System, that becomes the object of the project, but also an analysis and a design tool.

We may think therefore that we can “design” the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities “designing” their activity. In reality it is still necessary to consider two aspects before we are able to reach an appropriated methodology, holding corretly in consideration the complexity of a community and of a project directed to it.

Is it possible “to design” a community? Which of its characteristics can we design?

(to be continued)

1. Crowston K., Howison J., (2005), The social structure of Free and Open Source software development, First Monday, volume 10, n. 2, http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_2/crowston/index.html;
   Madanmohan T.R., (2002), Roles and Knowledge Management in Online Technology Communities: An Ethnography Study, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Digital, http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/madanmohan2.pdf Madanmohan2.pdf;
   Nakakoji K., Yamamoto Y., Nishinaka Y., Kishida K., Ye Y., (2002), Evolution Patterns of Open-Source Software Systems and Communities, Proceedings of International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution, ACM Press, New York, http://www.kid.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kumiyo/mypapers/IWPSE2002.pdf [↸]
2. Watson A., (2005), Reputation in Open Source Software, College of Business Administration Northeastern University Working paper, http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/watson.pdf [↸]
3. Lave J., Wenger E., (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [↸]
4. Pacenti E., (1992/93), Il design dei servizi, Tesi di laurea, rel. Ezio Manzini ; co-rel. Emmanuele Villani, Politecnico di Milano
   Pacenti E., (1998), Il progetto dell’interazione dei servizi: un contributo al tema della progettazione dei servizi, Tesi di dottorato, tutor: Ezio Manzini ; contro-tutor: Giovanni Anceschi, Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di disegno industriale e tecnologia dell’architettura [↸]
5. Sangiorgi D., (2004), Design dei servizi come design dei sistemi di attività : la teoria dell’attività applicata alla progettazione dei servizi, Tesi di dottorato di ricerca in Disegno Industriale, XV ciclo [↸]

Tags: Activity Theory, Open P2P Communities, Service Design

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