So I’m a little late in posting this, but we’re really excited to have so many great design firms working on this problem (AKQA, Cynergy, Clarity Consulting, Thirteen23, and CreateThe). The grand finale is at SxSW in Austin, TX on March 10th. Check out designchallenge.phizzpop.com for more details!
Congratulations!
Your firm has been selected as a finalist by a leading philanthropic foundation that focuses on citizenship and public life. This foundation has just received a significant endowment from three leading billionaires:
- The (now retired) founder of a large, multinational software company
- A pioneer in the social media space
- A retired iBanker who is focused on good government and civil society
Each has decided to invest a portion of their considerable wealth in developing an effort they call “Citizenship in the 21st Century.” This effort is underpinned by a few beliefs, which are:
- Technology can be a key enabler in creating a more informed populace and a more efficient, accountable and transparent democracy.
- Design thinking can illuminate new ways to leverage technology we use today and craft experiences and interactions to better leverage all of the content and information that is available to us.
- That the social media phenomenon is a critical factor in ensuring the success of this effort.
As one benefactor said, “We devote so much design energy to creating an iPod, or a BMW, why not do the same for our democracy?”
The endowers feel this may include online, Media Center, Portable, Mobile, Public Space / Kiosk, and the desktop and are looking for guidance in the following areas:
- How can we use technology to help people collect, measure and evaluate information in the home, in the work place and in public environment. Where can and should these interactions occur—in a browser, on the TV, on a mobile device? Are there group or shared experience that can be enabled by technology?
- How can we use the power of community opinion and social media to help people measure and evaluate messages? Are there ways to improve how this occurs now? (The benefactors are intrigued, inspired and troubled by things like Facebook, Technorati, Techmeme, Digg and Slashdot for example)
- What role does identity and privacy need to play in this solution? Do we need to explore blowing up the conventions that surround issues around personal and private information, multiple roles or personas in identity, the ability to be digitally and technically anonymous in some activities?
Part of your challenge is to determine which are the most appropriate channels for this system. From the cover lever to their RFP:
Democracy requires an informed populace. On the one hand, we as 21st century Americans have access to more sources of information in the history of our country. On the other hand, the number of different sources of information mean that there are fewer and fewer sources of news that are recognized as authoritative. There is no Walter Cronkite of our age.
Depending on which source of news you watch, read or listen to, you may get an entirely different understanding of an event. This alone makes it very hard for citizens of differing opinions to discuss a given topic. How can you reach consensus if there you can’t even agree on the facts?
Setting aside the challenge of competing world views, one of the other challenges of our hyper media culture is the sheer volume of content. Sifting through all of this to glean the information you’re interested requires a significant commitment to being informed.
The news is not always sexy, or interesting, but it is critical for being a participating member of a democracy. Design a system that creates desire for knowledge and involvement in issues, communities, events, parties or news.
We’re inspired by the enabling power and excitement we see in both digital and social media to make these issues and topics more relevant and exciting to the entire population? How can we extend this thinking into solving our challenge and sharing the successes that happen in our democracy every day? How can our efforts be a beacon and an inspiration for other democracies and emerging economies?
Assume you can aggregate content from many different sources, be it TV, radio, or print.
The goal of the endowers is to facilitate civil, public-minded conversations in a system that self-regulates for quality and civility. The endowers do not want an editorial board, rather, they want to community to enforce its own standards of behavior and finds the balance between free speech and unfettered channels for discourse.
Research:
You should feel free to use as much or as little of the research provided to provide additional context to your design solution.
You will be provided with a copy of Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software by Steven Johnson. We suggest focusing on Pages 152-162 which centers on the rule system behind Slashdot.
From http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=312
- The public expresses highly favorable views of many leading corporations. Johnson & Johnson and Google have the most positive images of 23 corporations tested. At the bottom of the list: Halliburton, which is viewed favorably by fewer than half of those familiar enough with the company to give it a rating.
- Views of many corporations vary significantly among Democrats along class lines. Two-thirds of working-class Democrats have a favorable view of Wal-Mart compared with 45% of professional-class Democrats.
- Americans are worried more that businesses rather than government are snooping into their lives. About three-in-four (74%) say they are concerned that business corporations are collecting too much personal information while 58% express the same concern about the government.
- The public is losing confidence in itself. A dwindling majority (57%) say they have a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions. Similarly, the proportion who agrees that Americans “can always find a way to solve our problems” has dropped 16 points in the past five years.
- Americans feel increasingly estranged from their government. Barely a third (34%) agree with the statement, “most elected officials care what people like me think,” nearly matching the 20-year low of 33% recorded in 1994 and a 10-point drop since 2002.
- Young people continue to hold a more favorable view of government than do other Americans. At the same time, young adults express the least interest in voting and other forms of political participation.
- Interpersonal racial attitudes continue to moderate. More than eight-in-ten (83%) agree that “it’s all right for blacks and whites to date,” up six percentage points since 2003 and 13 points from a Pew survey conducted 10 years ago.
- Republicans are increasingly divided over the cultural impact of immigrants. Nearly seven-in-ten (68%) conservative Republicans say immigrants threaten American customs, compared with 43% of GOP moderates and liberals. Democrats have long been divided along ideological lines, but the GOP previously had not been.
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_overview_eight.asp?cat=2&media=1
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/689/the-internets-broader-role-in-campaign-2008
From: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/590/digg-reddit-delicious (It’s worth it to read the rest of the article)
- The news agenda of the three user-sites that week was markedly different from that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected did not appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied. And there was often little in the way of follow-up. Most stories on the user-news sites appeared only once, never to be repeated again in the week we studied.
- The sources user news sites draw on are strikingly different from those employed by the mainstream media. Seven in ten stories (70%) on the user sites come either from blogs or Web sites such as YouTube and WebMd that do not focus mostly on news.
- The three user news sites differed from one another in subtle ways. During the study weej, Reddit was the most likely to focus on political events from Washington, such as coverage of Vice President Dick Cheney; Digg was particularly focused on the release of Apple’s new iPhone; Del.icio.us had the most fragmented mix of stories and the least overlap with the News Index.
- On Yahoo News — even when picking from a limited list of stories Yahoo editors had already pared down — users’ top stories only rarely matched those of the news professionals.
- While the Yahoo News list of stories that people were most likely to mail each other generally corresponded to the list of Most Recommended or Most Viewed stories, some differences emerged. Recommended stories focused more on “news you can use” such as advice from the World Health Organization to exercise one’s legs during long flights; the Most Viewed stories were often breaking news, more sensational in nature, with a heavy dose of crime and celebrity; and the Most Emailed stories were more diverse, with a mix of the practical and the oddball.
- Despite claims that the Web would internationalize consumers’ news diets, coverage across the three user-news sites focused more on domestic events and less on news from abroad than the mainstream media that week. Yahoo News, both on its main news page and three most popular pages, meanwhile, stood out for being decidedly more international that week.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/564/internet-news-audience
Some early efforts:
http://legislation.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://leagueoftechnicalvoters.org/
http://transparentfederalbudget.com/
Related Posts:
- Phizzpop Design Challenge LA – Feb 20th, 2009 at Zune LA
- Phizzpop Design Challenge LA: December 6th
- Scenes from the Phizzpop Design Challenge Nationals at SxSW
- Cynergy wins it all!
- Cynergy’s winning entry, Ben, posted
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