Tagging from personal to social

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www.uzanto.comWWW06 Tagging Workshop

Tagging – From Personal to Social:

Some Observations & Design PrinciplesRashmi Sinha

Uzanto

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www.uzanto.comWWW06 Tagging Workshop

Structure of Talk

• My Perspective

• Tagging on a Personal Level Compared to categorization

• Social Systems formed by Tagging

• Tagging & Wisdom of Crowds

• Some weaknesses

• 9 Design Principles

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Cognition in the wild

• Cognitive Anthropology: Understanding culture by understanding cognition

• Two main methods Pile Sorting Freelisting

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Free-listing

• Goals Explore boundaries & scope of

domain Capture cultural consensus Gain familiarity with user

vocabulary

• Strengths Simplicity Flexibility

Conducted as part of interview, or as written exercise

% of times items were mentioned

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Items

“Name all the x's you know.”

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Digital Categorization

Multiple concepts activated

Choose ONE of the activated concepts.

Categorize it!

Object worth

remembering (article, image…)

Analysis-Paralysis!

•Analysis Paralysis•Balancing your scheme•Over time – category boundaries change, labels obsolete

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• Cannot place in more than one place

• Disappears from view

• Mistakes are costly

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Tagging is simpler

Multiple concepts

are activated

Tagit!

Note all concepts

Object worth

remembering (article, image…)

•Goal is to categorize•Maps to cognitive process•Reduced load•Fun, Self-feedback, social feedback•Less balancing of scheme

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Tagging still leads to anxiety

• Differs from person to person And by domain

• Solution not simpler input process (though that could help) Confidence in finding

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Some hypothesis• Tagging takes lesser time than categorizing

Users generate tags/categorize for new emails / bookmarks Measure: Time to categorize compared to time for 1 OR 2 OR 3

tags

• Categories are more memorable than a tag Give users 30 secs. per item to generate tag OR categorize Measure: Recall of tag / category after a week

• Comparing different types of tags Personal tags are more memorable than Semantic ones

Measure: Tag recall after a week

Semantic tags are generated first Measure: Order of Semantic and Personal tag generation

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Hypothesis (cont)

• Hierarchy & non-exclusivity Compare time taken Recall Difficulty

Flat Hierarchical

Non-Exclusive

(A)

Tagging

(B)

Hierarchical Tagging

Exclusive (C)

Flat Categorization

(D)

Categorization

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The Personal to the Social

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Browsing alone

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Along together• Alone together

(Ducheneaut et al. CHI 2006) Passive presence of others Playing for the audience

but not necessarily interacting

• Social facilitation (Zajonc, 1960) Improvement in

performance in presence of others

Presence does not need to be active

Observed even in cockroaches!

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Tagging as second generation social network• Actually useful!

• Lots of weak ties (Granovetter: The strength of weak ties) Social networks emphasize strong ties (lists of contacts,

friendship ratings)

• Objects (tags) mediate social relationships Objects are reasons people affiliate with each other Provide context for relationship. Means for new relationships. Theory: Object centered sociality (sociologist Karin Knorr

Cetina)

• Application: Interest based groups Collaborative Tagging & Expertise in the Enterprise (John &

Seligman) Fringe Contacts: People Tagging for the Enterprise (Ferrell & Lau)

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Tagging and Wisdom of Crowds

1. Cognitive Diversity

2. Independence

3. Decentralization

4. Easy Aggregation

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1. Cognitive Diversity

• Need many perspectives for good answers

• Groups become homogenous Members bring less and less new information in Varying levels of insight & knowledge provide good mix

Better than everyone having a lot of knowledge!

• Diversity reduces groupthink Groupthink works by shielding members from outside

opinions Rationalize away counterarguments

• Diversity reduces conformity Chance that you will change opinion to match group

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2. Independence

• Keeps people’s mistakes from getting correlated (uncorrelated mistakes averaged out)

• Encourages people to bring in new viewpoints (diversity)

• Concept of Social Proof Milgram experiment People assume that groups know what they are doing Assuming crowd is wise, leads to herd like behavior

Can sometimes lead to good decisions

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2. Independence (cont.)• Information Cascades

Sequence of uninformed choices, building upon each other Example: Thai & Indian restaurant Information is imperfect – sometimes incorrect, sometimes

correct Decisions made in sequence

• Everyone relies on own information• And what everyone else is doing• Wrong information propagates down in a chain

Ideal when people make decision relying on private information

Compare Del.icio.us & digg Information Cascades can be good

Example: Iowa farmers decision about hybrid corn

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Imitation & Suggestion

• Intelligent & mindless imitation Human beings are imitation machines Imitation is a good thing

Bad when you don’t reply on private information And don’t make independent judgment

• Example: Japanese macaques learning to separate wheat from stones

Build some method to let people evaluate tag suggestions

• Imitation & Suggestion in Tagging Systems Lazy Sheep bookmarklet Google Suggest approach Towards the Semantic Web: Collaborative Tag Suggestions (Xu

et al.) Implicit Tagging using Donated Bookmarks (Markines, et al.)

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3. Decentralization

• Encourages independence

• Takes advantage of tacit knowledge People have specialized knowledge that might not be

communicable to right person in centralized structure Problems: Valuable information uncovered in one part of

the system does not get communicated to another part Need some type of loose coordination

“A crowd of decentralized people working to solve a problem on their own without any central effort to guide them, come up with better solutions, rather than a top-down driven solution.” Suroweicki

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4. Easy Aggregation

• A decentralized system can pick right solution With easy way for information to be aggregated across

system

• Example: Francis Galton A crowd of people made independent decisions He added the votes

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Some Weaknesses of tag-based Social Systems

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1. Tag Specificity, Expertise & Perspective• Shirky example: Dewey Decimals

categorization of world religionsWhat about Flickr?

Hinduism: 6512 photosChristianity: 5207 photos

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Tagging systems are better, but…

• Tagging systems represent people who participate in them Their viewpoints & perspective

• Types of biases In-groups might use more specific tags than Out-groups Experts might use more specific tags than novices

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2. No easy way to show minority viewpoint• Consensus viewpoint bubbles up

How to give alternative viewpoints a voice?

• Example: Catholic Church recognizes Devil’s advocate

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3. Why Amazon tags did not work

• No clear articulation of benefits

• Mixed with other, more common participation methods

• Busy interface

• No organic growth (seeding with select few)

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• Too many options?

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4. Adoption by Average User

• Tag navigation does not suit user task?

• Users do not understand its for navigation?

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Design Principles for Tagging Systems

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#1: Make System Personally Useful

• For end-user system should have strong personal use Memorable Personal Snippets (e.g., Del.icio.us & Flickr) Self-expression (e.g., Newsvine) My expertise or interests (RawSugar)

• Don’t count on altruism System should thrive on people’s selfishness Incent the behavior you want

• Clearly communicate benefits to users Create a positive reinforcement cycle

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del.icio.us Useful before Saving First Link

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#2:Identify Symbiotic Relationship Between Personal & Social

• Individual participation in system should naturally aggregate into social stream What personal snippets do people like to share? Personal snippets > Social stream

Example• Pictures > Organized by Events• Music > Organized by Playlists

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#3: Make Porous Boundary Between Public & Private

• Earlier systems Personal (Personal Desktop

Software, e.g., Picasa, EndNote) OR Social websites (Shutterfly)

• Rethink public & private People will share for the right

returns Set defaults to public, allow

easy change to private Provide clear benefit of sharing

• Give user control Over individual pieces & sets Delete items from history Reset /remove profile

Privacy settings on Flickr

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#4: Provide Outlet for Self-expression• Creative self-expression

Artistic expression (Flickr, YouTube) Humor (YouTube)

• Individual piece should be small Can create sets & lists Do Mashups Simple, guessable URLs for

everything

• Leave room for games & social play Appreciation Stalking (some!) Gossip

Writers on Newsvine

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#4a. Allow for Different Types of Participation

• Social sites don’t require 100% active participation Implicit creation (creating by consuming) Remixing—adding value to others’ content

Source: Bradley Horowitz’s weblog, Elatable, Feb. 17, 2006, “Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers”

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#4b. How to Encourage Participation• Insights from Social Psychology research

Highlight unique contribution Allow for smaller local groups Highlight benefit to self from participation Highlight benefit to group

Source: Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities, Ling et al. 2005

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#5. Provide Scent of Others in the System• What paths are well

worn, what are not

• User profiles / photos

• Real-time updating Feels like a

conversation sense that others

are out there

What people are digging right now!

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#6. And yet, Moments of Independence

• Choreography: when alone, when part of group

• Prevent mobs, optimize “wisdom of crowds”

• Don’t make it too easy to mimic others Incentives for

originality & uniqueness

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#7. Enable Serendipity

• Don’t make navigation all about popularity Access to some popular stuff (keep this fast moving)

• Make the “long tail” accessible Use popularity as a jump off point to other ways of

exploring

• Provide personalization Recommendations using collaborative filtering

Similar tags, content, others

• Ad-hoc groups?

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#8. Allow for alternative viewpoints & perspectives• Tags bias perspective in specific manner

People of a group know more Likely to use more specific tags Hence less exposure (no hierarchy)

Similar problem for experts

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#9. Keep input simple. Solve problems with good findability

• Tagging shows success of simplicity Don't’ increase cognitive cost of tagging

• Tagging systems can support different types of findability Some metaphors

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#9a. User Experience for Faceted Browse Interfaces

• User is in control

• Every movement (forward, making a turn) is a conscious choice

System should provide information at every step

• If user makes mistakes, she can go back or start againLike driving a car…

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#9b. User Experience with Recommender Systems

• User has less control over specifics of interaction

• System does not provide information about specifics of action

• More of a “black box” model (some input from user, output from systems)

Like riding a roller coaster…

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User Experience with Browsing Tagging Systems

• Pivot Browsing Move at a slower pace Get the lay of the land,

directly experience surroundings

Change paths when you want

Choose paths based on what looks promising, how well worn, what signs say

Like a hike in the woods

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You can do all three with tags• Faceted Systems from

Tags Inducing Ontology from

Flickr, Schmitz

• Collaborative Filtering from Tags Automatic Tag Clustering,

Begelman, Keller & Smajda

• Pivot Browsing on Tagging Systems Tag-Based Navigation for

Peer-to-Peer Wikipedia, Fokker et al.

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Parting thoughts

• Tagging is in the eyes of the tagger Can implicit tagging be tagging?

• Tagging by others is more useful than tagging by self Is tagging about harnessing consensus or personal

perspective?

• Will Categorization will be back? Better interface Non-exclusive

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Questions?

rashmi@uzanto.com

URLs

www.uzanto.com

www.rashmisinha.com

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• “In essence tag systems mirror the pagerank structure of Google's system, but make the internal structures browsable and viewable directly.” Lee Iverson