Following the chair’s introduction by Dr. Henry Jenkins, the opening keynote talk was delivered by S. Craig Watkins. Highly regarded for his research about race, youth and digital media usage and his books, The Young and the Digital and Hip Hop Matters. He was invited to join the MacArthur Foundation Series on Youth, Digital Media and Learning.

With this in mind and with no experience in this area I was looking forward to hearing the perspective from which he considers this space. Below is provided a few key insights I took out of his keynote talk:

• SCW Insight: The conversation around youth use of digital media and the digital divide as a racial ravine has changed. Black and latino youth are using technology and the degree of engagement has evolved considerably since 1998?

Here he poses the audience to reflect on what this conference might have looked like in 1998, over ten years ago in terms of race and usage?

• SCW Insight: If we ask them [youth] if they use and access – it assumes they are not connected for a certain period of the day? They are in fact using social media ‘more’ than heir white counterparts.

He presents to the audience a number of emergent patterns about black and latino youth usage, which challenged historical views about black and latino participation in the digital media space:

1. Usage is mobile: Mobile phones are merging as the preferred platform. 92% own a mobile phone …
2. Usage is peer and Interest driven: They are ‘Living and learning’ with new media …  engaging their peers … peer interaction … peer informed spaces that drive their usage and interest driven genres (e.g., hip hop)…
3. Use digital media is the new town square: ‘Back in the day’ .. hip hop … youth always writing stories, carrying pens and papers, documenting  their stories about their life in poems and hip hop … today, the digital landscape is the new town square about hip hop … they go online to engage with their community, and engage in a ‘stunning’ critique about the world around them ….
4. Use digital media as a space of opportunity: Messaging & hanging around in digital media is NOT just wasting time, but they are creating gateways for them to create opportunities and engage with what they are love and passionate about … e.g., a young girl who used hip hop to connect with hip hop artists, but also to connect with her friends and record/tweet about her own hip hop …

He goes on to discuss the affinity between social media and hip hop (e.g., mobility, DIY, peer-based learning, participatory, view of them in their world) and summarises some key tenants of what they have learnt so far about black and latino youth in the digital media space:

1. Black youth capital is about – ‘keepin it real in the digital age’
2. Black cultural capital wherein “soft skills” and code switching in/between digital and real world is important. Soft skills he defines as the ways people interact with others, esp. how they talk … black and latino youth profiles in digital space, how they present themselves, their linguistic practices, these styles of behaviour suit their peers, but not perhaps the wider/formal view of the world (e.g., getting a job).
3. Creating and critiquing expression and peer-group connection: Digital media is the space where they grapple with their own fears and their own concerns and peer-group connection. He gives an example of New Orleans and Katrina and how a young boys digital media practices changed before (i.e., didn’t use/value Myspace) and after Katrina (e.g., place to express and reconnect with his peers, post evacuation.
4. Creating and critiquing the politics of race and place … public memorials, grieving and engagement with social issues… are engaging with differing skills and life experiences and these life experiences are shaping their interaction and participation in the digital world.
5. Creating and critiquing in any place through digital space … Black/Latino … more likely than white via handheld … more reliable than home access and in these places they feel ‘policed’, not so with mobile technologies … mobile becomes an empowered space in any place …

In summary, S. Craig Watkins poses some interesting insights into not just the usage of black and latino youth with digital  media, disposing the historical view of the 1990’s of the synergy between race and digital divide .. but also sharing his learning on black and latino youth in the digital space … their experiences, values and in his words ‘how they are in this world’ (S. Craig Watkins, DML-2010).

From this delivery I felt an additional area worth exploring:

1. In addition to how black and latino youth use, are, see, interact and participate in the digital media space, how does digital media make black and latino youth feel as part of this experience? This question comes from an exploratory study with MedisSnackers in the UK that I was fortunate to be part of entitled: The Web Makes Me Feel!

Smiles
Kelly

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The core distinguishing character of the social web to more linear electronic resource such as TV, Radio, Print and even Web 1.0, is the degree of involvement the user plays in generating and sharing content than ever before. This is why we love it! But do they actually control their content?

It might be user-generated, but is it really user controlled?

Let’s say our organisation decides to use social technologies in their marketing activities or build a social network where our customers, consumers and stakeholders can share and interact. Where a dialogue and conversation can evolve. Where we as a company we can engage with the community within which we coexist. Sounds great!

But as a user or participant in this community, can I really choose how that content is displayed? To whom it is shared? and What the very nature of that content is? Or does someone else control this, for what ever purpose, or aim or objective they have?

This is very much dependent on the nature of the properties of an electronic resource – the technical, structural and experiential properties. And these properties are contingent on who designs, builds and develops it!

Not the user who might use it. Despite the user being the most important node for network sustainability. After all they do create the content.

Properties of Electronic Resources

Electronic resources such as the social web comprise technical properties (hardwired, mechanical elements) that enable structural properties of a resource, such as how interactive it is how vividness etc. This in turn influences the experiential properties – user perceptions and experiences such as ease of use and utility.

Source: Page (2009)

For example, if I design the functionality of a system or network in a certain way (the technical properties), I can influence the degree of control a user has over what they can do with the system or information in the system. This is known as a structural property called ‘pacing’.

Pacing can varying in degree from being controlled by the designer/marketer. We call this externally paced. With more control being given to the user, thus is considered more of an internally paced system.

For many broadcast delivery systems such as television, these are external pacing where the transfer speed and the information sequence is controlled by the advertiser and network- with minimal influence by the receiver of the information (audience).

Turn on your television, select a channel—how much control do you have over the order in which you receive the information and the speed at which you receive it? Compare this to watching a rental video or a DVD. With print media, users have a larger degree of freedom of choice of the order and time allocated to the information, which is why print media are regarded as more internally paced than broadcast media.

User Control and The Web – Who is Pulling the Strings?

Although the concept of information/media control has been around since the 1960′s the development of computer and network-based communication technologies like the Internet and Web has increased its relevance.

With resources like database technology upon which Google and Amazon are based, users have a larger degree of control over the order in which they access information and the amount of time they take to process it.

The social web on the other hand, has an increased capability to enable both external and internal pacing with a common example being the difference between ‘user generation & customization’ (internally paced) and ‘system mediation and personalisation’ (externally paced).

Let’s look at Myspace and Facebook. Myspace is designed to enable more user customisation, not just in content display and sharing, but also in design and functionality, with a lesser degree of system mediation. Facebook in comparison, adheres to more terms and conditions of the use of their network, limiting user control in functionality and design, but enabling it in content generation and sharing.

If I don’t like either of these offerings and their control over my content, I can create my own … a blog through WordPress, a wiki through PBWorks, a social network through Ning and define my own ideas of who controls both the system and it’s content … or as is technically possible through these systems.

So I suppose the closing questions of this blog post are:

• As a participant/user I need to consider who inherently has control over the content I generate? The designer, system developer, the management or marketer … they can add, remove, publicise or ban my content at the click of a button.
• As a designer, developer, management or marketer … how much external and internal control does my community expect or want from the system, and how much am I prepared to give?

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A basic model of usability developed by Davis in the 1980′s is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) – (some 62,000 Google search results!). Based on years of research on what influences an individuals propensity to accept or adopt a technology, it’s basics parameters are still fundamental today. There are many others, but let’s start here.

It identifies two core elements for usability:

• Ease of Use – how easy something is to use – the level of perceived complexity or simplicity
• Usefulness - how useful something is – the core value it delivers over another channel, technology or tool!

What is the difference between ease of use and usefulness?

These two are not one in the same.

It is like saying that a push bike (cycle) is easier to use compared to a car (automobile) in how complex it is to use, however a car has more value (usefulness) to us in terms of distance travelled, number of passengers and protection from the weather than a push bike (cycle).

It sounds quite simple, but usability, especially in terms of complex interfaces such as web sites, social network sites etc is not that simple.

But how usable a technology is perceived, especially in terms of how much value they deliver compared to other channels, technologies, tools will most certainly have an impact on your brand and your market’s tendency to revisit and reuse your site.

What do we need to know about usability?

Now we understand the very basics. It is important to develop insights in the very least about what ease of use and usefulness means to the users of our websites, systems, networks and technologies! Do they find it useful for communication, information search, transactions? Of Perhaps none of the above!

We also need to profile what influences these perceptions – is it age, income, education, gender … or is it more complex, such as experience, knowledge, usage context and user aspirations.

Don’t just skip over these questions until after your site is launched, ask your market, your users of the technology before, during and after system design and launch and ensure you listen to them, document their language and how they feel!

How do you gain this insight?

Very simply – talk to users, conduct a survey, hold a focus group or workshops during the system development stage and profile their usage of your site or other related technologies.

In this day of social web technologies, there are loads of technologies that can facilitate a dialogue about what makes a useful and easy to use technology or channel.

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