Embedded Observation

In the week 5 article “G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide”, Danah Boyd presents a new methodology for social system design centered on “embedded observation”, which is the process of designers engaging in the culture of their users. In this sense, they perform a sort of ethnography, whereby “becoming embedded in the culture they create allows an unprecedented understanding of the people and semantic workings of the site.” http://www.danah.org/papers/Etech2006.html

Boyd’s theory of embedded observation focuses on user centered design, wherein designers and developers understand the culture of their users and actually shape the system architecture to support the culture. In doing so, “their efforts at understanding culture and evolving the design alongside it create a meaningful bond between the users and the designers” (Boyd, 2006). However, designing with an embedded observation framework has its limitations, mostly pertaining to scale as sites exponentially grow and simultaneously, various sub-cultures are created, each with their own design implications. As the user culture evolves and diversifies, designers are challenged with staying technologically relevant with the community of users as cultural issues arise, such as linguistic differences, morality conflicts (obscenity, pornography), etc. In response to these obstacles, Boyd advocates diversifying the development, design and customer support staff and enabling users to personalize, manage and culturize their own online space to avoid cultural collisions while still presenting opportunities for “accidental socialization.”

What websites successfully leverage “embedded design” and which do you think struggle with the issue of emergent online cultures? Do you think the web has homogenized online communities, or instead are we seeing a surfacing of clusters, or nodes of heterogeneous communities? Can technology adequately accommodate the influx of social and cultural nuances and values that color the web and is this even the role of technology in the web 2.0 world?