Draft learning agreement

Neil Owen
Draft Learning Agreement

“Most often, when people are asked to describe the current media landscape, they respond by making an inventory of tools and technologies. Our focus should be not on emerging technologies but on emerging cultural practices.”
Henry Jenkins
Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html

“There is a misconception that all the changes we are experiencing as a society are the result of new technologies, but the real changes are profoundly cultural. As we shift to a DIY culture that runs on creativity, the implications could be as profound as when society from farming to manufacturing”
Matt Mason
The Pirates Dilemma

“Web1.0: get Noise.
Web2.0: make Noise
Web3.0: filter Noise
Web4.0: Deaf - or SmartNoise?”
Gerd Leonhard
http://www.mediafuturist.com/2008/05/web10-to-web40.html

I work in an emerging area of design and media, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.
Web 2.0 a loose term used to describe a range of websites, software and design on the Internet.
The O ’ R e i l l y R a d a r report Web 2.0: Principles and Best Practices describes Web 2.0 as “ a variety of guises, names, and technologies: social computing, user-generated content, software as a service, podcasting, blogs, and the read–write web. Taken together, they are Web 2.0, the next-generation, userdriven, intelligent web.”
Web 3.0 is the mapping, curating and filtering of all the “noise” being created not only online but across all forms of media.

These new and emerging areas of media throw up numerous challenges for traditional forms of design. Web 1.0 allowed designers to create websites with limited user interaction, it was a one way conversation. New techniques and tools but not that far removed from traditional print or graphic design. Web 2.0 allows interaction by the user. The user can be the person uploading a video to Youtube, someone viewing the video, someone commenting on the video or someone posting a video response to a comment. Web 2.0 starts to redefine the roles of designer, maker and critic. Web 3.0 goes further, expanding a users role as a critic or curator and blurring even further the role of maker and consumer..

I'm not a content creator, this is to say I don't make my own films and upload them to Youtube. But is this a limited view of what it means to be involved in web 2.0 and contribute to "making Noise"?
I blog, I comment and read other blogs from design to music to football, I upload images to Flickr, I listen to streamed radio through the BBC and Last FM, subscribe to podcasts, I download music from the HypeMachine and BitTorrent, I watch videos on iPlayer/Youtube/BlipTV and on blogs as embedded content, I subscribe to RSS Feeds, post links to De.li.cous and Digg, I post on Facebook. I'm not looking for and don't expect a response to what I publish online but all this is noise. There are millions of other people doing the same.

So how do you start to filter. all this stuff into what is relevant to you. The idea of good and bad becomes almost irrelevant with web 2.0 and web 3.0, as you start to filter and find your niche interests, removing t;he useless stuff along the way. The filtering process and making sense of this information is where web 3.0 comes crucial.

A broad definition of what web 3.0 is or might be.
It involve issues of copyright, distribution, making and publishing work. It involves issues of control, and ownership. It involves blended distribution; working across media, web, mobile tv, print and live events. Each platform has equal relevance; there is no destination site. Content is tailored for the platform and the end user. It means being prepared to give up control of how and where your work might be used.

Not at all these are negative problems and should not be seen as such. Rather artists should be looking at ways of exploiting these new media. How do you reach an audience? How do you narrow it down so the relevant audience sees your work? This is hard for many designers, artists and musicians to do but a younger generation of artists are happy to do this. The web is just something that is there in the same way they might watch TV or or use the phone. The idea of creating and distributing work becomes equally as straightforward.
In a band? Post your tracks on Last FM and MySpace. Make films or animations? Create your own YouTube channel and post them there. Take photographs? Upload them to Flickr, add them to a group. Make illustrations? Create a Deviant Art portfolio. and upload there
Again this is not about making the best work, making money or becoming famous. It is the simple act of doing because you can.

Web 3.0 design will involve developing ways of filtering and finding content. This doesn't mean building another video uploading site to add to the hundreds already out there or trying to build a new Flickr. These sites are already out there, the content is there so how do you start to curate and filter what is relevant to you.

Some definitions of what I do as a designer.
I work with existing tools and software wherever possible. My role is not coder or developer, though I have an understanding of how these areas of web design works. I work as an architect I design, mock up, plan and specify. I don't build!!!

I see the role of the web 2.0/3.0 designer working within these existing spaces and sites, refining and improving them. Using existing code, tools and API. At a simple level this involves designing functionality, interface design and how people use a site. As web 3.0 develops the role of the designer will develop further into that of curator, capturing meta data and using that data to develop the design experience for a user. This form of design will increasingly become a two way interaction between designer and user. Feedback between designer and user will become seamless.

Web is a limiting term.
This is cross media from an RSS Feed on a laptop of a printed newspaper to the BBC iPlayer rebroadcasting TV programmes online. It is about the stream of information, the platforms this stuff is being distributed across and most of importantly how you start to filter all this stuff. This is about not only filtering the stuff you are interested in but how you choose to consume this stuff.

Example, my iPod is synced with my iTunes, my LastFM account scrobbles what I've played on my iTunes. This information can be viewed by anyone, I can embed a widget to Facebook to tell everyone what I've listened too. I can fill in my LastFM user name to www.soundamus.net, subscribe to the RSS Feed and get daily recommendations of new album releases on Amazon based on what I'm listening to. I no longer need to search for this information, someone or something will feed this information. I only need to visit Soundamus once to fill in my username. It will constantly update itself on what I am playing through iTunes/Last FM.

In that example there dozens of ways that a designers role can be redefined. Painstakingly designed sites, with beautiful interaction design can be stripped back to text and a database/spreadsheet. An RSS feed means you may never even see the beautifully designed site. The code and data from companies worth millions of pounds, such as Last FM and Amazon, and whole business is capturing data is given away for free. Allowing anyone to design and develop their own applications.

Over the course of the next twenty proposals I will illustrate the key themes and emerging developments of Wb 2.0 and Web 3.0 and how this will alter the role of the graphic designer over the coming years. Print this post