Research paper presented in the Innovation through Social Media workshop in Oslo, Norway 3 Dec 2012. Read the paper: http://tapironline.no/last-ned/1086

1. Facilitating active participation in
web-based co-development
Innovation through Social Media, Oslo, 3 Dec 2012
Pirjo Friedrich1, Jukka Huhtamäki2, Kaisa Koskela-
Huotari1, Kaarina Karppinen1, Kaisa Still1
1 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
2 Tampere University of Technology
Read the paper: http://tapironline.no/last-ned/1086

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Introduction
Problem
 Innovation does not happen by itself in social media
 Which factors influence on the success of web-based innovation?
Earlier studies
 Motivation of users (open innovation, online communities)
 Group facilitation (e-learning, CSCW, collaboration engineering)
Research question
 How can facilitators activate participants to contribute to
concept design in web-based co-development?

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Facilitators’ possibilities to activate participants
Online discussion
 Well-defined questions, clear guidelines (Beaudin, 1999)
 Problem-centric and curiosity-arousing wording of the tasks
(Friedrich et al., 1999)
 Clear deadlines (Kienle & Ritterskamp, 2007)
Co-design
 Keep participants motivated and focused,
 Create and maintain a relaxed atmosphere,
 Provide concrete materials to begin idea exploration,
 Allow participants to move from easier tasks to more
challenging ones (Lucero et al., 2012)

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“My Internet” case study
 A real innovation process of a Finnish company
 A group of consumers participated in the concept
design of a new internet service
 Web-based co-development on the Owela platform
 1000 invitations for members
 Advertisements on Facebook
and email lists
 88 participants, 66 active
 5 weeks online study
 3000 comments, 200 gallup answers

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Co-development in Owela
 Facilitated and scheduled co-development
 Asynchronous discussion
 Everyday life experiences
 Evaluation of service concepts based on
text, pictures and user interface sketches
 Service name suggestions
 Minigallups
 Chat sessions
 Analysis of facilitation activities and user participation
 Owela logs, facilitators’ emails and notes
 Visual analytics

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Facilitation activities in the case study
1. Interesting and versatile tasks (scheduled over five weeks)
 Weekly discussion topics: carefully planned questions
 Daily minigallups
 Two chat sessions: two facilitators lead discussion
2. Activity points -based rewarding
 Points from all activities (answers, comments, ideas)
 30 points  a movie ticket
 30 most active  a software product of value 100 euro
3. Weekly email reminders
 Guidelines, reminders of discussions, chat, points & rewards
4. (Comments and further questions in online discussion)

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Amount of participants (commenters) per day
4-32 participants
per day (avg 16)
Most participants during the
two first weeks

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Amount of participants (commenters) per day
Email reminders + new tasks

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Amount of participants (commenters) per day
Email reminders: rewards
Email reminders: deadline

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Amount of comments (by users) per day
Over 20% on one day
(622 comments by 24 users),
mainly name suggestions
Everyday life experiences Concept evaluation Name suggestions

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Amount of comments (by users) per day
Email reminders: rewards for
the most active ones
Email reminders: deadline
Everyday life experiences Concept evaluation Name suggestions

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Discussion and recommendations
 There is a rhythm in participation
 The most important topics in the beginning, when participants
are eager to contribute
 Utilize the rhythm: new tasks and email reminders always on
the same days of the week
 Email reminders of new tasks activate people
 Automatic reminders sound like an easy improvement...
 ...but we trust on carefully formulated messages with a
personal style of the facilitator
 Rewards and deadlines activate only some people, but can be
effective for them

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Future work
 Rewarding based on the efforts and quality of the work instead of
the quantity of the contributions (Antikainen, 2011)
 The competition of the activity ranking may lead to less
valuable comments
 Utilizing the activity visualisations during the study to analyse the
implications of the interventions
 Real-time visual insights integrated in the Owela platform to
help the facilitators to target their actions