Serving the evolutionary community

design principles draft to inform our technical decisions, Jan. 31, 2006


We (Finn, George, Ria) propose that when we talk about how to improve the site, we keep in mind that we are in service of the whole; not only in service of evolution – the biggest whole we can see now – but more specifically the whole community of past, present, and future Evolutionary Salons and similar initiatives.

How to make the site more user-friendly for members with different levels of net-literacy? How to make it simple enough for first-time users, so that they can grow into the next level without even noticing that their capabilities are transformed through using Nexus?

We would like to make the site work well, first for those not been having, or having only negative experiences with online systems in the past. We know that the dreams and competences that the evolutionary community can bring together will be of great value for all other communities that will follow.

Below are our reflections on some non-technical principles of community platform design  that may usefully inform our conversations.

Beauty

We would like that the site be aesthetically very, very much appealing! That it is a joy to be there; that you can feel it as a centered space… We, and probably many of you have lots of ideas about it, but no visual design competence to implement it. How to cope with that?

Designing for emergence

Designing a community platform for emergence is designing for something unpredictable in the details of how people will use it, yet sufficiently predictable in direction. Design should be optimized for enabling spontaneity, individual and group creativity. Honoring the “emergence” principle implies designing ample opportunity for experimentation, iteration, and member initiatives.  
Dialogue 
 
A key process for enabling emergence of meaning and collective intelligence in virtual communities is the re-combination of ideas. That re-combination occurs mainly in various forms of dialogue.   An effective design of virtual communities is optimized for enabling the largest possible number of productive conversations among all members and their sub-communities.  

In such a design, there should be explicit provision to promote the synergy of
real-time (synchronous) and delayed-time (asynchronous) dialogues, which is
the richest source of emergence through idea re-combination.  

Innovation focus

Innovation is the booster of evolution at the level of community or organization. To continuously add value to the members experience, a virtual community needs to strive for the simultaneous cultivation and integration of four domains: learning, social, business, and technology innovations (outlined in the Community Design Architecture developed by George Pór).

Jump time

We believe that we are living in a time of jump into unprecedented opportunities and dangers of global scale. The challenge of our learning to jump together is very high. So is our joint potential to meet it.

If you have questions or comments on any of the above, please post it in the

Conversation on our site development principles

topic.