designing for serendipity in food chains of everyday life creativity

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 1

Designing for serendipityin food chains of everyday life creativity

Lennart Björneborn Associate Professor, PhDIVA – Royal School of Library and Information ScienceUniversity of Copenhagen

LB@iva.dkhttp://ku-dk.academia.edu/Bjorneborn

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 2

serendipity

Horace Walpole• 4th Earl of Orford, 1717-1797

”serendipity … making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of …”• Walpole, 1754

“The three princes of Serendip”• Serendip = Sri Lanka

• Merton & Barber (2004). The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Historical Semantics and the Sociology of Science. Princeton University Press

“the art of making an unsought finding”• Van Andel (1994).

Anatomy of the unsought finding: Serendipity: Origin, history, domains, traditions, appearances, patterns and programmability. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45(2): 631-648.

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 3

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminarSlide 4

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 5

agenda

• “… discuss design dimensions across physical and digital mediation spaces – like libraries, museums, web sites and urban spaces – that may enable and trigger people to find interesting resources not planned or not known in advance.”

• “… such mediation spaces enabling serendipity may be seen as important players in food chains of everyday life creativity that may feed - and be fed through – other innovation infrastructures in society as addressed by the national INNO+ initiative that the University of Copenhagen is contributing to.”

why is serendipity interesting?

serendipity: finding interesting things in unplanned ways

important role in many scientific discoveries

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 6

7

is this serendipity?

penicillin

antabus

why is serendipity interesting?

serendipity: finding interesting things in unplanned ways

important role in many scientific discoveries

also integral part in everyday information practices

• how we get new inspiration, ideas, insights in everyday life

• how we explore and learn many new things in life since infanthood

• serendipity is foreseeable in unforeseeable world

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 9

how we getinspiration, ideas, insights in everyday life

serendipity: foreseeable phenomenon in unforeseeable world

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminarApril 24, 2013

how we explore and learn many new things in life since infanthood

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 11

‘Revenge of the Right Brain’. Wired, February 2005

food chains of everyday

serendipity & creativity

how and where do we get new ideas in everyday life?

how and where do new ideas spread in society?

“homo ludens”

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 12

Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on TwitteriConference 2013, Fort Worth, TX – http://hdl.handle.net/2142/36052

Toine Bogers & Lennart Björneborn Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science 14

15

16

why is serendipity interesting?

serendipity: finding interesting things in unplanned ways

important role in many scientific discoveries

also integral part in everyday information behavior

• how we get new inspiration, ideas, insights in everyday life

• how we explore and learn many new things in life since infanthood

• serendipity is foreseeable in unforeseeable world

design for stimulating and supporting serendipity

• search engines, recommender systems (e.g. music, books),

micro-blogging, …

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 19

people/profiles

places/forums

artefacts/resources

metadata

4 network layers in mediation spaces / ‘food chains’

reachability structures serendipity affordances

Björneborn work-in-progress

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

‘Tantrix’

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 22

3 key serendipity dimensions

traversability• rich navigational topology• how traversable is phys./dig. terrain?• i.e., how easy is it to move around?

diversity• rich topical topology• how diversified is terrain?• i.e., how much new stuff to find?

sensoriality• rich sensorial topology• how perceivable is terrain?• i.e., how easy is it to sense?

Björneborn work-in-progress

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 23

10 serendipity sub-dimensions

modified after Björneborn (2010)

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 24

3 key serendipity dimensions

traversability• how traversable is environment?• accessibility + multi-reachability

+ explorability + stopability

diversity• how diversified is environment?• diversity + imperfection + cross contacts

sensoriality• how perceivable is environment?• display + contrasts + pointers

Björneborn work-in-progress

explorability interface invites users to move, look around and explore

Pho

to:

Jann

ik M

ulva

d

Aarhus Main Library

key serendipity dimension: traversability

imperfection allowing ’cracks’ and users’ behavioural traces in interface

Copenhagen Main Library

key serendipity dimension: diversity

contrasts sensorial differentiation incl. quiet zones + display zones

Vangede Library

key serendipity dimension: sensoriality

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 28

3 key serendipity dimensions

traversability• how traversable is environment?• accessibility + multi-reachability

+ explorability + stopability

diversity• how diversified is environment?• diversity + imperfection + cross contacts

sensoriality• how perceivable is environment?• display + contrasts + pointers

Björneborn work-in-progress

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 30

final remarks

• “… discuss design dimensions across physical and digital mediation spaces – like libraries, museums, web sites and urban spaces – that may enable and trigger people to find interesting resources not planned or not known in advance.”

• “… such mediation spaces enabling serendipity may be seen as important players in food chains of everyday life creativity that may feed - and be fed through – other innovation infrastructures in society as addressed by the national INNO+ initiative that the University of Copenhagen is contributing to.”

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013Slide 31

Designing for serendipityin food chains of everyday life creativity

Lennart Björneborn Associate Professor, PhDIVA – Royal School of Library and Information ScienceUniversity of Copenhagen

LB@iva.dkhttp://ku-dk.academia.edu/Bjorneborn

IVA – Royal School of Library and Information Science

Björneborn – IVA/CCC research seminar, University of Copenhagen – April 24, 2013

selected references• Bogers, T. & Björneborn, L. (2013). Micro-serendipity: Meaningful coincidences in everyday life

shared on Twitter. Proceedings of iConference 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/36052

• Björneborn, L. (2011). Behavioural traces and indirect user-to-user mediation in the participatory

library. Proceedings of ISSOME 2011, the International Conference on Information Science and

Social Media. http://bit.ly/ZZ962c

• Björneborn, L. (2010a). Design dimensions enabling divergent behaviour across physical, digital,

and social library interfaces. pp. 143-149. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6137 /

Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Persuasive Design, PERSUASIVE 2010. Springer.

http://bit.ly/1620FG7

• Björneborn, L. (2010b). Genre connectivity and genre drift in a web of genres. pp. 255-274.

In: Mehler, A. et al. (eds.). Genres on the Web : Computational Models and Empirical Studies.

(Series: Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol. 42). Springer. http://bit.ly/ZBnSuV

• Björneborn, L. (2008). Serendipity dimensions and users' information behaviour in the physical

library interface. Information Research, 13(4): paper 370.

http://informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper370.html

• Björneborn, L. (2006). 'Mini small worlds' of shortest link paths crossing domain boundaries in an

academic Web space. Scientometrics, 68(3): 395-414. http://bit.ly/11XHLvO

more references: http://ku-dk.academia.edu/Bjorneborn