Patterns are not easy to write, especially if we consider that we might aim to achieve what Alexander (1979) termed ‘quality without a name’ (see below for the full-quote*). The day was not only a chance for a small group to sit down and discuss the complexity of pattern writing but it was also purposeful with defined outcomes. As such it followed a particular format based on the pattern writing workshop used at the annual Europlop conference that draws on the work of Gabriel (2002) and others. What is particular about a pattern writing workshop is that the author, though present, sits outside the group (or ‘shepherds’), not within it, while their work is reviewed. S/he becomes a fly on the wall – listening to the group discuss, comment and suggest changes, yet s/he is forbidden from intervening or responding.

Step 1 – Papers are prepared in advance of the workshop

The patterns are worked on and top and tailed with an introduction and conclusions to give the pattern the feel of an academic paper (though the core remains the problem, solution and context).

Each section is completed as far as is possible and where unfinished marked as TBC (to be completed).

Our papers were circulated to the workshop participants who were directed to read through each of the patterns looking for strengths and weaknesses. The four patterns that were submitted to this workshop were:

• Space for Lurking – Steven Warburton
• Identity Placemaking – Megan Smith
• Others First – Margarita Perez Garcia
• Permissioned Aggregation – Andy Powell

Step2 – Running the workshop

After the welcome and introductions amongst the group members a specific set of stages were used during the review process and respected for each of the authors:

1. The first paper is introduced by the chair;
2. The author is then invited to read a paragraph from their paper (to hear the author’s voice);
3. The author is asked to move outside the circle and only listen to the group discussion;
4. The chair asks for comments on the strengths of the paper, moving around each group member in turn;
5. This is repeated for the weaknesses in the paper – but importantly there should be constructive suggestions to solving any highlighted problems;
6. There is then a final round of commentary and encouragement;
7. The author is now invited back into the circle and may ask for clarifications, if needed, on what has been said by a group member;
8. To close the session, the group thanks the author with a round of applause;
9. The group then moves to the next paper and repeats the process until all the papers have benefited from this group shepherding process.

Note: If you do happen to have a lot of papers then timing needs to be strict and due to the level of discussion I cannot imagine reviewing more that eight to ten papers in a single day.

Step 3 – Updating patterns after the workshop

Authors are asked to update their patterns, taking as much or as little of the advice and suggestions as they feel is needed to improve their work. For our workshop we asked the four authors to resubmit their work back to the group.

So how well did this ritual-like format work? This was the first time any of the workshop participants (myself included) had been involved in a writers workshop and I can say it was enlightening for all. As both an author and a commentator/shepherd I experienced both sides of the process. The format works on the principle of a trusted circle and introductions were important even though we already knew each other to some degree – and although the term shepherd feels slightly strange at first it does convey the way that one approaches reviewing others work. The idea is to help the author produce a better piece of work – in this case a design pattern. This is not about ego or competition, or about rubbishing other people’s efforts. It is about guiding and in that guidance being positive and encouraging even when highlighting weaknesses. If you spot a problem then what can you offer as a shepherd to help improve or solve it. It might sound disconcerting to have the author present while the group review takes place and here space is an important consideration – it needs to be comfortable and provide a natural area for the pattern author to sit outside the circle. In this way the discussion between the group can flow freely without interruption or distraction.

Listening to my own work being reviewed was strangely relaxing – being there but not there. Sitting away from the group, with no eye contact or direct presence forces one to simply listen – a rare opportunity. There is no point in feeling defensive – how can you when you have no voice? So I was left to concentrate on writing down and capturing as much of the help, insight and advice as possible … and there was plenty of it, reflected in the copious notes I gathered on the day. What you receive is a sense of what readers will understand in the work you have written. If you have not explained something well enough then you can hear it the comments – and have a chance to correct it.

Since the workshop all of the patterns have been amended and resubmitted to the group. These four patterns will now go towards publication, most likely in a new edited collection on Digital Identity and Social Media.

Finally, just to add thanks to all of those who put the effort to write the patterns up in advance and thanks to all those present on the day for their valuable comments and input, including Yishay Mor our excellent chair.

References:
Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press, UK.

Gabriel, R. P. (2002), Writer’s Workshops and the Work of Making Things, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc. Boston, MA, USA.

*This oneness, or the lack of it, is the fundamental quality for anything. Whether it is in a poem, or a man, or a building full of people, or in a forest, or a city, everything that matters stems from it. It embodies everything. Yet still this quality cannot be named. (Alexander 1979, p28)

There was a real mix of participants from across Europe (and beyond), including Italy, Finland, Greece, UK, Australia, and Hungary. This richness in nationalities immediately foregrounded what is an often overlooked dimension in discussions around digital identity – namely the impact of cultural difference. Different cultures both create and consume their [digital] identities in different ways. This was most keenly reflected in the shared conversations around where we perceive the boundary between our public and private lives. The mass use of social services such as Facebook can appear to have a homogenising effect, erasing cultural distinctions through normalised ‘social-networking’ practices. Many of our participants felt that this was an area that would benefit from further empirical  research to, at the very least, expand our dominant Westernised perspectives of online identity.

Other key points that came back from the session were, in brief:

• An acceptance that in a connected global space, not only is it difficult to avoid having an online identity but that it is also advantageous to be proactive in managing it. Therefore the importance of teaching what we might call  digital identity literacy skills needs to be on the agenda at all sectoral levels;
• There must be more awareness raising and advocacy around the potential risks associated with the use of social media and the long term impact that digital tracks and traces can have on our online identities, for example in relation to career building and the job market;
• Rather than try to respond to fears around using the Internet by heavily monitoring and containing our online activity we should over time learn to accept the contradictions between the differing roles and perspectives that are presented by ourselves and others;
• Separating personal from professional activity is difficult, if not impossible to achieve. But do we really need to maintain this divide? We could not reach consensus on this issue and the debate circled around the question of aggregation versus compartmentalisation of online activities;
• Towards the end of the session someone asked “How should we interpret other people’s online presence?”. An interesting question suggesting that reading and interpreting online identities is in itself a skill.

It was a valuable session and we are grateful for the input of all those who attended and we hope that the person who at the end of the workshop declared “I do not want to have a digital identity as it makes me too nervous” has now overcome her anxieties.

Next on the agenda: we are looking forward to Online Educa Berlin ’09 where will we take these issues forward into our symposium discussion session on (yes you guessed it)  ‘Digital Identity’.

The second workshop deviated from the ‘standard’ Participatory Pattern Workshop format. Rather than focusing on developing and iterating the patterns identified during the first workshop we decided to tackle scenarios, in other words unsolved real-world problems around how we manage or use digital identities. From these scenarios we then worked with our patterns from the first workshop, applying them to create solutions, and in the process identified new case-stories and patterns as they arose.

Before the workshop we asked the participants to submit scenarios and we recorded nine separate entries on the Planet xWiki platform. These ranged from the use of micro-blogging tools like Twitter to using data portability technologies to solve the problem of digital identity aggregation.

The workshop itself broke down into to distinct phases:

Part 1: Mapping the forces within the scenarios. Here we asked each group to identify and map out the forces in tension within a particular scenario. These were the tensions that a pattern would need to resolve to produce a potentially successful solution.

Part 2: Designing solutions using patterns. Using the force map each group then looked through the pattern collection to see if any of the patterns developed so far could be applied. One of the major themes that had emerged from the earlier analysis of the scenarios was how to control who views our data. This was related to two dimensions of managing distributed digital identity data (i) aggregation versus compartmentalization and (ii) public versus private.

A solution was developed that addressed both of these tensions using the architectural metaphor of the house and the notion of progressive disclosure. This represented a simple but powerful idea whereby access to our digital identity is managed through the creation of differing spaces for intimacy. Megan Smith gives a deeper insight into the ways that this approach might work in a posting written for her blog.

What developed was a link to two patterns. The first from the Digital Identity pattern collection called ‘Facet Me’ and second, to one of Alexander’s patterns. As Jim pointed out this idea had resonance with number 127 ‘Intimacy Gradient’:

Conflict: Unless the spaces in a building are arranged in a sequence that corresponds to their degrees of privateness, the visits made by strangers, friends, guests, clients, family, will always be a little awkward.
Resolution: Lay out the spaces of a building so that they create a sequence which begins with the entrance and the most public parts of the building, then leads into the slightly more private areas, and finally to the most private domains.

Overall the format of this workshop worked well and produced two new candidate patterns with supporting case-stories:
Pattern 7: Purposeful delay
Pattern 8: Leaving trails

So what next? We want to build on the success of this workshop and hold a final session to complete the series, which we are planning for September 2009. Invites will be sent out shortly and we look forward to seeing you there.

With close to 35 people attending there was a lot of pressure on everyone, not least our facilitators Yishay, Jim, Mark and myself, to work hard. We started off with a quick paper and pen warm-up activity called the ‘faces of identity’. We asked everyone to draw three facets of their identity on three pre-drawn heads and then turn to their group and describe (i) what these identities represented and (ii) which they promoted and which they kept hidden in online settings. This was a powerful exercise and created some intense discussion that ran over the allotted 10 minutes for the exercise. Comments on this activity (including the rest of the day) can be found over on Margarita’s blog.

There were 19 case-stories in total and we split participants into seven discreet groups each led by a starting case-story. Stories were shared, discussed, questioned and argued over. With some gentle, and not so gentle, pushing and prodding from our facilitators a series of seed patterns were eventually documented. Identifying patterns can be a tricky process and articulating a common problem is more challenging than describing the solution. To scaffold this process and help the participants to move successfully from case-stories to patterns we employed two active approaches:
1) Three Hats Pattern- to share and interrogate stories in a small group setting
2) Table Top Concept Mapping – to draw out the key issues and tensions within case-stories

The full outputs from the day, including the six patterns that were established, are summarised here on the Planet design patterns repository page: http://purl.org/planet/Groups.DigitalIdentities/outputs.

Pattern 1: Others first
Pattern 2: Digital Identity panic
Pattern 3: Whats my name
Pattern 4: Space for lurking
Pattern 5: Facet me
Pattern 6: Permissioned aggregation of identity information

The power of the patterns approach is one of stripping out the specifics to produce transferable solutions that address common problems. But sometimes it can feel that by losing some aspects of the context and moving to a more generic instantiation of the core issues that we lose something of its’ [the case-story] vitality – perhaps this is particularly noticeable when we analyse our [digital] identities and are guilty  of stripping away certain subject positions – such as class, race and gender. Yet I would still argue that producing a solution that can be applied in multiple places is a powerful and revealing process. This issue came up in a case-story that started with motherhood and the uploading of family pictures to a photo-sharing site. This case eventually formed part of a pattern called ‘Others First‘ about parental responsibility towards the digital identity of dependents – particularly children. In this pattern the subject position of motherhood seemed to come under erasure. My thoughts are that this does not necessarily detract from the value of the pattern – it does not erase motherhood, rather in the use of the pattern in solving particular scenarios motherhood will become [re]surfaced as one of a number of [possible] subject positions. The case-stories also remain linked as part of the underlying evidence that supports the patterns. I think in this case there is more than one pattern, particularly surrounding the complications of motherhood and gender in relation to building professional representations of the self. This is not a new issue, where work and motherhood compete, but one that raises new problems when we make choices about how we portray ourselves online. One of the issues with running the workshop over a single day is dealing with the constraints on time that limit the amount of work that can be done to pull out of these related patterns. Many of the groups realised they were dealing with case-stories that held multiple patterns that could have been addressed through developing complimentary patterns.

• How far has technology altered prevailing notions of identity?
• What new technologies are emerging and what might be their impacts?
• To what extent is it possible to inscribe legal requirements into technologies of identity, and with what results?

This looks like a good place to present the work on digital identity patterns that was started at the Eduserv digital identity event, focusing on the pattern elicitation methodology and elaborating one or two of the patterns for comment and feedback.

The important dates are:
Submission of papers (4000-6000 words): 9 April 2009
Notification to authors: 1 May 2009
Identity in the Information Society Workshop: 5 June 2009
And there is the possibility of publication in the IDIS journal:
Submission of revised papers to IDIS Journal: 6th July 2009
Publication in IDIS Journal from January 2010

It was decided to host an event where projects do not simply talk at their audience – but rather an active day that is fundamentally about the participants and their experiences. We have chosen a workshop format that is driven by the Planet methodology for pattern language development, an approach that has resonance with the narrative inquiry methodology being adopted by the Rhizome project. The Planet approach is straightforward, taking participants through a number of predefined steps from shared cases to seed patterns. The morning session focuses on storytelling in small groups, and uncovering common themes within shared narratives. In the afternoon these common themes – composed of a problem, solution and associated forces – are used to build the patterns – what Christopher Alexander (1977) defined as:

“a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice”

The key to the success of the workshop is making sure that relevant stories (or cases) are collected in the Planet Xwiki database in advance of the day. To help guide authors, a template is used to organize each narrative – you can view a blogged case here that uses the STARR template:

http://www.margaperez.com/2008/12/im-also-a-starr-tell-me-whom-you-walk-with-and-ill-tell-you-who-you-are/

Further details of the workshop, including cases and patterns developed from other workshops, are available here on the Planet Xwiki site at http://icanhaz.com/planet-digital-identities.

This first event is by invitation only but we will be holding more follow-up workshops. The next is likely to be in late March/early April. So if you are interested in participating then please do contact us.

References
Alexander, C. with S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel (1977) A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, New York, 1977
See also: http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm