http://www.lutin.utc.fr

The platform effect in social sciences

Dominique BoullierDirecteur de l’UMS CNRS 2809 Lutin

1st European UserLab ConferenceParis La VilletteNovember 24th 2004

Social sciences and applied social sciences

Ergonomics MarketingUses studies

SemioticsAudienceInfoCom Sciences

Cognitive psychology

Sociology Anthropology

Economics

Linguistics

Applied social sciences and users’ properties

Applied academic

fields

Ergonomics Uses studiesMarketing

Semiotics

Users dimensions

Operator Client Receiver

Objects dimensions

Product Service Content

Relevant competence

Manipulation Appropriation Interpretation

Methodologies

Academic field Cognitivepsychology

Sociology Anthropology

Linguistics

Methodology Experimental Naturalistic Modelling

The pressure of computer science

 Applied academic fields

Ergonomics Uses, Marketing

Semiotics

Computer science fields

Man machine interfaces

Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Consumer Relationship Management, User Modelling

Computational linguistics

« Give me a lab and I shall raise the world »

• Sciences: confined labs, equiped, severed from society

• Social sciences: authors (rather than labs) involved in social debates, instable, non equiped

• A new era: social sciences go technical (with a little help from computer science)! But keep open to society

A new transdisciplinary challenge

• The user lab as a tool for focusing the cooperation

• Equipment as an « epistemic catalyst » !• Combination of methods for every project

• Following: The Web CSTI project as a demonstrator

Goals• Science and technology diffusion as a field • How the institutional strategies get applied

on Web sites (editorial choices vs uses): analysis and strategy recommandations

• Validate the combination of methods: – mass data vs individual behavior– Automated and quantitative collection of data

vs qualitative observation – Offer vs demand (structure and properties of

sites vs tracking of web trails and uses)

Four workpackages, four methods

• 1- Topology of Web sites in the field (Tarent: dynamic map of agregates (Kleinberg) , hubs, autorities) Costech

• 2- Web Trails analysis (In/out,inner trails ) LIP6

• Combining data from topologies and mass tracking of trails

• 3- Semiotic features of Web sites: traditions indicators (Manovich), emerging conventions. Scanning of screens with specific software for semiotic categorization (in progress) Costech

• 4- Eye-tracking of web pages trails: cognitive load, user behavior modelling

• Connecting tools for describing sites and eye-tracking: offer/demand relationship

Four workpackages, four methods