Redistributing Leadership in Online Creative Collaboration

Kurt Luther (Carnegie Mellon)Casey Fiesler (Georgia Tech)

Amy Bruckman (Georgia Tech)

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7Renae Robert

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Leadership andOnline Creative Collaboration

• Leadership essential to successful online creative collaboration

• But leadership is hard, and many leaders aren’t effective– Newgrounds: leaders overburdened, only 20% of

collaborative animation projects completed [Luther et al. 2010]

• How can we support leaders of online creative collaboration?

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Preview

• Background: Why online leadership is hard• Theory: Redistributing leadership• Design: Pipeline (collaboration tool)• Case Study: Holiday Flood• Implications for theory and design

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Challenges for Leaders

• Many responsibilities– Planning, problem solving, clarifying, etc.

• Challenges of distributed collaboration– Leadership at a distance

• Challenges of creative collaboration– Subjectivity, originality, ownership, completion

• Lack of technological support– Example: Newgrounds “collab threads”

[Becker 1984; Hinds & McGrath 2006; Luther & Bruckman 2008; Yukl 1997]

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Dealing with the Challenges

• How Newgrounds collab leaders manage the challenges– Simplify projects

• Top-down leadership styles• Minimize interdependence

– Work very hard

• Still, many leaders become overwhelmed, collabs fail[Luther & Bruckman 2008; Luther et al. 2010]

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Research Question

How can we ease the burden on leaders of online creative collaboration and help them organize more successful, complex, creative projects?

Design a technology, Pipeline, that helps leaders redistribute leadership to (1) other members and (2) the technology itself.

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Distributed Leadership

• Leadership roles can be separated from leadership behaviors [Thorpe et al. 2011]

– Only formal leaders hold leadership roles– Any member might perform leadership behaviors

• Leadership can be distributed in traditional orgs [Bolden 2011], online collaborations [Zhu et al. 2012]

Design implication: Help non-leaders perform some leadership behaviors

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Distributed Cognition

• System-level view of cognition– Cognitive processes can be

distributed across social groups, artifacts, time

• Systems of humans and artifacts fly airplanes [Hutchins 1995], fight vandalism in Wikipedia[Geiger & Ribes 2010]

Design implication: Technology itself could perform some leadership behaviors

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Pipeline

• Web-based collaboration tool for creative projects

• Augments, rather than replaces, existing communities– Newgrounds, Georgia Tech, etc.

• Released as free, open source software

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Pipeline features

User profiles

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Pipeline features

User profilesProjects

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Pipeline features

User profilesProjectsTasks

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Pipeline features

User profilesProjectsTasksDiscussions

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Redistributing leadership toother members

Trusted member system

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Redistributing leadership tothe software

File managementActivity feeds

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Studying Pipeline Usage

• Case study: Holiday Flood (HF)– 6-week Newgrounds art collab

• Data sources– Pipeline server logs (1100+ events)– Discussion on Newgrounds forums (140+ posts)– Interviews with 5 most active members (10.5 hours)

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Leadership in Holiday Flood

• Five behaviors for managing the work [Yukl 1997]

– Planning– Problem Solving– Clarifying Roles & Objectives– Informing– Monitoring

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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12 DrummersDrumming

11 Pipers Piping

10 Lords Leaping

9 Ladies Dancing

8 Maids Milking

7 Swans Swimming

6 Geese Laying

5 Golden Rings

4 Calling Birds

3 French Hens

2 Turtle Doves

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

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Planning

• Task system helped HF’s leaders develop and share “action plans” with members

• Pipeline’s tools encouraged leaders to plan a more complex, ambitious collab– Multiple phases, deadlines– High interdependence

“Holiday Flood was all planned and plotted. It’s the reason we needed Pipeline. I doubt it would have worked out any other way.” –Renae

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Poster

Gabriel Gabriel Robert Robert Renae (final)

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Problem Solving

• Dealing with emergencies, unexpected situations requiring immediate attention [Yukl 1997]

• In HF, Pipeline provided awareness, access to resources to help leaders and non-leaders solve problems– Poster: Multiple members iterate

on big task– Emergency drummers: Replacing

a drop-out days before deadline

ZaneZansorrow’s last-minute contribution “saved the whole project, basically.”–Gabriel

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Informing

• Gathering, sharing relevant info with members [Yukl 1997]

• Pipeline’s activity feeds offloaded some informing tasks (e.g. group awareness) from HF’s leaders

• Feeds redistributed informing to members, not just software

• Human informing provides motivation, not just information

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

Informing was “a clear sign that the leader is very much motivated with the project.”–Robert

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Implications

• Implications for theory– Distributed leadership and distributed cognition

provide complementary perspectives on designing for redistributed leadership

– Leadership in online creative collaboration can be redistributed to encourage more successful, complex, creative projects

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Implications

• Implications for design– Assume influential formal leaders, but help them

redistribute leadership beyond themselves– Beware of unintended human costs of redistributing

leadership to software – Support a variety of leadership styles

Background / Theory / Design / Case Study / Implications

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Thank You

• Co-authors: Amy Bruckman, Casey Fiesler• Pipeline developers: Boris de Souza, Chris

Howse, Kevin Ziegler, Joe Gonzales• Georgia Tech ELC Lab• CMU Social Computing Lab• Pipeline users, beta testers• Newgrounds community• NSF CreativeIT-0855952

Try Pipeline!http://pipeline.cc.gatech.edu/

Fix Pipeline!https://github.com/kluther/Pipeline/