In Online Social Networks (OSNs), users are often overwhelmed with a huge amount of social data, most of which are irrelevant to their interest. Filtering of the social data stream is the common way to deal with this problem, and it has already been applied by OSNs, such as Facebook and Google+. Unfortunately, personalized filtering leads to “the filter bubble” problem where the user is trapped inside a world within the limited boundaries of her interests and cannot be exposed to any surprising, desirable information. Moreover, these OSNs are black boxes, providing no transparency for the user about how the filtering mechanism decides what is to be shown in the activity stream. As a result, the user trust in the system can decline. This thesis presents an interactive method to visualize the personalized stream filtering in OSNs. The proposed visualization helps to create awareness, explanation, and control of personalized stream filtering to alleviate “the filter bubble” problem and increase the users’ trust in the system. The visualization is implemented in MADMICA – a new privacy-aware decentralized OSN, based on the Friendica P2P protocol, which filters the social updates stream of users based on their interests. The results of three user evaluations are presented in this thesis: small-scale pilot study, qualitative study and large-scale quantitative study with 326 participants. The results of the small-scale study show that the filter bubble visualization makes the users aware of the filtering mechanism, engages them in actions to correct and change it, and as a result, increases the users’ trust in the system. The qualitative study reveals a generally higher proportion of desirable user perceptions for the awareness, explanation and control of the filter bubble provided by the visualization. Moreover, the results of the quantitative study demonstrate that the visualization leads to increased users’ awareness of the filter bubble, understandability of the filtering mechanism and to a feeling of control over the data stream they are seeing.

Online communities thrive on their members participation and contributions. Continuous encouragement of participation of these members is vital for an online community. Social visualizations are one of the methods to make members explicitly aware of their connections and relationships. There are numerous ways to visually represent information, current-status, power, and acceptance of members in an online community. In this thesis I present a design of a visualization representing the evolving reciprocity of relationships among users based on the comments they give to each others posts. The purpose of the visualization is to emphasize and hopefully trigger a common bond in the community and thereby increase their participation. We developed and deployed the visualization in an online community called WISETales where women in science and engineering share personal stories. We also deployed modified and improved versions of the visualization in two other communities, I-Help class discussion forums and the Vegatopia discussion forum for vegetarians. In this thesis we present the results of the evaluation in these three communities. The results unfortunately, were negative. Even though separate explanations for the lack of motivational effect can be found in each of the experiments, it seems that the chosen motivational approach was too gentle to encourage participation. It seems for reciprocation to take place, the users need to be committed to the community and already have some other underlying motivation to participate actively. The visualization also should provide some new information that they werent aware of previously. This was not the case with the users in the three chosen communities. WISETales was too new and can barely be called a community. I-Help was not a community, but a place for student to post questions for the teacher to answer. Vegatopia, in contrast, is well established, active community, where people know each other, and engage in conversations with each other. The visualization did not provide any new information for them that they didnt know and only served as a brief attraction for a day (novelty effect). We are still optimistic, however, that the visualization may be useful for active and too dynamic communities where people are unaware of their social relationships because they are too many, for example, social network sites like Twitter.

Online communities thrive on their members participation and contributions. Continuous encouragement of participation of these members is vital for an online community. Social visualizations are one of the methods to make members explicitly aware of their connections and relationships. There are numerous ways to visually represent information, current-status, power, and acceptance of members in an online community. In this thesis I present a design of a visualization representing the evolving reciprocity of relationships among users based on the comments they give to each others posts. The purpose of the visualization is to emphasize and hopefully trigger a common bond in the community and thereby increase their participation. We developed and deployed the visualization in an online community called WISETales where women in science and engineering share personal stories. We also deployed modified and improved versions of the visualization in two other communities, I-Help class discussion forums and the Vegatopia discussion forum for vegetarians. In this thesis we present the results of the evaluation in these three communities. The results unfortunately, were negative. Even though separate explanations for the lack of motivational effect can be found in each of the experiments, it seems that the chosen motivational approach was too gentle to encourage participation. It seems for reciprocation to take place, the users need to be committed to the community and already have some other underlying motivation to participate actively. The visualization also should provide some new information that they werent aware of previously. This was not the case with the users in the three chosen communities. WISETales was too new and can barely be called a community. I-Help was not a community, but a place for student to post questions for the teacher to answer. Vegatopia, in contrast, is well established, active community, where people know each other, and engage in conversations with each other. The visualization did not provide any new information for them that they didnt know and only served as a brief attraction for a day (novelty effect). We are still optimistic, however, that the visualization may be useful for active and too dynamic communities where people are unaware of their social relationships because they are too many, for example, social network sites like Twitter.

The greenhouse effect is the biggest environmental challenge of today, and in line with UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, we must drastically decrease our global production of carbon dioxide. A sustainable society needs knowledgeable citizens who can vote for competent decision makers, and as knowledge is power, the environmental issue becomes a question of democracy. This pinpoints the importance of the general public getting dependable and accurate environmental information from trustworthy sources. So, how and where to design information about sustainability in a meaningful way for the individual, connected to his or her everyday context? The literature review was concentrated to the areas of Social visualization, Placemaking and Interaction design. The empirics were directed at the general public near Malmö Central Station and concentrated around the area of travel and transport. It included a triangulation of contextual methods; observations, questionnaires and interviews. Data and key figures from the regional public transportation company were also used. The result of the empirics shows that people experience environmental information as diverse and complicated, especially numbers and statistics. They want concrete tips of what they can do in their everyday life, and they want to understand the effect of their sustainable choices. The majority of the respondents are positive to using public places as information carriers for environmental issues, preferably in places where they stay for a while, for example waiting halls or staircases. They want easy-to-grasp, concise information from trustworthy sources. With these insights, the theoretical and empirical findings were used as the basis for the storyboard in an iterative design process that resulted in a graphical animation. The concept can easily be transferred to other areas of sustainability. My research shows that in order to feel included in the work for a more sustainable society, the general public needs help to see the correlation between large-scale environmental activities and their own, individual everyday efforts.

User contributions are vital to online communities; therefore it is important to know how to motivate user participation to ensure flow and quality of content, and to generate more traffic and revenue to community owners. In contrast to previous research which has explored the motivations of participants in already existing online communities, I investigate whether a new niche online community with a particular focus(women in Science and Engineering sharing their personal experiences through stories) can be started through a design that follows best practices for community design and principles derived from theories of motivation. The design of the WISETales community is based upon insights from literature in three main areas: social psychology, computer science, and gender studies. A social visualization which serves informational, navigational and motivational tool was also developed. One pilot study and two exploratory studies were carried out to evaluate the need for such a community, its design and interface usability. The design of the community and visualization, along with the results from the studies, their analysis and discussion are presented in the thesis.

User contributions are vital to online communities; therefore it is important to know how to motivate user participation to ensure flow and quality of content, and to generate more traffic and revenue to community owners. In contrast to previous research which has explored the motivations of participants in already existing online communities, I investigate whether a new niche online community with a particular focus(women in Science and Engineering sharing their personal experiences through stories) can be started through a design that follows best practices for community design and principles derived from theories of motivation. The design of the WISETales community is based upon insights from literature in three main areas: social psychology, computer science, and gender studies. A social visualization which serves informational, navigational and motivational tool was also developed. One pilot study and two exploratory studies were carried out to evaluate the need for such a community, its design and interface usability. The design of the community and visualization, along with the results from the studies, their analysis and discussion are presented in the thesis.