Designing for Remixing: Computer-supported Social Creativity

In this talk I present a framework for the design and study of an online community of amateur creators. I focus on remixing as a lens to understand the social, cultural, and technical infrastructure of a social media environment that supports creative expression. I am motivated by three broad questions: 1) what is the functional role of remixing in cultural production and social learning? 2) what are the structural properties of an online remixing community? 3) what are amateur creators’ attitudes towards remixing? This research builds on my work on the Scratch Online Community, a website I conceived, developed and studied. The Scratch website allows young people to share and remix their own video games and animations, as well as those of their peers. In three years, the community has grown to more than

700,000 registered members from around the world and 1.6 million user-contributed projects.

Speaker Details

Andrés Monroy-Hernández is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. His work on social computing focuses on the design and study of online spaces that support creative and amateur peer production. As part of his research, he created the Scratch website, an online community where more than half a million kids from around the world share, program and remix animations and video games. His work has been recognized at Ars Electronica, the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition and by fellowships from Samsung, Bradesco and Telmex. Andrés’ side interests include traveling, spicy food, cycling and Internet memes.