Observing and asking people of all ages they "want to" build complex artifacts with LEGO, construct model trains, spend time gardening, participate in book clubs, build furniture with Ikea, construct houses for Habitat for Humanities, and contribute to Wikipedia and Open Source Systems whereas they "have-to" go to work on Monday morning or attend class in schools and universities. The differentiation stated this way hides the complexities between "have-to" and "want-to": most activities that people do are a mixture of the two objectives (see Fig. 2). While "want-to" activities are not good in an absolute sense, they are credited with allowing people to engage in flow experiences [1] by changing (1) alienation to involvement, (2) boredom to enjoyment, and (3) helplessness to control. Flow experiences are not based on a return to the Garden of Eden with a life of abundance free of all work, effort, and pain [2]. The short paper explores the challenges and opportunities offered by new media to increase "want-to" participation. It derives criteria from an analysis of "want to" success models in different domains to design socio-technical environments that have the potential to increase the "want to" experiences of people in working, learning and collaborating.
The analysis of success models provides an existence proof to disprove the notion that working, learning, and collaborating must always be less enjoyable than freely chosen leisure [2]. Numerous additional success stories for "what-to" participation exists (that can not be discussed in this short contribution) including: (1) the engagement of people of all ages with LEGO [11]; (2) the participation in Maker cultures [12]; (3) the participation in Computer Clubhouses [13]; and (4) playing computer games with high levels of engagement [14]. An Exemplary and Inspirational Example: The "Rocket Boys". The film "October Sky" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Sky) (based on a true story) illustrates the many aspects of how passion and self-directed learning can change people's lives.
In the film, a personally motivating event (observing the Sputnik in the sky) piques the interest in rockets and space science of four boys in a coal-mining town. The boys pursue this interest and eventually win a major science fair. For all members of the group, this represents a life-changing experience and sparks a desire to go to college and become engineers. The movie illustrates in a unique way the essential aspects of "want-to" work, learning, and collaboration:
failure and the tenacity to overcome it (e.g., the first few attempts to build a rocket are unsuccessful); inspiration and encouragement (from their high school teacher) are critical factors; help from people with special expertise and from peers being knowledgeable in different domains; and partial success (the initial successful launch of a rocket) creates positive encouragement and recognition by the community (e.g., a news reporter writes an article about their exploration in rocket design).
These supportive aspects are critical to overcome the obstacles that "want-to" participation often faces: in this particular case, the "Rocket Boys" engage in their activities against their parents' wishes. This story is just one of a large number of documented cases that show that life-changing encounters can be found more often in interestdriven, self-directed learning environments than in school environments [9], [15], [16].
An interview that we conducted some time ago with a geoscientist illustrates how "have-to" and "want-to" are intertwined. He uses a couple of domain-specific software systems to analyze his research data but none of the existing systems can provide complete solutions to his problems as his research unfolds and his understanding of the problem, data, and results proceeds. During the interview, he says:
"I spend in average an hour every day developing software for myself to analyze the data I collected because there is not any available software" (rationale for doing so: because the is an infinite number of different problems in the world there is a need for an infinite number of software system); "Even if there is a software developer sitting next to me, it would not be of much help because my needs vary as my research progresses and I cannot clearly explain what I want to do at any moment" (rationale for lack of external support: illdefined problems cannot be delegated);
"I spent three months to gain enough programming knowledge to get by (rationale for learning something new in order "to get by": he is not a professional software engineer and does not intend to become one); Software development has now become an essential task of my research, but I do not consider myself a software developer and I don't know many other things about software development"(rationale for acquiring personally meaningful idiosyncratic knowledge to increase his individual autonomy: he has acquired excellent programming skills for solving his own problems and develops software for a larger context rather than the computational artifact itself).
To make activities conducive to "want-to" participation requires the creation of environments in which people can experience flow experiences: the right mixture between the challenges they are facing and the skills that they have [1]. Most human activities will not be pure "have-to" or "want-to" activities, but they represent a mixture of the two experiences (e.g.: (1) as self-driving cars become a reality, different people at different times "have-to" to drive a car as well as "want-to" drive a car). An important objective of our research and teaching has been to move activities so they will reside more at the "want-to" end of the spectrum (as illustrated in Fig. -2). Some of the specific mechanisms that we have explored in our research [17] are:
allow people to engage in working, learning, and collaborating activities that are personally meaningful to them [6], [18]; eliminate prerequisite skills (e.g.: by supporting not just human computer interaction but human problem-domain interaction) [19]; motivate the learning of new skills by supporting learning-on-demand and the integration of working and learning [20]; provide feedback (with critiquing systems) relevant to the task at hand [21];
identify the right mixture between self-exploration and self-control and guidance, mentoring, and organizational support for sharing ideas, knowledge, and artifacts [22], [23]; develop system architectures that provide "low thresholds" to get started but have "high ceilings" to allow people to grow over time [1], [24]; empower people to actively contribute (grounded in the following observation:
"The experience of having participated in a problem makes a difference to those who are affected by the solution. People are more likely to like a solution if they have been involved in its generation; even though it might not make sense otherwise" [25]).
All these research activities explore and support how new socio-technical environments enable people of all ages to obtain more enjoyment and more pleasurable experiences from their activities. One design requirement to create such environments is that they should support "flow" characterized as "a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter" ([1], p 4).
Being in a flow state represents a major prerequisite for "want-to" participation. Fig. 3Errore. L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata. illustrates that to be in a flow state requires the right mix between challenges and skills. Activities representing challenges too big for existing skills (e.g.: for an inexperienced skier skiing on black slopes) lead to anxiety, and not demanding enough challenges for existing skills (e.g.: for an experienced skier skiing on green slopes) lead to boredom. Copyright © 2016 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
People of all ages spend substantial amounts of time in idiosyncratic, personally meaningful activities with a level of engagement and effort that they do not bring to many working, learning, and collaborating activities. In their work and school environments, many people experience their life dominated by "have-to" participation. The unique opportunity briefly outlined in this contribution is to learn from "want-to" participation in order to create conceptual frameworks and socio-technical environments in which personal experiences are shifted more towards the "want-to" end of the spectrum (see Fig. 2).
Relationship to the CoPDA workshops series. I consider the challenge from "haveto" to "want-to" participation an important objective of the overall scope of the CoPDA workshops "Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age", complementing and widening the themes of the three previous workshops; an extension of my contributions to previous CoPDA workshops ( (1) CoPDA'2013: "Is More More or is Less More? Exploring Frames of Reference for Quality of Life in the Digital Age"; and (2) CoPDA'2015: "Information, Participation, and Collaboration Overload -A Design Trade-Off Analysis"); and a central issue for a number of research themes, including meta-design (enabling, inviting, and supporting active contributions by all stakeholders) and cultures of participation (characterized by productive activities that are voluntary and nonmonetary) that we and many others have pursued for the last two decades.