El proceso de armonización en la Unión Europea

Facebook was established in 2004 in Harvard University as an online face book, “a directory of student ID pictures that classmates use to check each other out”

(Lashinsky, 2005). The young founder of Facebook, then a Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg and his friends, launched the website to be the “electronic freshman directory” managed by students (Heiberger and Harper, 2008; Lashinsky, 2005). Initially, only the university students were allowed to the directory; a dot-edu e-mail account was a requirement for membership. Today everybody can join Facebook. The site, which serves as a “communication tool” among people and groups of people, is the most commonly used social network site worldwide, hosting more than one billion users (Zuckerberg, 2012; Heiberger and Harper, 2008). This widespread use of the site is one of the reasons, why it was proposed to be used by the students and teachers of design studio courses in the second cycle of the implementation in this research. In this study, the aim is to supplement the social interaction and communication processes between teachers and students by using an online platform; in other words proposing a simple and familiar platform, which can easily be used by students and teachers of the studio without being an effort to learn and adapt. Within this context, the most commonly used social network site is presumed to be relatively the easy and familiar to use by teachers and students (Heiberger and Harper, 2008). Another reason for the selection of Facebook as the implementation site is its inclusive quality housing many of the tools and features other social network sites offer. Heiberger and Harper (2008) define Facebook as the

“synthesis” of many existing but “disconnected” interaction and communication tools, such as personal web pages – the “profile pages” on Facebook, synchronous chats – the chat feature on Facebook, asynchronous messages – wall posts and comments on Facebook, picture and video uploads – image based wall posts and photo albums on Facebook, groups, “events”, “RSS feeds” – the Newsfeed on Facebook, “blogs” – the profile pages and homepage on Facebook, microblogs – status updates on Facebook, “e-mail” – one-to-one or group messages on Facebook,

and “networks and friends”. Therefore, Facebook offers a rich platform of tools and features of social network sites to be tested within this study.

The structure of Facebook is built on the idea of a shared homepage, which is constantly updated to show friends’ activities in reverse-chronological order, including status and profile picture posts; verbal wall posts; image, video and audio posts; event posts; link posts such as web pages and articles; activities on other social networks; and most importantly, any comments made on these posts. All the latest activities within one’s friends circle are automatically located at the top of this shared page; when a friend posts a video it appears at the top, and also, when a friend’s friend comments on an image, which was posted a year ago, that image with all its existing comments moves to the top of the page, too. This feature of Facebook, which is called Newsfeed, enables one to be “aware” of all the information flow within her/his closed circle of friends in a chronological sequence (Schadewitz and Zamenopoulos, 2008). All the verbal and visual material posted by everyone is collectively “visible” on a long vertical scroll surface permanently recorded with the date, time and author. In addition, the feature makes sure that you see any information entered the moment it is posted. In other words, it is a collective surface, where all users are able to interact with their own ideas and contributions as well as other’s, while all the bits of information are related to each other by being on the same surface. From a design studio course perspective, it can be used as an endless vertical presentation scroll board, where all the students’ design processes – including all their sketches, drawings, found research material, teachers’ and other students’ critiques and comments – are gathered together, and constantly organised by records of date, time and author, and the inter-relations between (Blevis et al., 2008).

Another basic space in Facebook is the personal profile page, which is one’s private area; here connected to a student’s desk in the studio. The profile page is a user’s verbal and visual personal description and presentation of her/himself, with profile picture, and other background information. In the centre of the page is the “wall”, where all of one’s posts such as written messages, photo or video posts, link posts, written comments on those posts, likes, events, other people’s posts or comments are located and presented; coinciding to the whole design process of a student.

Everything a user does on Facebook is posted on her/his wall in

reverse-chronological order functioning as a personal online journal, log, or a “weblog” or

“blog” (Schmidt, 2007). The structure and the use of the profile pages in Facebook are very similar to another type of social network site, blogs, (in September 2011 Facebook launched the new design of the profile pages, the “Timeline”, which bases the wall on an even more blog-like structure) which people use mostly for “creative expression” and “documentation of personal experiences” and also to “influence other people” or “meet new people” (Schmidt, 2007; Lenhart and Fox, 2006 and Nardi et al., 2004 qtd. in Schmidt, 2007). The first three of these motivations to use blogs and blog-like features are proposed to correspond to the intentions of a student in a design studio course. The profile pages in Facebook are based on the inter-related relationship between visual and verbal posts. The importance of the use of images and words together in mutual support of each other in studio critiques is emphasised previously (Schön, 1985). Facebook may provide a platform for the reciprocal relationship between the visual and verbal material in critique sessions.

Any photo and/or video one posts on Facebook is open to comments by that person’s friends, depending on the privacy settings. Comments are lined up vertically and chronologically under the visual posts, the oldest comment being on top and the most recent being at the very bottom of the line, all with the information of day, time and author. The comments sequences have no limits and can be extended endlessly. In terms of design studio context, the photo and/or video may function as the visual work, i.e. skecth, drawing, model, short film, research material, etc., of the student, while the comments line as the critiques given to it by teachers and students. This set up also reveals the inter-relations between different pieces of critique, such as the comments made on other comments (critiques). Comments can also be in the form of links, thus one can comment on a visual by referring to a different webpage. Another feature for commenting on photos is tagging, which is principally aimed to label the people in the photos, but often used by Facebook users to describe the images, or parts of them, by writing short notes over the relevant area of the image. There is also the alternative feature of creating photo albums, where a group of photos can be posted within a photo album under a name, and thus viewed all together, thematically. Each photo can be viewed individually one after another, and they can be viewed all together as thumbnails in a grid, as well. Similarly, each photo can be commented separately while the photo album can be commented as a whole. The feature of photo album is proposed to function as a presentation board in a studio

jury, where students hang their presentation sheets on the vertical board, mostly within a grid-like arrangement, and the teachers and students comment on both individual sheets and the whole presentation. Facebook provides its users with

“groups” feature, where a group of people can start a common homepage to share ideas and material within that allocated space with that selected group of people.

Groups can be “open groups”, where any user on Facebook can find and see the group and its content, and also join or leave without permission or confirmation;

“close groups”, where any user can see the name and members of the group but the content is visible and available only to the members of the group, and membership needs approval from the group admin(s); and “secret groups”, where any information about or material within the group is only vsible and available to the group members, and membership is only possible by a group member adding someone in her/his friends list. A Facebook group is thematic, separated area, with its own homepage, members list, photo and video collection, etc. It represents a group of students and teachers getting together as a team to work on a particular task; it can also represent the supplemental online space of a design studio course, i.e. the online platform porposed in this study. Design studio course holds complex relations and levels of public and private areas and activities (Blevis et al., 2008). On one hand, it is an open-plan, physical and social environment housing personal – and mostly private – ideas, inventions and creations, produced over a duration of time next to one another (Blevis et al., 2008). On the other hand, it stands on and operates in a public, social network of interactions and communications, multi-directional reflections; constant sharing of ideas to receive the reactions and “critiques” of studio people (Kvan, 2001; Craig and Zimring, 2000). This complicated balance and arrangement of private and public within the social setting of design studio is suggested to be addressed through the similarly complex public and private spaces within Facebook.

Finally, the central idea behind Facebook is that people have social connections such as family, friends, etc. in their actual, offline lives, and they want to communicate and share information with those people who they already know (Heiberger and Harper, 2008). Locke (2007) points out that Facebook was designed for, and still functions as, not as a community space but a network of connections among people who already know each other. He (2007) also states the importance of Facebook as a service for people to share information and data. Facebook aims to facilitate

information and data sharing among the users who already know each other. This perspective of Facebook is another major reason, why it is proposed as a model for the online environment in this study. The online platform here is proposed to be a supplemental tool for the already connected studio people to share visual and verbal data representing their ideas on design projects. In addition, it can offer a more casual and comfortable interaction and communication space than design studio class, which is proved to be a necessary characteristic for informal interactions between students and teachers of the studio (Heiberger and Harper, 2008; Craig and Zimring, 2000; Zimring, 2001).