Designing Digital Ecosystems for Collaboration, Innovation, and Community-Building

Online platforms, including social media, are often designed to drive engagement and maintain the user’s attention. This approach has led to an increase in polarization and echo chambers within many online communities. Yet, addressing global challenges and making fundamental advances to human knowledge requires new, interdisciplinary and innovative thinking, for which we need positive environments for ideas to collide. In this context, SFI has been developing the ARCH platform, which is a new, digital ecosystem which focuses on fostering dialogue, collaboration, and exposure to new ideas rather than increasing engagement. 

This working group will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to study how best to support creativity, innovation, and community-building within ARCH. Two main themes will guide discussions: (1) leveraging the platform as a testbed for research on human creativity, team formation, and innovation, and (2) integrating best practices and artificial intelligence to optimize the ARCH’s design. Participants will explore topics including how ideas diffuse, how teams form, and how ethical AI tools can help avoid the polarization common to many digital spaces. By connecting researchers with expertise across multiple disciplines, the workshop aims to leverage the ARCH as a testbed for fundamental research on human behavior as well as develop new design principles to support online communities in a healthier, more productive digital ecosystem. 

This Working Group is made possible by a generous grant from the Siegel Family Endowment