社會議題資料庫的情境敘事型式對社會需求探索的影響

Abstract

社會創新(social innovation)是用創新方法來徹底了解社會議題、確認社會潛在需求，提出解決方案，以解決社會問題，促進大眾福祉。社會創新的從構想的孕育到創新方案的施行，包含六個階段。其中，第一個階段是要先讓參與者充分了解當前需要解決的問題，洞察出未被滿足的社會需求。近年來隨著網路的普及性，社會創新歷程可轉變成在網路平台上發展。參與社會創新的群眾可以將自身所握有的有關社會議題的知識與訊息，透過創新平台來交換、分享。然而，有關該社會議題的訊息又多又雜，如何組織這些資訊以促進參與者對社會議題的了解與潛在社會需求探索，是個值得研究的議題。本研究欲比較三種不同的議題敘事的型式在引導參與者釐清問題脈絡的績效。目前在設計領域用兩種常見的議題敘事類型來描述問題情境：(1)剪影敘事以物件或圖像化提供單點的印象，以及(2)故事型敘事含有線性情節特徵的描述內容。然而社會系統的元素相對地多元複雜，結構環環相扣，必得用具有組織系統性的架構來呈現議題的資訊，才能夠完整的敘事議題中的問題情境，提升參與者們對議題的探索。本研究認為可藉由活動理論系統化敘事之特性來改善，因此提出一個以活動理論架構為基礎的社會議題資料庫來呈現、管理議題資訊。 本研究招募90名參與者，每3人組成一個團隊，總共30個的團隊，分配到三種型式的敘事實驗組，每一敘述型式實驗組有10個團隊。每個團隊依據所給予的敘述型式，進行社會議題理解與探索。社會議題理解與探索以發現問題的廣度及深度作為衡量問題探索績效的指標。結果顯示：活動理論的敘事情境型式對參與者在發現問題的廣度上具有顯著的效果，可助於參與者對於社會議題情境了解的周全性。此研究結果可應用此資訊敘事的型式來建立社會議題資料庫的架構，藉此發展合適的資訊科技與通訊技術(ICT)之社會創新平台。

Social innovation is about using innovative approaches to exploring potential social need, deriving solutions to enhance social welfare of people. The process of social innovation consists of six stages, from idea generation to realization of innovative approaches. The first stage is to have participants understand current social problems and explore unsatisfying social needs. In recent years, with the widespread usage of the internet, social innovation can take advantage of information and communication technology to develop a web-based platform, by which participants can exchange and share information about social issues from various remote sites. Because of high volume and variety of this information, the information has to be organized so that it can be easily accessed and comprehended by social innovation participants. Thus, it is worthwhile to investigate how to organize this information to promote participants' understanding of social issues and exploration of social needs. In this study, we compare the effect of three different styles of issue description in guiding the understanding of social issue. Among the three issue description styles, two are frequently used in the design domain: snapshots and storyboard. Snapshots provide simple concrete images on series of cards or icons to help designers to build impression of the events. Storyboard provides narrative or account of events or objects in the form of user cases or personas. Since the complexity of social issue, we propose a third description style- activity-theory based description- that can help participants in exploring and gaining insight on social issues. Ninety participants were randomly assigned into the three style (snapshot, story and activity theory) conditions. In each condition, 10 groups of participants were asked to write down their views about social issue after reading issue description in which they were given. These views were used to examine their performance on issue exploration. Results showed that activity theory style significantly enhances the comprehensiveness of issue exploration. Furthermore, results of in-depth analysis show the proper usage of each description style. In sum, these findings can improve the structure of issue description and serve as a basis for the design of issue database in future social innovation platform.