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Kim Martin is

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an assistant professor of history
and culture

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and technology
studies at the University of Guelph.

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She is the associate director
of the Humanities Interdisciplinary

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Collaboration Lab, which has
the great acronym of the THINC Lab

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and the Research Board Chair
for the Linked Infrastructure

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for Networked
Cultural Scholarship Project,

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which has another great acronym,
which is LINCS.

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At LINCS,
Kim also leads the User Experience team

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investigating different interfaces
for working with linked open data.

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She has published on the topics
of serendipity in digital environments,

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inclusive maker spaces and digital history
pedagogy.

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And today, Kim will be speaking on finding
common ground,

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cultivating serendipity in the Commons.

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Thank you so much.

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I'm just going to try and share
my screen here.

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Is that looking okay to everyone?

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Yep. Okay.

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That's good.

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Okay. Thanks.

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I can't see anyone else, so this is

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an interesting conundrum.

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I'm just going to go.

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All right,
so I have more than a few words perhaps,

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but hopefully not too many
to walk you through today.

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And I'd like to start
with two points of gratitude.

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One of them is very central.

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So where I am at the University of Guelph
is situated on the central

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sorry ancestral

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lands of the Attawandaron, the Anishinaabe
and the Haudenosaunee peoples.

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I, myself, as a scholar, know
I have a lot to do

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to come to terms with Canada's past
and to do this day by day, slowly.

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But hope that we improve where we are
with reconciliation

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and relationships
in the next years to come.

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I also have two other points
or three other people to think.

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One of them is Evan Reese,
who is a UX student who works with me

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on the INKE project

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and LINCS projects who has been key
to some of the findings in this talk.

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John Maxwell, who's one of the

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other panelists who wrote to me
a couple of weeks ago

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with great excitement about serendipity,
which is going to be featured

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in both of our talks
and re-inspired me to get thinking

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and digging into what this means
and in the context of the Commons.

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And Graham Jensen, who
when I walked him through

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what I was hoping to do in this talk
last week,

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kept me grounded and,

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you know, indicated always think
critically about what you're doing

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so that the points on privacy
that I get to later in the talk

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come from that conversation with him.

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So I'm going to briefly

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do an overview here,
but before I jump in, I'll let you know

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a little bit
about my own research on serendipity.

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My it's been about a decade
now that I have studied

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serendipity in different forms.

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It started specifically looking at e-books
and whether or not

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people had aha moments
when they were using e-books.

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It moved on to investigations
of historians, which was my Ph.D.

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research and then humanities scholars.

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So I'll walk
you through a little bit of that today

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and some definitions and locations
where the serendipity happens.

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I will say that my own research focuses
on humanities scholars,

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and while I think

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that there are many similarities
between the work

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that humanities and social scientists do.

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I'm going to stick with

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the term humanities scholars just

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so I don't include anyone in an umbrella
in which they are uncomfortable.

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I'll talk a little bit and introduced my
own current research project called SCALE.

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Yes, we love our acronyms here at Guelph.

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SCALE is serendipity, context and agency
and linked environments.

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I will reiterate the commons
and talk through three different elements

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of serendipity, both context and agency,
and then the element of awareness

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and how the commons is already providing
space for some of this to happen.

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In addition to

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start
with each one of those, I will highlight

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an idea
that I've had doing the work of digging

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into the commons that might enhance
the grounds for serendipity.

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I will look at very briefly concerns
that we might have when we think about

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allowing serendipity into a space
like this before an invitation happens.

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And I conclude.

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So a couple of definitions here.

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They're very, very, very,
I suppose, definitions of serendipity.

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They've been called
it's been called a slippery term.

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It's hard to define.

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And the term itself actually doesn't
translate well into other languages.

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They do have things in common.

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So one of my favorite and perhaps most
open definition is here by Andre et al.

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Now the finally finding
of unexpected information

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while engaged in any information activity.

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So nice and open
any time you're experiencing anything.

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And their second part
is that intellectual leap, that movement,

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the movement of recognition
to arrive at an insight to

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the next one

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by hey I'm asking you now is again

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has that element of unexpectedness
and insight but adds the value.

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Right. So you have an aha moment.

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You recognize that it's important,
but it's not until that

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valuable outcome happens
that serendipity has actually occurred.

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And McCay-Peet and Toms agree

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with that notion
that it has to be valuable.

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The list several things

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that you could be interacting with ideas,
information, objects, phenomena.

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And it's that interaction that I'm going
to come back to here throughout my talk

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when I really indicate that it is the user
that makes the serendipity happen,

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not the platform,
but that we can do our best to kind of lay

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the groundwork for this
these aha moments to occur.

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So in the past,
lots of literature and serendipity,

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lots of places that it can be experienced
by humanities scholars.

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The library and the archives
and these pieces are speaking specifically

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to the physical locations.

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But there's lots of work done on the
digital versions of both of those spaces

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just online, the,
you know, the Internet itself.

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Google calling itself
the serendipity engine.

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We encounter
or have these information encounters

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all the time,
and often good things come out of them.

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Collaboration is another place

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that serendipity often happens,
and it has been proven

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repeatedly that interdisciplinary teams
experience

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it when collaborating.

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So my own research questions

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when I have gone back to serendipity

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in terms of the work
that I do investigating different

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digital environments are really it can
we can serendipity be an aspect of utility

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can that aha moment
help these platforms become more useful?

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One of the ways of doing
this is to provide context,

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which I'll talk about today.

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And another is to make sure
that the user has agency

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feels that they can control
the space that they're working in

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and they're not just handed information
and expect to engage with it in a way

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that is either visualized or analyzed

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or presented by someone else.

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And so we can get interfaces to combine

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features of content, context and agency.

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I think we will have a an environment
that is ripe for serendipity.

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I will say that no platform
that I have worked on so far is ideal,

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and I don't think there is an ideal
serendipitous platform,

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but that I'm making headway

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in kind of looking at these platforms
to see what they can do

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and what small changes
we can make to have these moments.

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So the commons itself as

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Graham introduced along with Ray
and Alyssa has some goals, right?

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Sharing.

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It allows people to share access
and repurpose scholarly

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projects, brings people together

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for the purposes of collaboration,
project management, and it really helps

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people get the research out there
and also find other people's research.

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So you can already start to see
from the way that I describe serendipity,

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how the connections to the commons
can happen.

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It's not it's not a huge leap here.

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So if we look first at context
and its connection to serendipity,

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anyone who does research, which I'm
assuming, as most of my audience here

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will know, that you can't just

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look at something and

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look inside something
and know what it's about.

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So you can read a journal article,
and that's great.

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But without those citations at the bottom,
without knowing that the author is

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without knowing when it was published,
all that context around it is

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what makes it important and allows you
to incorporate it into your own

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kind of research and your own path
through your own thinking.

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And the different ways

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that environments
and particularly digital environments,

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help with this is to visualize
these relationships, right?

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Not just between materials that happen
like in a library or on a library shelf,

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but also between peoples and between
materials and people associated with them,

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whether it's the author or people
that they cite and also their networks.

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Right.

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So it can expand outwards
because of the nature of the web

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and how it links
one piece of information to another.

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So I did a search
and they just ask commons and I just

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simply went in and just went to browse,
which is what I'm you know what?

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I have my kind of top of mind
and I'm thinking about serendipity.

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It is browsing behavior that people

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usually experiences
during the very top thing to come up.

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Lo and behold, with the most recent

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addition to the Commons,
which is John and Bea's talk.

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So what do I get?

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Context wise,
I've been able to bring this up

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right away.

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I know when it was uploaded
to the commons,

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which is great piece of information.

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I know it's a conference publication,
so I'm not necessarily

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expecting a blog post or a podcast.

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I know right away in my mind
the format that that's going to come in

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and I can see immediately
who wrote it, which is fantastic.

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You can see again,
due to the nature of the web

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that John's name is in blue,
which means I can click on him

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and find more information,
more context about this piece.

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And I will say here
that I did write to John for permission

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for this next slide here.

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So here's John's

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profile on the HSS Commons,

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and your brain automatically
takes in all this information

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and it helps you contextualize the piece
that you were interested

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in and clicking on in the first place.

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So I wanted to get to know
John a little bit better.

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I know from looking here
that he works at Simon Fraser

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and he has all these academic interests
which I immediately see.

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Several are very common with mine

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and I know

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that he's publishing an interest
in publishing, publishes a small journal

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and also that I'm likely going to see him
at INKE gatherings, lo and behold.

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But perhaps most

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importantly, I can click within two clicks
of my original source.

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I can be at other sources that John wrote,
so I can quickly contextualize

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not only who he is, but what his other
what his writing

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is in relationship
to his other pieces of publications.

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And again, with the Commons, it's
definitely not just writing.

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There's all different
types of formats at publication.

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So this is these are my idea slides.

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So what I would say here about

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a small enhancement
for serendipity is allowing users

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at the commons
to save the results of a search.

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And I will say that it's very possible

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that all of these things are down
the road.

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The commons is in beta, but we are

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myself and Evan are really investigating
as it stands.

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And I think being able
to have a checklist of things I looked at,

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save it in a little note to myself
and then adding a little contextual

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note of mine.

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What was I doing at the time?

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I perform that search, right?

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And that allows me to go back
through my own path of researching,

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which has been proven repeatedly
in serendipity literature

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to be a way that increases those
aha moments.

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Right.

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We've all had times when we've gone
looking for that one piece of our research

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that's been lost.

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And this is a way of being

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able to go back through those paths,
to go off on different tangents

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and find different spaces
within the commons.

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So agency

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is the second aspect of serendipity
I will explore here.

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And this is where it really gets

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back to the notion, as I said
at the beginning of the human right.

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My Ph.D.

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work really looked at the verbs
that people used, historians

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in particular, to describe what happens
during a serendipitous experience.

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And repeatedly, it was an active process.

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This is, again,
supported in the literature

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by the wonderful terms that people come up
with to call people who experience

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serendipity often as serendipitist
or a serendipper.

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And in addition to Edelez's
well-known encounter and super encounters

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and these people, you know,
not only experienced these things,

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these serendipitous experiences, often

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they also create their own opportunities
for serendipity as well.

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We'll get to again at the end.

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Within the Commons

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itself there's two different ways
that agency plays a role,

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and the first is the ability
to customize and personalize space.

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I think the control that users have over
the Commons is phenomenal.

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What you're seeing in front of you
here is my own settings

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for when I want the commons
to message me, right?

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And so if I or someone answers a question
that I posted,

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I want a message in my inbox.

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You can turn all these on,
you can turn them off,

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you can change them whenever you like,
which is really great

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because our minds are not always
in the same kind of

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setting. Right?

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I might be more open to ideas
and wanting feedback

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when I'm starting a paper
or a new research project.

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But when I'm bogged down
and I'm teaching a bunch of classes

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and can't surface, I probably don't want
a whole bunch of things.

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So that already allows me to feel like
I have some control over my space.

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The other

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way that agencies promote
the commons is through search and browse,

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and there are many different ways
this is possible.

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Again, on the Publications page
you get a list of categories.

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Down the left hand side of my screen,
you can see a huge long list

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and on the right hand side

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you can see tags that users have generated
so they have chosen to put on their own.

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There's multiple ways of engaging

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and you can obviously use these things
to filter rank

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so you can filter down
to a specific type of category

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and then a tag and draw right down
into what it is you want to look for.

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You can also leave a wide open
search on a phrase and see what comes up.

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The great things about tags,
particularly those that are folks gnomic

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like these, is I may click on a term
that I think means one thing

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and someone else might have used it
in another.

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So you're not always going to find
what you expect, which is,

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you know,
again, opens us up to those aha moments.

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The tags himself

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are interesting and I think

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even them as a visualization
is something to be investigated here.

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There's an extremely recent piece
that I had a good read through this week

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that I thought was relevant

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that really talks
about the experiences of tags, both

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how they're used and how people experience
serendipity when they're using them.

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And there's the tag
kind of cloud that we have here.

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There's a list,
and there's also a tag tree

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that you actually need
to be able to sort out.

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You need to be able to have data
that is be in either a database

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or a semantic format
to be able to do a tag tree.

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But they found that the difference
the difference in the platforms

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was that the more related to each other
the tags are, the more possible

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serendipity was, and the more often
they experience serendipity.

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So something to consider in the future.

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My own thoughts around this are that we do

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much more than research things right.

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And I think a space like the commons
should be not only for what we study,

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which is what those tags are doing right
now, but also perhaps how we study.

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So imagine tags
that say something like pondering or stuck

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00:16:21,280 --> 00:16:24,383
and, you know, inviting people
to come into what they know

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is an unfinished piece.

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There's a great conversation yesterday
on Twitter called All About Failure.

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And I can see that as a tag for people

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trying to relate to each other
across their own work.

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And if you color coded these tags
that were more human driven,

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they would obviously be instantly
separable from what we see in front of us

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with like single shade in the tags there.

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The final thing to look at

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quite briefly here is awareness.

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And this is something
that it's going to be

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quite hard, I think, at the beginning
for the commons to do.

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00:17:02,254 --> 00:17:03,756
And these these events are really

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00:17:03,756 --> 00:17:07,626
what we're doing here is getting people
using these tools and thinking about

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00:17:08,861 --> 00:17:10,729
how we get them engaged in a

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00:17:10,729 --> 00:17:13,332
space when there's so much else
in front of us all the time.

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00:17:13,799 --> 00:17:18,137
The social media, the aspects of,
you know, pushing information out versus

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the tools that you go out and have to,
you know, take information from them

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00:17:22,141 --> 00:17:24,977
and really inspiring this openness
and this curiosity.

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I think awareness wise, the Commons does
a great job of telling you

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00:17:30,149 --> 00:17:33,552
what's new, right, and what's popular,
which I think is fantastic.

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00:17:33,552 --> 00:17:37,022
There's several different ways from
the main page to the search interactions

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for you to be able to jump in and discover
what's been going on recently

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or what
people aren't paying most attention to.

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00:17:45,330 --> 00:17:47,599
I think, again,
going back to the kind of human, human

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00:17:48,267 --> 00:17:50,669
centered approach
to searching and permissions

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00:17:51,370 --> 00:17:53,839
is to think carefully
about the different mindsets

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00:17:53,839 --> 00:17:57,342
that researchers have as they go
through their own processes of research.

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These are different for,
you know, individual people,

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00:18:00,446 --> 00:18:04,049
but a lot of work has been done
to categorize these and understand them

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and imagine having settings for yourself
that was different when you were,

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00:18:08,854 --> 00:18:11,857
you know, starting a new project
and you wanted feedback

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00:18:12,558 --> 00:18:15,928
or for example,
you know, you were really just wanted

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00:18:15,928 --> 00:18:18,363
the answer to one question
and a unique group to answer you.

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And that's all the responses you got.

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00:18:20,532 --> 00:18:23,202
So really creating permissions
around these things

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00:18:24,203 --> 00:18:25,337
that allows you to focus on

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00:18:25,337 --> 00:18:28,640
the human element of research.

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So the concerns that we

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that I've encountered and tried to think
through here, I'll touch on briefly

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00:18:35,247 --> 00:18:37,983
and I'm happy to chat about them
more at the end of the talk.

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Privacy is a big one.

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Every time you open up a user
and you ask or a site

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00:18:43,856 --> 00:18:47,326
invites you to share your keywords
so it can tell you

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00:18:48,293 --> 00:18:50,762
other things that are affiliated
with the same keywords.

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00:18:50,929 --> 00:18:53,966
There are elements of privacy
that are encountered there.

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00:18:54,066 --> 00:18:57,669
People might not want to themselves
online, their institutions online, etc.

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00:18:57,970 --> 00:18:59,104
These are all elements

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00:18:59,104 --> 00:19:02,040
you have to think about
when you're building an open platform.

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00:19:02,674 --> 00:19:05,377
I think over personalization
can be a bit much.

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00:19:05,377 --> 00:19:07,045
And so these should all be choices, right?

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00:19:07,045 --> 00:19:10,082
Not things that it demanded of users,
but choices that they can make

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00:19:10,082 --> 00:19:11,316
if they so desire.

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00:19:11,316 --> 00:19:13,819
And once they're in the space,
they're more likely to use it

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00:19:14,419 --> 00:19:17,156
when they see
how you how useful it can be.

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00:19:18,190 --> 00:19:21,193
And we also have to be careful of creating
filter bubbles around ourselves.

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00:19:21,193 --> 00:19:24,363
Those, you know, things
we do on social media where we follow

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00:19:24,363 --> 00:19:26,965
people that are like us, that vote
like us, that have our beliefs

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00:19:27,533 --> 00:19:30,402
and we don't allow anything
kind of in there.

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00:19:30,936 --> 00:19:35,107
If that happens in a in a space
that is academically driven,

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00:19:35,374 --> 00:19:36,909
it's very hard to have those aha moments

363
00:19:36,909 --> 00:19:39,912
because you don't see other people's
point of view or what people

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00:19:39,912 --> 00:19:43,115
in different fields or disciplines
might be saying about your own research.

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00:19:46,618 --> 00:19:49,087
So here's a few ideas
for future possibilities.

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00:19:49,321 --> 00:19:52,691
I think ORCID and using PIDs

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00:19:53,358 --> 00:19:56,461
are the identifiers
that kind of stick across

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00:19:56,461 --> 00:19:59,932
platforms is a really interesting
way of thinking through customization.

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00:20:00,299 --> 00:20:02,201
I think having collections
where people can go

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00:20:02,201 --> 00:20:04,336
back to what they found before is great.

371
00:20:04,336 --> 00:20:07,839
But I also think one of the best ways
to, you know, be open about

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00:20:07,839 --> 00:20:11,777
this is to develop modules
that help cultivate serendipity.

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00:20:13,111 --> 00:20:14,746
So here's my invitation.

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00:20:14,746 --> 00:20:17,683
I run these events through

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00:20:17,816 --> 00:20:20,252
through my UX team
at LINCS called Design Frolics.

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00:20:20,986 --> 00:20:23,188
There are a lot of fun
we get together online.

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00:20:23,522 --> 00:20:27,659
You are given everything you need
to do a creative exploration

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00:20:27,659 --> 00:20:31,530
and an idea generation
for a design challenge.

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00:20:31,530 --> 00:20:35,400
And this one would be obviously around
designing for the frolic, thinking through

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00:20:36,001 --> 00:20:39,338
either serendipity
or another element of user experience.

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00:20:40,072 --> 00:20:41,673
And I will put a link in the chat

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00:20:41,673 --> 00:20:43,842
to how to register for this,
if you're interested.

383
00:20:45,210 --> 00:20:49,481
And finally, I'll just wrap up by saying
that all of what I've spoken about

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00:20:49,481 --> 00:20:52,684
in creating these cultivation
or sorry, these conditions for cultivation

385
00:20:52,684 --> 00:20:54,019
is only part of the work.

386
00:20:54,019 --> 00:20:55,520
It's really, really on the user.

387
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:56,855
So we need to work together.

388
00:20:56,855 --> 00:20:59,758
We need to find the common ground
to be able to pull us in

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00:20:59,758 --> 00:21:03,061
and really investigate
what the Commons can do for us

390
00:21:03,662 --> 00:21:06,598
and to be open to all of the opportunities

391
00:21:06,598 --> 00:21:10,535
that a space like this
allows at all of the different processes.

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00:21:10,535 --> 00:21:13,171
Sorry,
steps of the research process. Thank you.