Learning with polyphony: AmpDamp

Abstract

With exponential increases of information flows on social media platforms, user experiences have become fragmented, cacophonous, and often overwhelming. Such “noise” makes learning on these platforms difficult. By contrast, the principle of polyphony frames learning with social media as a graceful, intentional threading together of multiple voices. In this paper we describe AmpDamp, a design concept for orchestrating polyphony in social media environments. Connecting a physical knob to a browser extension, AmpDamp translates the gestures of turning up (amplifying) and turning down (dampening) into a dynamic orchestration of the “volume” of a user’s social media feed. By focusing on issues of granularity and temporality, we position polyphony as an entry point into incorporating the values of control and curation into learning experiences using social media.