Information, Participation, and Collaboration Overload - A Design Trade-Off Analysis

Socio-technical environments grounded in end-user development (EUD) frameworks and supported by EUD technologies provide fundamental enabling conditions for cultures of participation. This paper argues and provides examples and evidence for the following claims: cultures of participation can cause (1) information overload (by generating substantially more information), (2) participation overload (by engaging people to act not only as passive consumers but as active contributors), and (3) collaboration overload (by requiring coordination activities between the numerous contributors); developments are needed (and some of them are described) that can reduce these overload problems; design trade-offs are created by these developments that should be carefully analyzed to gain a deeper understanding of the promises and pitfalls of different approaches.