O'Day, Vicki L.Bobrow, Daniel G.Shirley, Mark2020-06-062020-06-06199836039http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008691222992https://dl.eusset.eu/handle/20.500.12015/3532Network communities are especially interesting and useful settings in which to look closely at the co-evolution of technology and social practice, to begin to understand how to explore the full space of design options and implications. In a network community we have a magnified view of the interactions between social practice and technical mechanisms, since boundaries between designers and users are blurred and co-evolution here is unusually responsive to user experience. This paper is a reflection on how we have worked with social and technical design elements in Pueblo, a school-centered network community supported by a MOO (an Internet-accessible, text-based virtual world). Four examples from Pueblo illustrate different ways of exploring the design space. The examples show how designers can rely on social practice to simplify a technical implementation, how they can design technical mechanisms to work toward a desirable social goal, how similar technical implementations can have different social effects, and how social and technical mechanisms co-evolve. We point to complexities of the design process and emphasize the contributions of mediators in addressing communication breakdowns among a diverse group of designers.computer supported cooperative learningCSCLCSCW designlearning communityMOOMUDnetwork communityparticipatory designsociotechnical systemswork practiceText/Journal Article10.1023/A:10086912229921573-7551