Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Jonas Heide Smith works on on social dynamics in multiuser systems, particularly massively multiplayer computer games. His point is that when people interact through software - be it groupware or games - they are highly influenced by the design or architecture of that software. He argues that "users or gamers who need to cooperate on tasks such as selling/buying an object, writing a report or slaying a dragon are faced with an issue of trust. This issue has traditionally been insufficiently addressed by designers of online worlds who, historically at least, have approached the design process from a technical or single-user-oriented perspective."

His "project focuses on the ways in which design decisions shape user behavior. Particularly, I explore ways in which to strike a balance between avoiding troublesome behavior and severely restricting the user's actions. Whereas one may monitor everything or employ similar resource-inefficient measures the more interesting solution is to build systems that through their very design encourage constructive behavior (depending, of course, on what one is building)."

That is very close to the notion of "design for grounding" in the paper I wrote with Pierre and the others !