IlliGAL Blogging

The DISCUS project is approaching to a big milestone. During the last fall visit to Urbana-Champaign of our research colleagues from Hakuhodo, Tsukuba University, Osaka University, and the Chance Discovery Consortium, we agreed we needed to have common users involved in our research endeavor. They are the final users of the DISCUS tools, thus, the sooner we get their feedback the better.

We have been designing a big experiment to validate some of our theoretical assumptions and results on innovation and creativity support, and influence diffusion in web-centric social networks. From February 28 to March 4, several focus groups will be using the state-of-the-art DISCUS platform. The goal, to discus about media environments under the guidance of our Hakuhodo colleagues. Around forty, non-DISCUS related, potential customers will form several focus groups to discus about different media environments and how they use them. Besides the intrinsic marketing interest of such experiment, this first big stress test will help us to see, in real time and close to reality, the performance and feedback of the innovation and creativity support tools of DISCUS.