'Social' systems: Designing digital systems that support social intelligence

Large groups of people exhibit social intelligence: coherent behavior directed towards individual or collective goals. This paper examines ways in which such behavior is produced in face to face situations, and discusses how it can be supported in online systems used by geographically distributed groups. It describes the concept of a 'social proxy,' a minimalist visualization of the presence and activities of participants in an online interaction that is used to make online social norms visible. It summarizes experience with an implemented system, presents conceptual designs that illustrate the range of situations to which social proxies can be applied, and discusses how to go about designing these types of visualizations. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2007.