Social network innovation in the Internet’s global coffee houses: designing a mobile Help Seeking tool in Learning Layers

In this paper, we argue that there is much that we can learn from the past as we explore the issues raised when designing innovative social media and mobile technologies for learning. Like the social networking that took place in coffee houses in the 1600s, the Internet-enabled social networks of today stand accused of being the so-called “weapons of mass distraction” or worse. However, we point out that modern fears about the dangers of social networking are overdone. The paper goes on to present some of the 1930s ideas of Vygotsky. Part of the Learning Layers project builds on this work; we report on extensive initial co-design work and significant barriers with respect to the design of a mobile Help Seeking tool for the health care sector (UK). We then provide an account of how the Help-Seeking tool is being linked to a Social Semantic Server and briefly report on a follow-up empirical co-design study. We conclude by highlighting associated challenges.