December 31st, 2007
Facebook, Lifelets, and Designer Responsibility
by Joshua Porter | 
6 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/727
If you’re a regular reader of Bokardo then you know I think issues like the Facebook Beacon incident, the Facebook News Feed incident, and the Digg gaming incident(s) are big deals. (I’ve written about all three here on Bokardo)
The reason why I think they’re big deals is because they’re canaries in a coal mine of privacy, so to speak. What Facebook and Digg are doing (or trying to do) is exactly what everyone else will be trying to do (or having to deal with) in the near future. Why are Facebook and Digg able to do it now? Two reasons: they have flexible platforms which allow them to make changes relatively quickly and have big, savvy audiences who grew up with tech. Other social apps aren’t dealing with the same issues yet because they’re simply not innovating as fast as these two. But they will have to deal with them, and soon.
I was chatting with another designer the other day and we were surprised at how little we hear other designers talking about these issues. Why not?
It’s an interesting question.
One reason is that designers might view these as policy issues to be handled by executives. Certainly, part of them are policy issues: someone has to decide what to do when the barbarians are at the gates. Another reason is that they aren’t traditional design topics. They have little to do with color, typography, coding, standards, or any of the standard design issues we deal with day in and day out. A third reason might be that designers consider these issues no-brainers…although judging from the fact that it’s happened twice to Facebook I highly doubt that.
In watching these issues come and go, however, it strikes me that we might be looking at a new kind of design problem, a much harder type of problem than we designers are used to.
Consider:
1. In each case the design of the site either directly or indirectly influenced the user experience negatively. In the Facebook Beacon situation in particular, the design was especially conspicuous, as Facebook tweaked the language and the behavior of interface elements. (see evolution of the Beacon interface)
2. The solution to each problem was a change in the design of the site. In Digg’s case it was getting rid of the Top Digger’s screen and in Facebook’s it was (and still could be for Beacon) a control panel.
3. Some of the issues at hand are of such spontaneous nature that current practices in design evaluation (usability testing) could not have predicted them. Nor, probably, could have an insightful designer known when or how something was going to erupt. There is no test that lets you know when the mob will want rule.
So to me these are clearly design issues. But the people who are talking about them are decidedly not designers. Why is this so?
Here’s an idea for you:
Every web application is an interface through which people lead increasingly remarkable lifelets (lifelet = a slice of life). The users of Digg and Facebook rely on their respective application interfaces to let them know…well…everything! In the same way that you can’t shop at a physical Amazon store, you cannot do anything with Digg or Facebook without having access to the interface they provide. Thus the users are subject to whatever (and only whatever) the interface allows. If information is in the interface that day, it’s part of their world. If it’s not in the interface that day, it doesn’t exist. The interface therefore becomes the arbiter of their existence in that world.
As our online experiences grow richer through social software, the responsibility of that software to represent the world faithfully becomes paramount. And who is responsible for the integrity of the software interface?
Designers!
And…these entanglements continue to happen to all sorts of great designers. Just this past week the Google Reader team stepped into it by releasing a feature which took previously private items and made them public.
Things are just beginning to get interesting. The question is: who’s paying attention?
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Comments
1. Ben 4:20pm, Mon 31st, 2007
I observe that operators of online business units are indeed paying attention. Web development is becoming business development. More and more of my conversations with clients now have to do with business factors, not technical ones (whether graphical or IT).
As independent contributors have increasingly more control over web content, large publishers and web property owners necessarily relinquish centralized control. But I think it’s bigger than that – perceptions are changing about what users can expect (i.e. “user experience”), and competitive business owners adapt to stay ahead of the industry curve.
So, these changes appear to me to manifest a natural broadening of roles within a new technology space, and I don’t see this as “developers: with power comes responsibility.” It seems like these same changes occur as most new industries become competitive. And in this case the pain points are around privacy and accountability.
In the automotive industry, roles expanded over time to accommodate mechanics and detailers, designers and manufacturing engineers. Perhaps that industry’s pain points had to do with safety and now environmental impact.
A valid parallel?
2. dave 3:04pm, Tue 1st, 2008
“3. Some of the issues at hand are of such spontaneous nature that current practices in design evaluation (usability testing) could not have predicted them.”
For subtle points, this may be true. But the core issues with Beacon could have been predicted with by including privacy questions in those tests. Who wants to share, by name, with no opt-out, what they bought their friends for Christmas? Who wants banner ads to be plastered alongside their p2p endorsements? There’s a perception that the primary Facebook demographic is ignorant of these areas; that’s not what I’ve seen in my own tests.
3. Josh 8:12pm, Tue 1st, 2008
You’re right, Dave. Some aspects of Beacon were easy enough to spot. However, the overall landscape of testing, I believe, is getting harder for most issues, especially ones where an action happens over here, and a display changes (for lots of people) over there.
4. Charles 11:08am, Wed 2nd, 2008
I think your mostly right and it is an opportunity for Digg and Facebook by selling their users information to advertisers, of course they are going to do it, their user base is huge.
5. Zephyr 12:42pm, Wed 2nd, 2008
It’s the *design* principle “user in control”. If the design doesn’t clearly communicate what’s going on, and how the user can influence it, the user can’t feel in control.
6. Steve Mills 12:40am, Mon 7th, 2008
Its a very good point that the average user can only do on facebook what the provided controls allow them to do.
I think however that it is a fact of life that bugs will get through, and that it is up for the users and the designers to be diligent and spot them before they do any real damage