June 29th, 2007
You can’t be social by yourself
by Joshua Porter | 
10 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/637
Found a great explanation of social design from Crysta Metcalf of Motorola, who is currently involved in an ethnographic research project to find out how people communicate through technology: (via experientia)
‘When we talk about the “user experience” the main emphasis is often on an individual’s experience with a particular technology. Even with a purported social technology, for example a social networking site, we still tend to create for the individual’s interaction with the site (how does someone find their friend, how do they access this site easily from a mobile device).
However, designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.
Of course designing for an experience between people doesn’t mean ignoring the interaction with the device, but it calls for taking something else into account. That “something else†is often another person or people. How do we, as developers of communication technologies, make the communications more interesting, more exciting and more stimulating for the receiver? How do we help our users meet the needs of the other people in their social network? How do we create a shared experience that is equally compelling for all participating parties? When we begin to think like this, we truly start to think of designing social software, social applications, social media.’
I was thinking about this yesterday…that we still glom onto singular words when describing designing for others. Even “experience design”, the preferred term of the moment, is singular. But it still focuses too much on a singular user and their experience when most of what people are doing nowadays is having shared experiences.
That’s why I prefer social design, because you can’t be social by yourself.
Several of the findings from Metcalf’s ethnographic research are interesting (here’s a pdf of the presentation). One, in particular, caught my eye:
“There is so much emphasis on doing things together that our participants try to recreate being together, even when they are not”
This signals to Metcalf that there is an opportunity to design for generating shared experiences, not just talking about previous ones. Right now most of our technology is focused on sharing previous experiences through media (pictures, video, writing), not really sharing new experiences as they happen.
This reminded me of Facebook’s “send a gift” feature, which is different than most of the other features on the site because it’s an activity in an of itself. While we can see what has happened on the news feed and on our wall, we don’t really get further than commenting in terms of having a new experience. But sending a gift is something else…a new, shared experience that both people enjoy.
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1. Rahul 8:52am, Fri 29th, 2007
Something I learned from a MMO game designer’s blog was how to think about social design in the context of a massive multiplayer game like World of Warcraft. In that context it’s important to understand being “social” as not necessarily an active choice by the user/player. It could be something as simple as experiencing the game while being aware of others co-existing in the same world. I thought that was a good point: many players of MMO games like WoW will never really interact with other players, perhaps because they’re shy or whatever. But at the same time, the experience for them is increased due to the social nature of the beast — ie. the fact that there are other players that they may come across and interact with, even if it’s in a very simple way.
So in the context of social networks and writing software for the web, I try to remember that lesson: a lot of users are on your social website and actually very social people, but not necessarily being actively social with other people. Instead, they lurk and enjoy the background noise. So, creating a website that is low on active choices but high on passive experiences (such as something as simple as being aware of others’ presence) can be equally social.
2. Michael Clarke 9:51am, Fri 29th, 2007
Useful – we’re working on redesigning our old links library (of career resources) for students into something socially driven. Obviously the model is social tagging – does that count as a shared experience, I wonder? I know that del.icio.us has become a much more addictive passtime since I started actively working with a network of people and interesting pieces of content from complete strangers have an extra little buzz about them. Del.icio.us also has that “save for” feature
3. Josh 10:23am, Fri 29th, 2007
Rahul, great comment! I think you nail it…there is a sort of presence aspect to gaming, and it isn’t always explicit interaction with other gamers. Just being there is social.
It’s kind of like leaving a TV on when you’re home alone because you feel like you’re not alone.
Lots to ponder there…
4. Gong Szeto 9:10am, Sat 30th, 2007
is there something between “synchronous” communication and “asynchronous” communication?
is it “semi-synchronous”?
are you following where i am going with this? it’s like “bas-relief” in art, that state that is neither 2D nor 3D, but 2 1/2 D.
there is something about social experiences that are mediated (in this case, some kind of invented interaction mediated by internet technology) that is neither asynchronous, nor fully synchronous, but somehwere in-between, and is clear to me that it has become as valid today as either fully understood temporal state.
this in of itself is historically significant.
5. Jeffrey Augustine Songco 12:21am, Sun 1st, 2007
Or can you have fun by yourself…
6. Grengo 12:30pm, Sun 1st, 2007
What do your meen “is there something between “synchronous†communication and “asynchronous†communication?”
7. Heidi 8:51am, Tue 3rd, 2007
@Gong Szeto: Wow, that is deep. Your comment and others are giving me a whole new perspective as I prepare for my next major project: a complete intranet overhaul. Already I’m realizing the potential to design for employees to feel connected by the intranet across multiple office sites, whether or not they use an active tool like instant messaging.