Also, discount code! Use the code bokardo to get 10% of the registration price.

Designing for Social: 3 Core Principles

My talk is going to be about three core principles of social design, the ones that really matter whether you’re building a social network or considering “adding social” to your current product/service. These principles are not nice-to-haves or simply ideas to get philosophical about…they affect every design decision you make from what features to have to how to lay out a page. I’ve got lists of hundreds of principles, psychological angles, game mechanics, you-name-it, but these three stand out…they are the ones that keep coming back.

If you’ve read my stuff at all you know that one of these is The Delicious Lesson, on which I dashed off a quick post on years ago but then grew a life of its own and has continually come up on nearly every project I’ve worked on. (it’s still the most popular article on bokardo.com four years later). It’s really taken on a life of its own…I’ve actually been introduced as the guy who came up with the Delicious Lesson! (I’m not kidding). It’s odd to be sure…but that signals to me that the principle really helps people think about and design social software. So, I’m going to tell the story of that lesson and show how it applies to some newer software as well as talk about two other principles that are just as important. So I’m excited about the talk, to say the least.

I’m also excited about the conference because I think it is the right topic at the right time: an awesome intersection of designers and businesses…which is exactly what both need right now. Businesses are realizing that Design is a major differentiator while designers are realizing the power of the work they do, but also the need to quantify and pay attention to metrics.

The conference is presented by 500 Startups, the brainchild of Dave McClure who is spear-heading the idea of design as a differentiator. I’ve been a fan of Dave’s for a long time…check out his talk on metrics for startups and you’ll see why. Incidentally, Dave’s work around metrics dovetails very nicely with my work around the Usage Lifecycle.

The speaker list is ridiculous…I’m extremely honored to be speaking with these folks. In particular, I’m excited to hear what Irene Au from Google and Kate Aronowitz from Facebook are going to talk about…given that they’re in very senior design! positions at two of the strongest companies in the world right now, both working hard on social and both competing in various ways.

Anyway, remember the discount code (bokardo) and I hope to see you at the conference!

But this year the content of SXSW was all about “social” as well. Social media, social marketing, social design. While I’m excited by this development, as it’s right up my alley, I’m also troubled by a remarkable trend: we’re still having relatively early discussions about what it means to listen to your customers/audience/passionate people.

In the wave of social panels and talks at SXSW, the term social media kept coming up again and again. Social media, it seems, is about talking to your customers. While this doesn’t seem to be a revelation, it almost assuredly is for a large number of companies and organizations out there, as that’s what almost all of the conversation is about. The takeaway from many panels was, over and over, “Listen to your customers”!!!

This became clear to me as I walked into a party with Freshbooks CEO Mike McDerment. Mike and I have communicated online for a while, and we both have very similar thoughts about engaging with the people who use your software and having conversations with them. Mike has done this amazingly well through the Freshbooks blog, as well as the feedback mechanisms of the Freshbooks application.

Mike and I were asked to interview for a podcast put on by MZinga. One of the questions I received was about what companies can do if they want to start a conversation with their customers. I replied that they’re already having a conversation with their customers, even if it’s a broken one and even if it’s offline.

Jim Storer, whom I was glad to meet after reading his work for a while, paraphrased my answer by saying something like: “So, social media is just another channel”.

Now, while I understand that Jim knows what he’s talking about and is deeply immersed in social media, the term “channel” brought a flood of thoughts back into my head about the central argument of the Cluetrain Manifesto. I immediately recognized my overall frustration I was experiencing with the panels at SXSW. The problem, I think, is that while everyone recognizes the need to talk to their customers (the people who make them successful), they (we) continue to use terminology that, in my mind, degrades the relationship.

Part of the central argument of The Cluetrain Manifesto, whose theme is that markets are conversations, is that we need to use the right terminology while framing any discussion that involves talking with people. This means that we don’t use terms like “consumers”, “prospects”, “leads”, or “channel”. Instead, we use the term “people” as much as possible.

But what we see over and over, especially from the “social media” crowd, is a continuation of archaic corporate verbiage that sets up a distance between the two parties that need to have a conversation. While Jim and I would certainly agree on lots of things, probably most things, and while I understand that he’s talking in the language of the people he does business with, I can’t help but think that the long term effect of using “channel”, etc. is distancing, not attracting.

So there were lots of panels that were directed at, as my friend Christina says, “those who have yet to board the Cluetrain”. Unfortunately, I think she’s right.

And, by the way, the Cluetrain is now approximately a decade old…

I’m proud to say that the panel which I was a part of, the Social Design Strategies panel, assumed people were on the Cluetrain and we avoided getting into the same discussion that many panels ended up with. Our focus was on designing interfaces and social systems that support that important communication, not about arguing the beginning point.

That said, if there is a continued need to revisit the Cluetrain, I’m certainly all for it. We need to break down any and all barriers between people in the marketplace, and if those barriers still exist, the least we can do is start to weed out the language that serves to perpetuate them.

A couple of years ago I would not have written this blog post, this is somewhat of a subtle argument…I’m really only arguing about words, right? How can the terminology affect the practice?

Well, if there is anything that can subvert the activity of people without them knowing, it’s the exactness of the words we use to have conversations. So I urge everyone who has not read it (or not read it recently) to go out and read the Cluetrain. Each time I read it there is a new revelation…it’s certainly one of the defining books of the current generation.

Needless to say, I’m thinking long and hard about panels and discussions for next year’s SXSW. I would love to hear your input and thoughts on that matter, as I fear we have a long way to go before we can claim that everyone is aboard the Cluetrain.

My co-panelists are awesome designers: Emily Chang and Max Keisler of Ideacodes, and Daniel Burka, creative director at Digg. Thank you Emily for organizing the panel!

This is the official description of the panel:

“Now that social networks are pervasive and quickly becoming a regular feature set, designers need to understand the dynamics of creating experiences that encourage social behavior and public expression, while giving individuals a sense of privacy, personal gain, and ownership. This session will take an in-depth look at the principles and practices of social design. How do you create a symbiotic relationship between people and data that maximizes discovery, game-play, connections, and communication? We’ll examine a breadth of examples and explore their pros and cons. Then, we’ll take a look into the future of what’s possible. You’ll hear firsthand from a group of designers who do this every day.”

Since we had to write out that description a while ago, it’s not totally accurate. So here’s what we’re actually doing:

Each of us is going to tackle a really hard problem in social design. We’ll talk about the problem and some strategies for solving it, pointing to real-world screen flows and interfaces. These are not challenges you’ve never heard of. They are challenges that affect everyone building social sites. Examples of challenges might be: How to add an element of fun to your social web app, How to prevent gaming [Daniel can take that one ], How to roll out features that straddle the privacy line, and How to measure your success.

We’re really trying to focus on providing a solid set of practical techniques to overcoming widespread, hard problems. My experience with SXSW in the past has been that talks are all over the place in terms of being useful…if there is one thing we’re trying to do it’s describe useful, practical techniques to overcome these problems.

The social design strategy panel is Sunday morning at 10am.

Hope to see you there!