Another in my class on User Experience, a shorter version of my workshop on Designing Social Websites.

1. Designing Social
General Assembly
10/24/12

3. Twitter
Social Media Facebook
Social Software
LinkedIn
Social Network
MySpace
The Social Web
The Social Graph Flickr
Communities
Web 2.0
UGC
Jargon Check

4. What
is social, really?

5. Credit Tim O’Reilly

6. The Social Web
is a digital space where data about
human interactions is as important
as other data types for providing
value
Community
is when those humans care about
each other.

7. Social XXX
• Usenet Social Software can be loosely
• Forums defined as software which
• Email supports, extends, or
Nothing Newderives added value from,
• Mailing lists human social behavior -
• Groupware message-boards, musical
• Social Networks Services taste-sharing, photo-
• Social Software sharing, instant messaging,
• Social Media mailing lists, social
networking.

8. Why
bother?

9. 8 days after a video was posted showing
how to pick the lock in 30 seconds using a
pen Kryptonite recalled 380,000 locks

10. Your users have something
to tell you. If you don’t give
them a way to
communicate, they will find
one.
Trebor Scholz http://collectivate.net

12. “I could go on with the benefits of
building relationships rather than SEO
campaigns, such as:
– Longevity and customer retention,
not to mention repeat customers
– Bug tracking and community
policing (ie. Flickr’s ‘Flag this photo
as “may offend”?’)
– Amplified word of mouth
– Built in market research
– Buying ads is bloody expensive”
Tara Hunt

13. “HOLD ON A SEC...are social feature
economically viable?
1. Direct contact with people who
make you successful
2. Amplify customer opinion
3. Data, data, and more data
4. Reduce support costs
Joshua 5. Engender Trust to form lasting
Porter relationships”

14. How
do you design social?

15. B=f(P+E)
Behavior is a function of a Person
and his Environment
- Lewin’s Equation

18. The Social
Web is built
here, from
love and
esteem

19. O’Reilly Report on Facebook
The Facebook Application Platform

20. Motivation for hours
(and hours and hours)
of work

21. Kollock’s 4 Motivations for Contributing
1. Reciprocity
2. Reputation
3. Increased sense of efficacy
4. Attachment to and need of a group

22. Reciprocity

23. Reputation
What's the motivation of behind these
people actually interacting and
people want to
participating? …
share with the community
what they believe to be
important …. and they want to
see their name in lights. They
want to see their little icon on the front
page, their username on the front page, so
other people can see it.

24. Increased sense of efficacy

25. Attachment to and need of a group

26. The New Third Place?
“All great societies provide informal meeting places, like
the Forum in ancient Rome or a contemporary
English pub. But since World War II, America has
ceased doing so. The neighborhood tavern hasn't
followed the middle class out to the suburbs...” -- Ray
Oldenburg

28. 205 Structure Follows Social
Spaces
Conflict
No building ever feels right to the people in
it unless the physical spaces (defined by
columns, walls, and ceilings) are congruent
with the social spaces (defined by activities
and human groups).
Resolution
A first principle of construction; on no
account allow the engineering to dictate
the building's form. Place the load bearing
elements- the columns and the walls and
floors- according to the social spaces of the
building; never modify the social spaces to
conform to the engineering structure of the
building.

30. 36. Degrees of publicness
Conflict: People are different,
and the way they want to place
their houses in a neighborhood
is one of the most basic kinds of
difference.
Resolution: Make a clear distinction
between three kinds of homes―those
on quiet backwaters, those on busy
streets, and those that are more or less
in-between. Make sure that those on quiet
backwaters are on twisting paths, and that these houses
are themselves physically secluded; make sure that the
more public houses are on busy streets with many
people passing by all day long and that the houses
themselves are exposed to the passers-by. The in-
between houses may then be located on the paths
halfway between the other two. Give every
neighborhood about an equal number of these three
kinds of homes.

31. Identity
Social
Space
Activity Relationships
Distribution (Viral)

32. TOWNS
The language begins with patterns that define towns and
communities. These patterns can never be designed or
built in one fell swoop - but patient piecemeal growth,
designed in such a way that every individual act is always
helping to create or generate these larger global patterns,
will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community
that has these global patterns in it.
BUILDINGS
We now start that part of the language which gives shape
to individual buildings. These are the patterns which can
be "designed)' or "built”- the patterns which define the
individual buildings and the space between buildings;
where we are dealing for the first time with Patterns that
are under the control of individuals or small groups of
individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once:

33. profile
Identity
presence reputation
Social
Share Contacts
Space
Activity Relationships
Collab Convos Groups Attention
Distribution (Viral)

34. Strategize
Exercise 1: brainstorm a new
feature or site area that brings
a appropriate community to
your website.
Things to think about:
• Business goals: how does this community further the needs of
the company?
• User goals: what makes this community attractive in a time
when they have a hundred other places vying for their
attention. What is the personal worth of the tools?
• What if no one shows up, can it still have value?
• Community nature: will this be a true community, or will this
be a collective wisdom tool? Think about the spectrum.
• Approach to Creation: can you partner. rather than build?

35. profile
Identity
presence reputation

36. 1.) If you were going to build a
piece of social software to support
large and long-lived groups, what
would you design for? The first
thing you would design for is
handles the user can invest in.
Clay Shirky, A Group Is Its Own
Worst Enemy
http://shirky.com/writings/group_
enemy.html

37. Profile
• Avatar
Profile
• Bio
• Collections

38. Identity is Context Based
Facebook- Personal LinkedIN - Professional

39. Identity
• Avatar
Avatar
• Profile
• Activity
• Collections

40. Collections

41. Presence

42. Presence
•Status Presence
•History
•Statistics
•Signs of Life
•Keeping me
Company

43. 2.) Second, you have to
design a way for there to
be members in good
standing. Have to design
some way in which good
works get recognized. The
minimal way is, posts
appear with identity. You
can do more sophisticated
things like having formal
karma or "member
since."

44. Reputation is…
Information used to make a
value judgment about an
object or person…

45. Reputations

46. Strategize
Exercise 2: what elements do
you need for identity?
Profile?
Presence?
Reputation?

47. Contacts
Relationships
Groups Attention

48. you have to find a way to
spare the group from scale.
Scale alone kills
conversations,
because conversations require
dense two-way conversations.
[Dunbar] found that the MAXIMUM number of
people that a person could keep up with socially at
any given time, gossip maintenance, was 150. This
doesn't mean that people don't have 150 people in
their social network, but that
they only
keep tabs on 150 people max at
any given point.

49. Attention Groups Contacts

50. Attention

51. Groups

52. Connectionss

53. Strategize
Exercise 3: what kinds of
relationships will you support?
Asymmetrical Attention-Based?
Groups?
Connections?

54. Share
Activity
Collaborate Communicate

55. The AOF Method
• 1. Defining your Activity
• 2. Identifying your Social Objects
• 3. Choosing your Features
Courtesy of Joshua Porter. Check out bokardo.com!

57. Classic Question
• Who are your users?
Better Question
• What are your users doing?
• What do people have to do to make you successful?
• What are you making people better at?
• What are your users passionate about?

58. 2. Identifying your
Social Objects

59. The term “social networking” makes little sense
if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties
between people. Think about the object as the
reason why people affiliate with each specific
other and not just anyone.
Jyri Engeström

61. What are Social Objects?
• Social objects can be ideas, people, or physical
objects.
• Social objects influence social interaction...they
change the way people interact with each other.
• By interacting through/with social objects, people
meet others they might not otherwise know.
• Social objects can be the reason why people have
an interaction or form a relationship.
Joshua Porter (bokardo.com)

62. 3. Choosing your Features

64. Conversations

66. Sharing

67. Strategize
Exercise 4: what are the social
objects and what do people
do?
i.e. What are your SOCIAL
nouns and verbs?

68. profile
Identity
presence reputation
Social
Share Contacts
Space
Activity Relationships
Collab Convos Groups Attention
Distribution (Viral)

69. Social
Space

70. Norms & Caretakers

71. Community Management
• Who’s going to do what?
– Participate in your community
• Who will handle complaints?
– CRM or GetSatisfaction?
• What is the resource commitment?
• What is the core functionality
• What are the phased releases?
• Will you learn from your mistakes?

72. Veneration
Vilification

73. Simple (hard) Steps
• Have a compelling idea
• Seed
• Someone must live on the site
– Community manager or you
• Make the rules clear (and short)
– Write a good TOS
• Punish swiftly and nicely
• Reward contributions
• Spread the work out
• Adapt to Community Norms
• Apologize publicly, swiftly and frequently
• Simple good software that grows with group

74. Does Software Matter?
Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software
Robin Miller, Cofounder of
Slahdot

75. Probably not

76. Homework
• Define and design (outline, sketch) identity
components
• Define the relationship type
• Define the core social behavior. One task
analysis for a social activity (commenting,
sharing, etc)