1. Social Design
A Definition
Eric Fisher
Design Strategist
facebook.com/ericfisher
Hey everyone, as Doug said, I’m Eric. I’ve been a designer at a number of places big and
small and most recently for a while at Facebook.
Great products and services depend on great experiences from their users. But it’s not about
what they do or how they do it, but rather why. Why they do what they do, why they keep
coming back and why they tell their friends. And Social Design aims to explain the why
behind great experiences.

2. ks ”
e rs of Boo
“29 K ilomet
I’ll tell you a quick story. This is the Strand bookstore in NYC. It’s apparently very famous, but
I had never heard of it. Really. And I’m from the New York area too. A few months ago I was
walking around with a friend and she pointed it out to me. She said I’d like it. So we go inside
and apparently they’re famous for their large selection of books. 18 miles, to be exact. So as
we’re looking through the inventory, she pulls out this one book and says I should read it -
it’s very me.
Turns out, I had read other books by the same author and didn’t realize there was another
book by him that I should read. So I bought it!

3. Is there a cool
museum opening
somewhere?
Whereʼs a good
Italian restaurant?
What movie
should we see?
That story in and of itself is not a big deal. But the point is this: with technology today, we
live in a world where we can get answers to anything factual right away. I could have looked
up on my phone how to get this bookstore. I also could have searched for books by the
author. But the value of social is when I don’t even know I’m looking for anything at all.
Often times we’re faced with more subjective questions that really can’t be answered by a
computer, such as “where’s a good Italian restaurant?” or “what movie should I see?” or
“where’s a great museum nearby?” And for these types of situations, we turn to a community
of people to help us out.

4. Community
Communities are very useful. In the wild, they’re an evolutionary defense mechanism against danger because a
larger group is more powerful and formidable than an individual. And the individual can look to the group for
social cues on what to do - Should we run? Should we eat? Should we leave?

5. Friends
With people, it’s a bit more emotional. Our communities are defined by the close people we surround ourselves
with - our friends and family. We know them, we like them, they know us and they like us. We share thoughts,
feelings, experiences and we turn to our friends and family for love and support throughout our lives because we
trust them.

6. Trust
And that’s the foundation of why social design works - because of this trust.

7. Relationship Types
Lasting
Parents
Coworkers
Spouse
Neighbors
Friends
Doctor
Formal Intimate
Brands/Services Clubs
Doorman Relationships
Customer Service College Friends
Ephemeral
Now, we have a lot of different kinds of relationships with people and things throughout our lives. And
if we were to plot these on a graph, whereby we’d have the strength of the relationship on the X axis -
from formal to intimate - and the timeline of the relationship on the Y axis - from long and lasting
relationships to ephemeral and short-lived ones, we’d see this:
Our friends and family would be in the top right quadrant, very lasting and very intimate.
People like coworkers, neighbors, maybe your doctor would be more formal but still lasting.
Then you’d have maybe college friends or friends from clubs in the intimate but short-lived space.
And finally things like brands and services, maybe your doorman, in the formal and ephemeral space.

8. Relationship Types
Strong Ties
Trust
Weak Ties
But the takeaway from this is how we have our strong ties in the upper right quadrant. That’s
where we hold the must trust. These people follow through our lives and what they can do is
make recommendations on other relationships we should have that they already trust, such
as what clothes to buy, what movies to see, which restaurant to visit, et cetera. And because
we trust them, they essentially cast out these fish-hooks into other quadrants and we start
bringing these other relationships into our trust area.

9. This place is
awesome
So when my close friend in New York tells me about a place I should visit, I trust her to know me well and her
opinion. And when our experience matches that of the recommendation - when we actually enjoy ourselves - we
not only feel special and thankful for the experience, but we also feel prompted to tell our friends about it as well.
Ever go on a trip and a friend gives you a recommendation for some restaurant? "I know it's out of the way," they say, "but trust me, it's amazing." And then you go and you're so glad you
did. You feel special and you like it.

10. And everyday, hundreds of millions of people are having these kinds of conversations on
Facebook, along with thoughts, feelings, places they’ve visited, articles they’ve read, movies
they’ve watched, and on and on.
Social Design aims to harness this conversation, enhance it and build more of these
serendipitous and valuable social experiences for everyone.

11. Identity Conversation Community
The way I like to break it up, Social Design comes down to three very core components:
Identity, Conversation and Community.

12. Community
Conversation
Identity
I like to show this in a concentric circle, with identity in the center, conversation in the middle
and community on the outside. And the reason for this is because conversation really serves
as the “glue” between identity and community. The identity says something to the
community, the community replies, the identity responds, et cetera and so you get this back
and forth that is conversation.

13. Inside Out?
Now, one product strategy idea would be to start from the center. That is, allow people to
define an identity, let them talk about it and build a community over time. For a while, this
was the most popular thing on the Internet. This is how Facebook started.
When Facebook began in 2004, it simply allowed college students to create profiles of
themselves and edit and add to them again and again. And, over time, these changes became
somewhat of a conversation of their life events and people developed a very strong
community of friends and family to keep in touch with.

14. Outside In
But since this is already built and already being used by such a large audience, it makes more
sense for social apps to reverse the strategy. Start from the outside in.

15. ✓ Utilize the Existing Community
✓ Define a Conversation
✓ Add to Identity
That is, utilize the existing community of trusted friends and family, define a new
conversation and let people curate their identities further.

16. Start with the Conversation.
Let people curate Identity.
So again, start with the conversation and let people curate identity from it.

17. Conversation Involves Two Experiences
Conversation really has two experiences because it’s composed of a back and forth. They’re
different but equally important. The first is listening to what someone says, and the second is
speaking back.

18. Listening
So let’s talk about the listening experience.

19. A listening experience is, for example, going to a restaurant you’ve never been to before and
seeing on the menu all the dishes other people have tried and making decisions from their
recommendations. You’re essentially using the actions and words of others to inform you.

20. “Just watch this clip.
Other users liked this.”
We already see this in many places online. On Hulu, for example - a popular site for viewing
TV shows and movies - you can see ratings for each episode or clip. And these ratings help
you determine which ones to watch, since you probably don’t want to watch the bad ones.
They say “watch this one - others liked it.”
But there’s a big problem: I don’t know these people. And they don’t know me. So how do
they know whether or not I’d like it? How can I trust them to give a good rating? I can’t.

21. “Read this article.
YOUR FRIENDS
and others liked it.”
Social Plugins
So what we’ve done with Facebook, is remodel this paradigm but around your friends. With
our social plugins, which I’m sure you’ve seen, we’ve thrown the Like button everywhere
around the web. And people click it when they like stuff. And through our activity plugins, we
surface what content is being liked. The difference is that in addition to showing you what
the community at large thinks, we put your friends first. And so the message is “your friends
liked this, you should check it out.”
And because of this, you’re more likely to listen, because again it tracks back to that upper
right quadrant of trust.

22. People Already Have Full Profiles. Use them to...
And it’s not simply about the Like button. Users have profiles full of information about
themselves and what they like that they’re already sharing with their trusted friends. And you
can utilize this information to form a great experience.

23. Connect Users To Friends
Connect users to their friends when they sign up to your app. No one should be alone.

24. Recommend Content from Profile Data
Use profile information to make recommendations on content right off the bat.

25. For example, Rotten Tomatoes - the popular movie reviews site - shows users movies that
their friends like as well as movies they might like based on the movies they like in their
profile.

26. Show Friend Activity
Also show the activity of all the users’ friends to keep everyone informed. Spotify, for
example, shows a feed of all the songs that users are sharing and adding to their playlists.
It’s a passive way for users to browse some of the latest and popular songs.

27. Sharing
The other half of the conversation - and perhaps the most important part - is the speaking.
The sharing. You have to get people to engage in the first place.

28. So on Facebook, obviously there’s a lot of social data to read. But there’s also a lot of places
to interact. We have:
- A composer at the top which lets you share anything from one place, right on the
homepage
- You can also give feedback on individual posts
- You can answer questions
- You can write on walls
- You can chat with friends
- You can see notifications of conversations that might need your input

29. And when you do engage, it’s a very simple and fast interaction. You can easily like
something or leave a comment. And because of the distribution of social activity, this informs
others to engage as well.

30. We see this happening elsewhere now. On Clicker, for example, you can rate, share and talk about TV shows.

31. On Spotify, you can make comments and share songs to all your friends and ones individually.

32. More Contributions ›› More Activity
More Activity ›› More Contributions
And so what we find is that the more contributions that are made to the system, the more
activity exists to engage with.
So obviously, the more activity there is to engage with, the more contributions can be made
to the system.

33. More Contributions ›› More Activity
More Activity ›› More Contributions
And this creates a positive feedback loop that grows exponentially. And when you’ve got this,
you’ve got it made :^)

34. Principles of a Great Social Experience
‣ Utilize Personal Info + Connections
‣ Show Social Context Spread Throughout
‣ Make it Easy to Share and Give Feedback
So these are really the three basic principles of a great social experience:
1. Utilize personal information and connections to build a personalized experience by default
2. Show the social context and activity everywhere through the app
3. Make it really easy to talk, share and give feedback

35. Identity
And at the end of the day, what does this all come down to? What is the motivation? The
WHY?
It’s all about identity. People want to talk about stuff and learn about stuff that’s meaningful
to them.

36. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self Actualization
Self Esteem
Belonging/Acceptance
Basic Safety
Physiological
Hopefully you’ve heard about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - it’s a rather famous psychology
theory that helps explain motivation. Basically it says that after our physiological needs of
food and water, and after our basic safety needs of essentially not getting killed, we have a
very interesting duality.

37. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self Actualization
Self Esteem
Belonging/Acceptance
Basic Safety
Physiological
For one, we want to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance within a trusted group. And for
another, we want to have our own sense of self and self esteem.
But it stands to reason, given the diagram, that we base much of our own self esteem in how
the community sees us and how accepted we are. So in other words, the community helps
drive our identity. And it’s only when we have that feeling of belonging that we can build our
self esteem and reach our full potential - and know ourselves the best we can.
I must have downloaded hundreds of songs in the last couple years based on
recommendations from friends. And these are some of my favorite songs now. I can’t
imagine not having them in my life. The same goes for many other experiences. They’re all a
part of me and who I am now.
#

38. #1 Reason Why People Love Facebook:
Users want to showcase their personalities.
It turns out we’re right. We did research and found that the number one reason by people use
and love Facebook is because they want to showcase their personalities. They want to
showcase what they like and what makes them happy and they want to learn about new
things from others so they can find more things they like.

39. Identity Conversation Community
So again, social design comes down to these three core principles:
Identity, Conversation and Community
And when you face product design questions and decisions, always track the reasons back to these three ideas,
because they will help you drive the process down the right path.
It’s really very simple fundamentally, but it’s really quite powerful.
Thank you.