This document outlines 5 principles and 5 practices for designing social interfaces, as well as 5 anti-patterns to avoid. The 5 principles are paving cowpaths, talking like a person, being open and playing well with others, learning from games, and respecting ethical dimensions. The 5 practices discussed are giving people identity and a social object, enabling activities and bridging real life and online connections. The 5 anti-patterns warned against are cargo cult design, breaking email conventions, weak password security, building a fake "Potemkin village" community, and an unbalanced ecosystem. The document provides examples and guidance for applying each principle and practice, and avoiding the anti-patterns.

1. 5 principles
5 practices
5 anti-patterns
Designing
Social
Interfaces
christian crumlish & erin malone

2. A little about us: erin malone
@emalone

3. A little about us: christian crumlish
@mediajunkie

4. People are unpredictable

5. new social media : always awkward

6. Designing social requires different thinking
Organic
vs Static
Emotional
vs Data
Relationships
vs Transactions
Continuum
vs One Grand Gesture
~ Deb Shultz, Altimeter Group photo © erin malone

7. 5 Principles

8. Pave the cowpaths

9. Dogster started as a photosharing service.
Shifted focus to pets once company saw people were
primarily uploading pics and talking about their dogs.

10. Talk like a person

11. Do you want to talk to your
customers like this?
Or like this?

12. How to talk like a person
Conversational Voice
Self-Deprecating Error Messages
Ask Questions
Your vs. My
No Joking Around

13. Be open. Play well with others

14. Embrace open standards
Share data outside of the bounds of your application
Accept external data within the sphere of your application
Support two-way interoperability

15. Learn from games

16. Learn from games
What are Game
Mechanics?
The systems and features
that make games fun,
compelling and addictive.
~Amy Jo Kim

17. How to learn from games
Game Mechanics
Collecting
gives bragging rights,
encourages completion
Points
game points by systems,
social points by others,
drives loyalty, drives behavior
unlock new powers or access
Feedback
social feedback drives engagement
accelerates mastery and adds fun
Exchanges
structured social interactions
explicit or implicit
Customization
character or interface

18. Respect the ethical dimension

19. Respect the ethical dimension
Some of the forces that must be
balanced, to apply many of these
patterns, involve ethical dilemmas

20. 5a brief tour of 96 patterns
or
Practices

21. The Ecosystem

22. The Ecosystem

23. Give people a way to be identified

24. Give people a way to be identified

25. And to identify themselves

26. Self

27. Attribution and Avatars
Identity doesn’t alway have to manifest itself
in a complicated or robust pro le.

28. User Cards
Identity doesn’t alway have to manifest itself
in a complicated or robust pro le.

30. Make sure there is a “there” there. What’s your social object?

31. The Social
Object, in a
nutshell, is
the reason
two people
are talking
to each
other, as
opposed to
talking to
somebody
else.

32. Social Networks form
around Social Objects, not
the other way around.
~ Hugh MacLeod
GapingVoid.com

33. Give people something to do

34. It’s a continuum

35. It’s a continuum

36. Activities involving objects

37. It’s a continuum
Collecting One
Sharing One to one
Broadcasting & One to many
Publishing
Feedback One to one, One to an object
Communicating One to one, One to many, Many to many
Collaboration Many to many
Social Media Ecosystem

38. Activities involving objects
Books: ratings, reviews, search

39. Activities involving objects
Books: ratings, reviews, search
Public conversation

40. Activities involving objects

41. Activities involving objects
Photos: collecting, sharing,
comments, favoriting, groups,
broadcasting

42. Activities involving objects
Collecting, Ratings, Reviews

43. Activities involving objects
Labels, ratings, reviews, levels
Collecting, Ratings, Reviews
Tagging
Sharing

44. Enable a bridge to real life

45. Bridging Real Life

46. Taking it offline
Geo-Mobile
Face-to-face meeting

47. And then back online
After the Party
Face-to-face meeting

48. Let the community elevate people & content they value

49. Let the community elevate people & content they value
Gently moderate

50. Connections & Community

51. Enabling people to make connections
Circles of
Connections
Find People
Adding Friends
Fans & Fame

52. Enter text here
Norms
Report Abuse
Model Citizen

53. 5 Anti-Patterns

54. Cargo Cult

55. Cargo Cult

56. Cargo Cult

57. Cargo Cult

58. Don’t break email

59. Don’t break email
Facebook breaks email since you can’t reply to messages
that arrive in the inbox.
Basecamp allows people to reply as they are accustomed
to and the message goes back into the stream on the site.

60. The Password Anti-Pattern

61. The Password Anti-Pattern

62. The Password Anti-Pattern
iLike
Plaxo

63. The Password Anti-Pattern
yelp

64. The Ex-boyfriend bug

65. Potemkin Village

66. Instead of building a Potemkin
Village, the architects of the
relaunched dead.net site started
with a judicious few groups and
then let the community spawn the
rest.

67. The Ecosystem - it’s balance with tradeoffs

68. Thanks
Erin
@emalone
erin@tangible-ux.com
Christian
@mediajunkie
xian@pobox.com buy the book
http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com

69. How to
Play the
Game

70. Game Goals
• Build a social digital product • Work as a team to collaborate
around an object for a speci c and build the best products
audience delivered in a speci c
way • Play against another team
• Deliver a well rounded product
(with features across Identity,
Activities and Relationships)
• Build products in a de ned time
frame

71. Game Play