“During [the twentieth] century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head. I expect that history will show ‘normal’ mainstream twentieth century media to be the aberration in all this. ‘Please, miss, you mean they could only just sit there and watch? They couldn’t do anything? Didn’t everybody feel terribly isolated or alienated or ignored?’ ‘Yes, child, that’s why they all went mad. Before the Restoration.’ ‘What was the Restoration again, please, miss?’ ‘The end of the twentieth century, child. When we started to get interactivity back.’”[1] | ||
| --DOUGLAS ADAMS, WRITING IN 1999 | ||
It’s odd to think of the twentieth century as somehow less interactive than other periods in history. But, in terms of how we spent most of our time, it was. Our TVs and radios and automobiles served to distance us from each other. It’s possible, for instance, to ride around in a car, see everyone in town, yet never say “hello.” How many of us sit at home and watch TV instead of going out and socializing?
When I started to write this book on designing for the social web, I thought I would be talking about new ideas that we hadn’t really dealt with before. In my work as a web designer, I had been challenged with many interesting projects, building everything from restaurant review sites to social networking applications. It turns out that the design of this software is new, but the principles underlying its success are as old as humanity.
The principles on which successful social software is built are the basics of human psychology. People use software to do all the same things they used to do without it: talk with each other, form groups, gain respect, manage their lives, have fun.
To web designers, tasked with creating increasingly sophisticated applications, it can seem daunting to get into these psychological issues. How do you not only make services personally valuable with easy-to-use interfaces, but also support people’s social desires for interactivity, authority, reputation, identity, and control?
I wrote this book to begin the discussion. And in writing it, I went deep into social psychology research to try to uncover ideas and explanations that we can use in design. But even though I have tried to share many important and interesting ideas, I have barely begun to uncover an amazing wealth of research.
We are just at the beginning of knowing how to design for a networked world.
I start off in Chapter 1, The Rise of the Social Web, with a discussion of the scale and significance of the social web phenomenon. Chapter 2, A Framework for Social Design, describes a prioritization scheme called the AOF method that helps designers make early decisions about what features their software should have.
The rest of the book examines the series of design problems that correspond to increasing involvement—the Usage Lifecycle—and the strategies social web design can offer. The concept of the usage lifecycle is central to understanding the book.
There is a common set of hurdles that every web site faces. No matter if a site is selling books or providing a tool to manage contacts or supporting a social network, there is a general lifecycle people go through in order to use its software.
The Usage Lifecycle is a set of stages people go through when using software. The hurdles that separate the stages are the major challenges faced in getting to the next stage. By recognizing that people are at different stages and have different hurdles to overcome, you can better make design decisions targeted at those stages.
There are five stages to the usage lifecycle and four major hurdles.
In the beginning stage, most people are unaware of your software, but they are aware of their own frustrations with their current way of doing things. Addressing their biggest pain points and telling an authentic story is crucial to getting their attention.
People at this stage have heard about your site from a friend, a news story, a blog post, or followed a link, and become interested. They are ready to hear more about what you offer. They have questions. They are ready for you to tell them what they want to hear. If you can do that, they’ll gladly sign up.
People at this stage are using your software for the first time. As these people settle into using your app, they’re making judgments about its long-term value. Do they find it easy to get up to speed? Does the software keep the promises you made? They are assessing whether this site is really for them, and worth switching from what they currently have.
First-time use is a crucial step for keeping momentum. If people don’t see the value in your service and fall off here, they may never return.
People at this stage are regularly using your software. This is where you start having success as people spend significant time learning and using. Not only do these people start telling others about your service, but they’ll start having conversations with you that you can learn from.
In Chapter 6, Design for Collective Intelligence, I talk about complex adaptive systems like Digg, which are an interesting case of persistent and constantly changing use.
Emotional attachment usually happens only after software achieves real success. This is what separates eBay, Amazon, Craigslist and other super successes: their audiences are passionate about using them. These people say things like “I love Amazon” and “eBay is the bomb.”
And now we come to why this is a cycle and not simply a progression. Passionate people are the key to driving new usage of your site, as they bring others into the fold by evangelizing your service.
Chapter 7, Design for Sharing, addresses a specific way to empower this passionate audience.
In Chapter 8, The Funnel Analysis, we begin measuring the effectiveness of your web application and actually show the results of your work.
I have had one goal in writing this book: to help you design better social web sites. If your site improves as the result of reading this book, then I have done my job.
However, I realize it can be quite overwhelming to add yet another discipline, psychology, to the vast array of activities we already do as designers. But in some ways that is what must happen if we are to truly understand why people do what they do when using social software.
But I do think there might be a higher outcome as well. If we begin to consider the underlying motivations of people, putting ourselves in their shoes, we might come to feel more empathy toward not only the people we design for, but everyone else in our lives as well. Is that too idealistic? Perhaps so, but nothing great was ever accomplished as the result of low expectations. Enjoy the book!
[1] From one of my all-time favorites: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet, by Douglas Adams: http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html