Workshop Title
Designing Social Websites

Presenter
Christina Wodtke (Boxes and Arrows)

It’s true. I attended two workshops pretty much on the same topic. The information presented in each was quite different, though, so it was good to have absorbed both.

Instructables has implemented a hodge-podge of social features, many of which have increased user engagement. But it’s hard to know how to move forward: How do we tie these together? What’s the full set of user behaviors we’re ultimately aiming to support?

The prior workshop (my last post) went into detail on a comprehensive set of social software design patterns. What problems can be addressed, what behaviors encouraged, and how? Christina Wodtke’s talk delved deeper into the theory of social software. What is the case for doing it in the first place?

In this workshop, Instructables was used as a case study at several points in small groups and by the whole room. I gleaned a lot of insight from these conversations on why social features would improve Instructables, and how. More importantly, I’m recognizing now that a number of buzz-worthy features won’t actually benefit us much.

Detailed notes, links, images, and the full slide deck can be found after the jump.

Note: By the way, I’ve noticed upon reading over my notes that it can be unclear what parts are the speaker’s thoughts and which are my comments. Sometimes my interjections are bolded, sometimes they are in brackets, and sometimes neither. I hope it can be inferred from context, but I apologize for any confusion.

Why Make it Social?

“The Social Web is a digital space where data about human interactions is as important as other data types for providing value.” [A very Information Architect-centric definition.]

“Community is when those humans care about each other” (Community not necessarily being required for Social Media; interesting distinction)

In the click economy, revenue is hidden in access to communities. These communities are arising outside the reach of those the companies they affect (e.g. GetSatisfaction.) It exceeds SEO campaigns in many ways, including customer retention, bug tracking and community policing, user-generated content, amplified word of mouth, built-in market research. Social media is dominant at this point, by any metric (page views, time spent, etc.) [All of these points address what the last preso didn't: i.e. what is the case for implementing social features?]

Theoretical Underpinnings

B = f(P + E)

Behavior is a function of the Person and the Environment see: last talk’s distinction between Behavior patterns vs. Interaction patterns

Social media addresses the second and third tiers on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Kollock’s 4 Motivations for Contribution. These are like hacks of human nature, translating basic human drives to the software realm:

1. Reciprocity – LinkedIn recommendations, mailing labels in nonprofit materials. People are hard pressed to ignore something done for them; they want/feel obligated to return the favor.
2. Reputation – People want to see their names in lights.
3. Increased sense of efficacy – Content is filtered, tasks handled by others, etc.
4. Attachment to and need of a group – Identity, lifestyle

The Web is the new “Third Place” (informal meeting place; Rome’s Forum, British pub, absent in America as a physical entity.) Looking back at Christopher’s A Pattern Language, you can see a near-complete relevance to social software. Take the following passage, but change the words for buildings and physical elements and substitute social software:

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 walls and floors — according tot eh tsocial spaces ofthe building; never modify the social spaces to conform to the engineering structure of the building.

“Degrees of Publicness” is a pattern that exemplifies this; People have different expectations of privacy; the space should conform to those people variably. The parallels to actual architecture are striking. Build the buildings around social behaviors.

Elements of Social Software

Wodtke’s basic elements:

It breaks down fractally:

Identity

As Clay Shirky says, “handles users can invest in.” (“A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy”) Examples:

• Profiles: The profile is a set of UI affordances to shape a user’s identity creation. A blank box would be terrifying. Use of the rich data follows. However, identity is context-based. A focus for the service allows a focus for the UI (LinkedIn is focused on professional, eclipsed less-focused competitors in this space.)
• Avatars: people don’t necessarily like their own pictures. Note that some sites have done clever things with unflattering default avatars to motivate customization (vimeo with the cro-magnon man avatar.) Wodtke wonders if the cartoon avatars on Yahoo Answers doomed the service to teen drama queries (it was intended to be a serious knowledge repository, at some point.)
• Collections: favorite stuff, stuff you’ve consumed, stuff you hate, etc. This includes things like playlists of songs on MySpace.
• Presence: Status (Twitter is the most base case: “I am here! I am alive! I am human!”) Can be as simple as time stamps on activity, e.g. forum postings, log in times. Presence can also be used to keep company. Who’s read this recently, who’s online now, etc. Note that putting the current reader’s avatar up top (seems stupid: the user knows she’s there) draws the eye to the entire list (remember that what’s logical isn’t always what works best.)
• Reputations: Note that adding a reputation system to an existing community can be tricky (Boxes and Arrows had this issue.) Allowing direct ratings on other users is usually a bad idea (people mess with one another; the aggregation doesn’t reflect the humor.) Another point: reputation is highly dependent on social networks. A friend’s recommendation can mean a lot more than an expert’s, especially in matters of personal taste.

Thoughts:

During discussion, as Instructables was being used as a case study, people latched onto the idea of “flow-through” reputation. The assumed use case was that less-popular people would get their ideas ripped off, and that there should be a way for reputation accruing to the derivative work to make it back to the originator of the idea. Some pre-existing models were suggested: “Cascades” and Google’s Page Rank. Also a Thompson Reuters product (Calais) that tracks correlations in provenance of journalistic information,

Relationships

Scale alone kills conversations. Dunbar: the maximum number that a person can keep up with socially (gossip maintenance) is 150. This translates to social networks.

• Attention – Twitter is based solely on attention; following, not necessarily any relationship. Asymmetric graphs.
• Groups – Common interest. Again, not necessarily any implied relationship between members. Lots of decisions around openness. Is this a collaboration and work, or is it just shared attention? On one extreme, we have health-related groups which have very passionate, motivated users. High barriers to entry could be tolerated, and may be preferred for comfort reasons.
• Connections – Actual relationships. Wodtke has no idea what Facebook does with the “How do you know X” information. Orkut has an even worse UI. This UI presents the user with a more mental load than they may be willing to expend when they want to make a connection.

Note: seems like Christina does a really good job of engaging the crowd and motivating the independent group exercises.

Note: Facebook Connect may be a good way to get access to social features on sites where people will not want to create a profile from scratch.

Social Objects

Social networks have little meaning without the objects that mediate the ties between people. The object can be the focus of the design.

1. Core activity
   • Classic Question: Who are your users? Better Question: What are your Users doing?
   • Read: Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath
   • The Commander’s Intent: Focus on what is critical. What is the one thing that is absolutely essential to achieve?
2. Social objects.
   • Focus on the objects that mediate the connections. Connections don’t exist without context. People associate around objects. What are they discussing, exchanging, recommending, passionate about, etc?
3. Choosing your Features
   • Finding your verbs. The very first cut can come simply from putting your social objects in sentences.
   • Families of verbs
     • Conversations: most important; people will drag themselves through horrible UIs to talk to one another
     • Sharing: a manifestation of gifting

Note: Shopping.com is doing some work with requesting advice over social networks. Go ask this UI guy about implementations.

Managing the Social Space

1. Norms and Caretakers:
   • Norms come from the community. Again, paving cowpaths.
   • Community management requires a human touch. There’s not a way to automate caretaking. Good community management can keep a community alive through a lot of scaling.
   • Genuine apologies for screwups, with open admission of errors turns community kerfluffles into opportunities to strengthen community and brand.
   • Seed! The Instructables robot commenting on Orange Boards is great.
   • Punish swiftly and nicely
2. Does Software Matter? Robin Miller for threading, Joel Spolsky against. The moral here is that, after a certain point, it probably doesn’t. Both formats will form discussions; people will find ways to use it.

Viral Distribution

• How do you find your influencers? (Hush Puppies, Gladwell)
• The problem is, “nobody knows anything.”
• Some Patterns:
  • Make it frictionless: Sadly, this means Privacy and Viral Distribution are at odds. Think about caretaking vs. control. If possible, reasonable defaults and a simple system. Flickr and Twitter benefit from being able to default to public. But there are serious concerns, here.
  • At Hand: Put your Commander’s directive Right There in the UI. Whatever social behavior is most vital should also take priority in the interface.
  • Impactful: “Email this” isn’t as wide a broadcast as Newsfeed or Network Updates, which isn’t as wide as Groups/Asymmetric Follow. Targeting is reduced as you go up this scale, however.
    • Twitter’s default to all for email invites may be the reason for their amazing growth. Every site does this, but the asymmetric nature of “following” makes people not feel guilty about spamming everyone they know, while reciprocity makes it likely that those people will follow back. Everyone feels good in a way that’s not the case with other SNSes. This is a much-abused feature, however. Essential to weed out noreplies, mailing lists, aliases. Instructables can harness this with its asymmetric “Subscribe” feature. Of course, note the antipattern at play, here.
  • Targeted: Power law of Participation. Core vs. Periphery (a.k.a. 90/9/1 rule.) Your valuable users deserve most of your effort and development time. Your community managers deserve the most.
  • Outreach: Wall of Buttons: See Slideshare’s optimization of which buttons overlap with your users and demographics best. Unclear how this is done, but they are prioritizing a subset of widgets depending on demographics. It may be through this Gigya thing…

Links

• http://blueprintsfortheweb.com
• http://www.eleganthack.com
• http://www.boxesandarrows.com

The Presentation Slides

Related Posts:

• “A Group is its Own Worst Enemy” (November, 2008)
• Now *That’s* DIY (July, 2008)
• Web 2.0 Notes: Social Interface Design Patterns (April, 2009)
• New at Instructables: Videos and Slideshows (November, 2007)
• Web2.0 Notes: Surfacing Personal Information (April, 2008)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm and is filed under coding, instructables, society, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.