Thursday, July 20, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Category: DesignIn recent months, a term that has become increasingly popular is "social search". In this talk, I will argue that we should be designing for social sharing instead of for social search. In order for Page-Rank based search to work, we need people to create hyperlinks to web documents that they feel like linking to. Similarly, in order for social search to work, we need people to share their information, media, opinions and preferences. I will discuss tagging systems such as Flickr & del.icio.us, and media sharing sites such as YouTube as models for the design of participatory systems.
I will discuss three trends that designers working with such systems should think about. First of all the web has evolved from its geeky roots and become a social sphere for a large number of people. People have become used to living their lives on the web, to writing, linking, sharing, and networking online. The second is the rise in popularity of online games that can serve as inspiration for design of such systems. People spend hours playing all sorts of games on the web. With the rise of massively multiplayer online games, millions of people have become used to playing with each other in an alternate space, across geographical boundaries. The third trend is the rise of rich interfaces that update in real time and make the user experience richer and seamless. This allows for systems that update in real time giving you a glimpse of others in the system.
I will trace these three threads and how they can come together in the design of such systems. I will present several principles for the design of such systems, such as serving the individuals goal, creating a symbiotic relationship between the personal and the social; designing to support creative self-expression and emergent behavior.
Speakers: Rashmi Sinha
My notes from the session: (basically I was typing while the session went on. I copied down some good point forms from the slides as well.)
What:
The web has become a social sphere
A lot of Internet usage is about sharing and connecting with family/friends
The whole thing about "go to the web and hangout"
One type of "online hangout": Massively multiplayer online games.
Example 1: World Of Warcraft.
In a short term manner and long term manner. People can stay on this game for a long time but at the same time it can be a game that is only played for a short period of time.
Example 2: Second Life
The game is about creating a country instead of creating a game space.
The users can creatively make things. At one point, it becomes a marketing vehicle: Wells Fargo StageCoach Island. This is a great example of merging the online and offline void
Four draws of such games:
- the ability to socialize
- an achievement system that gives players an incentive to improve
- complex and satisfying strategy that makes combat fun
- underlying narrative that players want to learn more about
- many games also update periodically.
While you are playing such massive online game, you don't necessary need to be constantly active. Being an observer and "hanging out" becomes an important sector of the social interaction.
The social space of "Alone together":
- Surrounded by others, feel their presence, but not necessary interacting all the time
- performing for audience
- Improved performance in presence of others (even if presence is passive)
- Observed even in cockroaches.
And it's not just the younger generation that plays the games anymore. There are lots of adults involved in the games as well. The game becomes a social interaction that they have. This is actually an interesting part. My roommate plays WoW all the time and nowadays he probably talks to the people in WoW more than others. He has started to hangout with different group of people because of WoW.
Now we think about different possibilities of richer interaction, A good example of a more current trend is Ajax. Rich interfaces enable richer interactions. A good social application of ajax is the integration of gmail and googletalk. The seamless integration and interface of contacts make it much easier for people to keep in touch. (After all, email and IM are probably still the most popular usage of the internet) Another example would be Writely, there's no need to pass documents back and forth between multiple people. Real time collaboration element is an important key for social interaction.
On the topic of "real time":
http://www.digg.com/spy
You get to see the real time digging. (creating an environment that helps the users feel like there are other people doing things.) I see it as a positive encouragement for more social interaction. People are usually intimated to be the first one to step up and take action. It is also a negative reinforcement by the fact that people would want to take part of the crowd.
In real life, we follow the crowd. By showing the action of the crowd online is regenerating the experience.
WHAT is NOT social sharing?
- Friendster/linkedin
- They are social mapping
Friendster and linkedin can be considered more as the first generation of social network - just playing around with the concept of six degrees of separation. It's only about the "connection" there's no "sharing". (Even though in these days friendster has integrated video/audio/blog and all those fancy things.)
People connect through objects. Objects mediate social networks.
Example of objects that connect people together: coffee, dance performance, tomatoes. How about ideas? Yes, ideas can be an object.
(Yes, do you know people connect through tomatoes?)
Second generation network:
Putting the shared object at the center.
Example: flickr, yahoo answers.
The idea is to share a bit of yourself and everyone will benefit from it.
Types of Sharing
- Viral sharing
- one person has shared something, and people pass it around.
example: youtube
Youtube has this nice feature where you can reply to a video with a video. It's a great feature to encourage more information exchange.
youtube becomes a source of entertainment. It is also a great creative outlet.
(is social sharing about letting people feel belonged and have the ability to be heard?) - tag based sharing.
- linked by concepts
i.e. del.icio.us, library thing
looking at del.icio.us popular and tag. - Social news creation
rating news stories.
example: Digg.
(My thought: digg is a very frequently used example in all the sessions I went to. Something is very interesting with its model. I shall talk look into it more later.)
Objects invite us to
- connect
- play
- react
- reach out
create something that's amazing and then step out of it. let the people take over by using it.
- make the system personally useful
- let the system remembers you. "memorable personal snippets"
- identify symbiotic relationship between personal & social
- linking individual things into a social stream
- create porous boundary between public & private
- people share for the right retruns
- don't force people to make it public. Give them the control
- allow for levels of participation
- let people have the control of how much they want to participate
- Let people feel the presence of others
- And yet moments of independence
- The forming of the mob
- Bringing the individual contribution, it's not about just mocking other people.
- "prevent mob"
- you want many perspectives and viewpoints.
- Independence: prevent information cascade from happening.
- Decentralization:
- Easy aggregation: feedback loop. Good feedback loop on what's happening with the system.
- enable serendipity
- don't make navigation all about popularity. (don't support popularity contest, it loses its point)
- allow for play
- the game value in everything.
why do people digg? Why do people share?
- social statues (incentive for being popular) (is this just a popularity contest? ultimately, popularity is actually a great cincentive)
- allow for alternative viewpoints & perspectives
how to create a wise crowd instead of just crowd.
(this smart crowd sounds like a bottom up system. Definite read on this: linked by barabasi, emergence, and wisdom of crowds Think of it as a design of a system and how to have the system survive within the consideration of these points) (I personally read 2 of these books already and they have been more than just great inspiration.)
