Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the VTM Web design Conference. For today podcast, I have the pleasure to be interviewing over the phone Joshua Porter Web designer, researcher, and writer living in Newburyport, MA,
Joshua presented at the VTM conference on the topic of Seven Core Principles of Social Design and he has written extensively on such topics as Web 2.0, Ajax, Web standards, and is the author of the upcoming New Riders title Designing for the Social Web.
Check out the twelve minute interview with Joshua Porter on the topic of Seven Core Principles of Social Design on the WOW Technology Minute website.
Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Adobe Corporation and the 2008 Adobe Design Achievement Awards.
Help Adobe honor the best interactive, motion and video, and traditional media work created by the most talented and promising students from around the world.
When: Thursday, August 14, 2008 Doors open at 6:00 PM for a gallery preview Award ceremony at 7:30 PM Creative formal attire.
Where:
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
New York University
566 LaGuardia Place
New York, NY 10012 (Find a map here)
Register: Adobe Design Achievement Awards
Transcript:
Transcript of WOW – Joshua Porter Interview
BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference that took place in Nashville. For today?’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing, over the phone, Joshua Porter, Web designer, researcher and writer living in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Joshua presented at the Voices That Matter Conference on the topic of seven core principles of social design. And he?’s written extensively on such topics as Web 2.0, AJAX and of course he?’s well known for Web Standard. He?’s the author of the upcoming New Rider?’s title DESIGNING FOR THE SOCIAL WEB. Joshua good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to this interview.
Joshua: Hey my pleasure Bill, thanks for having me.
BILL: You bet. Joshua can you summarize for the subscribers of this podcast the seven core principles of social design?
JOSHUA: Sure. Well, I should say to start that these are only 7 of what I consider core principles. I think there are actually a lot of really interesting things that we?’re learning about designing social websites. I actually have written like 50 or 60 of them but these I think are the 7 core ones. The first one is just the importance of identity. So when you?’re building a social website and you?’re making decisions about how people are represented in that system, so whether you?’re building an auction service like eBay or e-commerce service like Amazon or a social networking service like Facebook, you have to make a whole bunch of decisions about how to represent people. And there are several kind of facets to identity but one of the things that has really stuck out to me, and I?’ve observed on many sites, is the importance of having profiles that stick very much to the domain that they?’re in. So for example the domain, excuse me, the profile which represents identity on Amazon has a tremendously different type of information in it than one on Facebook, and which also has a quite different one than a profile on a site like LinkedIn. And it?’s what you find interesting is that there are very clear barriers between the profiles. For example on LinkedIn you?’ll never see any profile information about religion because you know there are laws against asking what people?’s religion is in the work place. And so you know those things I think contain really close attention to how identity is represented is very important there.
Another interesting observation that I?’ve seen on several sites is that the quality of the pictures that people upload are relatively similar so if there is a site that has high resolution, you know very nice pictures of members then new people are going to have the tendency to upload similar pictures and so the idea that what you show on screen and how you represent people is the type of behavior that you?’re going to illicit in new members so as your community goes over time.
BILL: Interesting.
JOSHUA: You can start to see the behavior that you want. So that?’s kind of just the first one, just kind how you represent people and I?’ll be quicker with the other ones I promise.
Bill: No. Interesting stuff.
JOSHUA: The second one is a principle that I describe as personal value perceived in network value. What I mean by that is that for anybody to participate in any of these social websites or services, people really need to know what the personal value they?’re getting out of it. So I?’ve actually worked with many clients who struggle with this problem, that they?’re building, say, a social site where people have to view a whole bunch of activity but they?’re focused mostly on the social or network value that?’s going to come up. So if a thousand people rate movies we?’ll be able to show what the best movies are. Or if a thousand people do some activity then we?’ll be able to sell that to advertisers. Whatever the specific value proposition is, you know, may or may not rely on people getting personal value out of it. I fondly call this book The Delicious Lesson. Delicious is a social bookmarking tool and when it was released it was this tremendous amount of hype and talk about how when everyone tags everything we?’ll going to be able to have this collective intelligence that will tell us what?’s most important in the world. But interestingly that?’s really not why most people use it. Most people use it simply to save bookmarks for later.
BILL: Yeah, good point.
JOSHUA: The personal value they?’re getting out of it is simply a cool kind of web-based bookmark manager. This kind of second order value that the site can provide is this network social value of what can we find out if everyone is bookmarking. Well it turns out you can find out some really cool things like what are the interesting trends, what subjects are people bookmarking more. That value is actually secondary to the personal value.
So the question I ask my clients a lot is, would people use your software even if nobody else was using it? And I think that?’s really a powerful question because if the answer is no, people wouldn?’t use it unless others were participating as well, then you have kind of a much different strategy than if you were providing personal value. So that?’s the key principle I think when designing the social web site.
Another one is that motivation often trumps usability. We don?’t have to look very far to see validation of this principle. You know MySpace for example is one of the fastest growing websites ever and the usability of the site was really poor, they?’re actually just redesigning it I heard just the other day, but the motivation to sign up and find your friends completely trumped any problems in the interface. That?’s really, I think really a new phenomenon that?’s really strong now in social sites that people, if their friends are on the service they?’ll jump through any number of, than early users are going to have, because their friends aren?’t going to be on the service and they?’re still going to have to deal with the interface problems. So it?’s a tough problem.
Another one is focusing on a single activity. And I think this isn?’t necessarily relegated to just social design. It?’s design in general, design of web-based software. There are so many alternatives. There are so many pieces of software out there vying for our attention that people literally can not understand what each piece of software does. So those that are getting the best traction are the ones that are focused on a single activity. Certainly the exception to the rule like social networking sites that are pretty broad in what they offer. But for almost every other example you know, almost every other class of software, like personal productivity software, you know, any software that people use to you know get work done, are very focused on the single activity. If you look down at the applications on your desktop and if you look at your desktop and look at the applications that you use every day they?’re very specific. One is going to manage your calendar, one is going to manage you photos, one is going to manage your email. So I think it?’s easy to get away from that.
This kind of came out of the observation that I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs who are building services and a lot of times they say something like, “Oh well we?’re building something kind of like the MySpace. It?’s kind of like MySpace and it?’s kind of like Flickr. Or it?’s kind of like this and it?’s kind of like that.” The second you start basing your service on another service or multiple other services you?’ve really kind of lost site of the core single activity. So that?’s why I think focusing on a single very specific activity is important.
The 5th core principle is the principle of reciprocity. That reciprocity is this notion where if someone does a good deed for you, you feel some compulsion to do a good deed in return. Or another side of that is if you do a good deed for someone else you expect some sort of reciprocal action in return. I think reciprocity is really the core driver of a tremendous amount of activity on the web. We hear all the time in the press about user-generated content and how people are doing, you know, a million different activities like blogging and twittering and all these things that seem such a waste of time and why would anyone go to Amazon and leave a book review? You know that?’s a question I get a lot. And the reason is reciprocity, that people are starting to really get hip to the value they?’re getting from the web so someone who goes to Amazon and you know leaves a lot of reviews will eventually say “You know what, I just read this book and I have something to say about it and I?’m going to add my review now. I?’ve been getting a so much value from the site for a long time.” Reciprocity really became very apparent to me when I was doing some interviews of people on review sites where people would say things like “Well you know I?’ve gotten a lot of value out of this service over the years or months or whatever it may be, so I?’m going to add value back and then it?’s really important to me to contribute to the community.”
BILL: Yeah, that?’s a good point, I know that I?’ve experienced that myself, with travel sites for example.
JOSHUA: Yeah, exactly, like TripAdvisor. So reciprocity is kind of an undervalued principle. But I think it really drives a tremendous amount of activity out there. So the 6th core principle is just don?’t over plan your social design, just let it evolve. What I mean by that is I?’ve been involved in several projects where we?’ve had months and months of planning and architecting the website and just going through screen after screen after screen, building screens and then releasing it and then thinking that okay well now it?’s out there and you know people will use it. But even if we did early testing we still are like new babies in the sense, when the software?’s actually released, because people don?’t use software in the way that it was intended. And so the most successful software out there is software that evolves over time.
You release this really early alpha candidate perhaps. You get feedback, you evolve it. You get more feedback, you evolve it. You get more feedback, you evolve it. And the teams that are building the most successful software, and Google is probably the best example of this, are the ones that are evolving. And so even though Google is starting to get maybe a little legend behind it, that it kind of is always improving it?’s software, the design practices of existing companies and organizations still aren?’t even close, in many cases. They?’re still very much entrenched in the old ways in doing things, especially if they are used to do a lot of print design. Because print design you have to get everything perfect before a release.
BILL: Right.
JOSHUA: Old habits die hard. Even though a lot of us are aware of the new way of doing things, I still have conversations daily from design teams that have actually not implemented process changes to get there. And so this is still a big, big hurdle that people are facing.
BILL: Interesting.
JOSHUA: So the last one is kind of related, that systems actually change over time. So if you?’re designing, let?’s say you?’re designing a social network website. You?’re building out profiles and you?’re building out ways for people to connect to each other and people are saving information or rating information or somehow interacting socially. What‘s good for the community when there?’s a hundred people might not be good for the community when there?’s a thousand people. And a great example of this is the site Digg.com. Digg is a social news site where members of the site submit news stories that other people then vote on, essentially vote on. And what happened over the course, as Digg has really scaled up in the number of users, is that early on they had a feature called The Top Diggers, it was called the The Top Diggers Page, and the people who were on the The Top Diggers Page you know were really were power users of the system so they were very good at submitting things that got Dugg and they also Dugg a tremendous number of things. And so they were essentially power users. What happened over time is that their authority on the site actually grew and grew and grew. And eventually they actually became too powerful on the site. So there was this list of like 30 top Diggers. What happened is that these people would actually start dictating, so powerful and every action they did was so influential that they started dictating the activities for the rest of the–
BILL: Eliminating everybody else.
JOSHUA: So people who weren?’t in the top Diggers list really couldn?’t catch up to them. They really couldn?’t get as much reputation as the people who were already entrenched in the system. So people were upset about it. Not only that but advertising companies came in or other sorts of companies and they started paying these top Diggers to miss stories because their influence was so powerful. So what eventually happened is that people complained that the top Diggers had too much, had too much influence on the site, that it was negatively affecting the experience for everyone else. So what Digg did was they actually took away the top Diggers screen. They took away that feature, they actually took a feature out of the interface, which almost never happens. What essentially they did was they made the site a little less usable for those individuals. But it was a little more usable for the group. So there is this notion in social design of group usability. And that?’s a really interesting thing I think, because you know, most of the history of HCI is built around the notion of desktop software, and you know especially that the usability industry was kind of built around the notion of testing software, testing the individual using software. And now we?’re actually seeing how this other level, this group usability kind of level where things that are a little worse for some individuals might actually be better for the group. So that?’s another kind of core principle that happens as sites scale, as social websites scale. So that is the seven core principles.
BILL: Very insightful resources, I certainly appreciate that Joshua. And I?’m curious to know, is the book, the upcoming New Rider?’s title DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL WEB that you?’ve written, is that out now or out soon to be out?
JOSHUA: It is out. Been out about a month.
BILL: Okay.
JOSHUA. So still brand new.
BILL: I need to make sure that I lobby Pearson for a copy of that. Where might individuals go?
JOSHUA: Well you can purchase it right on the www.peachpit.com website. And you can also purchase it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your favorite bookseller. I?’ll mention that the pricing is different. Amazon?’s price is really competitive at the moment. So that might be a good place to get it now.
BILL: Excellent. I appreciate that. We?’ll look at that.
JOSHUA: Well thank you.
BILL: Well us as well. We certainly thank you Joshua for your time today. BILL Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Joshua Porter who actually is a Web designer, researcher and a writer and consultant living in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Thanks again Joshua.
JOSHUA: Thanks BILL, my pleasure.
BILL: Great stuff.