Social Design

With the rise of the social web, web writers must know how to design pages for the social web.

You must learn the following:

The Five Stages of the Usage Lifecycle

[1162] Porter, Joshua Designing for the Social Web. Voices That Matter. Berkeley: New Riders, 2008.

According to author Josh Porter, using the simple journalism technique of answering basic questions of inquiry will go a long way in motivating people to use your software. You have 8 seconds to convince someone to use your software and you need tocapture the momentum each user brings whether they urgently want to sign up or need to do more fact-finding.

Collective intelligence fuels the success of socially motivated web sites. Users can maximize the potential of their site with a thorough knowledge of the following concepts:

• Complex adaptive systems
• Initial action
• Aggregate Display
• Feedback
• Leverage points

Authentic conversations, or dialogues that emphasize candor and open communication between parties, result in successful social web sites.

Web sites must feature authentic conversation in order to convince users that you care about their web presence.

Web developers should always build in features that enable word of mouth sharing.

Here's a rule of thumb: Design with sharers in mind. Sharers are the connectors or hubs of your social network.

Connectors

• keep others updated and informed
• spread ideas
• emable world of mouth sharing

If you design with sharers in mind, you get in return free, quality advertising. After all, sharers tell why you are great. And what sharers say about your site is more important than what you say.

Understanding why users participate helps you to create interfaces that support user motivations. Find the two or three key motivators that drive your users. These will show you how to design for Ongoing Participation.

People participate for reasons including: identity, uniqueness, reciprocity, reputation, sense of efficacy, control, ownership, attachment to a group, and fun. In order to motivate ongoing participation you must account for all of these areas.

"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." (Porter ix)

[1162] Porter, Joshua Designing for the Social Web. Voices That Matter. Berkeley: New Riders, 2008.

Joshua Porter's text on social web design.