Design for Social Sharing Workshop

Design for Social Sharing Workshop -some theory, a casestudy and a design exercise Rashmi Sinha www.slideshare.net www.rashmisinha.com

Structure of talk
Why now?
Understanding crowds
Design for Social Sharing
Some design principles
Case Study: SlideShare
Design exercise

Part I: Why NOW?

browsing alone Attributed to PIMboula on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pimboula/15256153/

Who is online
Broadband penetration is at more than 50%
From Pew Internet Research, for US only

From Pew Internet Research, for US only

Just for fun! 34% men , 26% women 37% of 18-29 yrs old , and 20% of 65 and over go online, on any given day, just for fun… From Pew Internet Research, for US only

6.5 million people

WOW is millions of people with diverse backgrounds collaborating, socializing, and learning while having fun. It represents the future of real-time collaborative teams in an always-on, diversity-intensive, real-time environment. WOW is a glimpse into our future. Joi Ito in Wired Magazine

240,000 users

Wells Fargo StageCoach Island

American Apparel

Part II Social presence (integration of GTalk with Gmail) Real time collaboration with text documents

DiggSpy: real time updating

Structure of talk
Why now?
Design exercise

Part II: Understanding crowds

Designing for the individual
Usability
Findability
Interactions and their flow
…

Designing for the group
How people interact
Rules for interaction
Product of interaction
A community
A joint decision
Working together

Psychology of groups
Social facilitation
Group think
Group polarization
Social loafing

Conditions for wise crowds
Cognitive Diversity
Independence
Decentralization
Easy Aggregation

Wise Crowds: Cognitive Diversity
Need many perspectives for good answers
Groups become homogenous
New (similar) members don’t bring new info
Diversity reduces groupthink
Groupthink works by shielding members from outside opinions
Diversity reduces conformity

Wise Crowds: Independence
Stops people’s mistakes from getting correlated (uncorrelated mistakes averaged out)
Encourages new viewpoints (diversity)
Concept of Social Proof
Milgram experiment
People assume that groups know what they are doing
Leads to herd like behavior
Information Cascades
Sequence of uninformed choices, building upon each other

Wise Crowds: Decentralization “ A crowd of decentralized people working to solve a problem on their own without any central effort to guide them, come up with better solutions, rather than a top-down driven solution.” Suroweicki

Wise Crowds: Easy Aggregation
A decentralized system can pick right solution
With easy way for information to be aggregated across system
Example: votes on Digg

Crowds in Online Games
Alone together (Ducheneaut et al. CHI 2006)
Passive presence of others
Playing for the audience, but not interacting
Social facilitation (Zajonc, 1960)
Improved performance in presence of others
Presence can be passive
Observed even in cockroaches!

A different type of social factor
“ … the other players have important roles beyond … quest groups: they also provide an audience , a sense of social presence , and a spectacle ”
Ducheneaut et al., 2006

“ playing WoW is therefore like playing pinball in a crowded arcade, where spectators gather around the machine to observe the best players ”

“ Community in MMORPGs tends refer to mythical old villages where everybody knows and interacts with everybody… as WoW illustrates, a large community of gamers can thrive in a context where relationships are much more indirect”

Structure of talk
Why now?
Design exercise

Part III: So you want to design for social sharing?

Forget the ipod!

Give up control This is messy!

Beyond hand-crafted IA

Plant the seeds, let people connect

Design for emergent architecture

What is social sharing?

This is not it!

Hi I found you while I was searching my network at LinkedIn. Let's connect directly, so we can help each other with referrals. If we connect, both of our networks will grow. To add me as your connection, just follow the link below.

First generation Social Networks (Friendster, LinkedIn…) 1) I am linked to -> -> to you --->You are linked to her -> ---> on…
How it works
People connect to each other
Six degrees of separation
“ Are you my friend” type of awkwardness

Object mediated social networks “… call for the rethinking of sociality along lines that include objects in the concept of social relations.” Katrin-Knorr Cetina Reference: http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why_some_social.html

Coffee Dance performance Tomatoes

Second generation social networks
Put objects at the center
Social sharing
Tagging
Viral sharing
Social News Creation

Watercooler conversations around our stuff (social networks with objects in between) e.g., Flickr, Yahoo answers 1) I share my pics -> -> with you ---> -->You share your pics -> ---> with him
How it works
People share objects | watch others
Connections through objects
Social info streams: emergence of popular, interesting items

Viral sharing (passing on interesting stuff, e.g., YouTube videos)
How it works
Individual to individual to individual
Popularity based navigation track “viral” items
1) I send video I like -> -> to you. You pass on --> --> to her, who sends on to her, who passes on…

Tag-based social sharing (linked by concepts…) e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us 1) I tag my bookmarks -> you see my tags -->You share your tags ->
How it works
Saving & tagging your stuff (creating bookmarks).
Tags mediate social connections
Formation of social/conceptual information streams. Emergence of popular, interesting items
politics lebanon Global voices politics technology Global voices web JAVA CNN networks blogs science science science brain

Social news creation (rating news stories) e.g., digg, Newsvine 1) I find interesting story -> you rate story -->Others rate stories
How it works
Finding and rating stories
Popular stories rise to top
5 4

Objects invite us to
Connect
Play
React
Reach out

Part IV: Some principles…

1. Make system personally useful
For end-user system should have strong personal use
Memorable Personal Snippets (e.g., Del.icio.us & Flickr)
Self-expression (e.g., Newsvine)
Social status: Digg
Don’t count on altruism
System should thrive on people’s selfishness

Bite-sized self-expression
Creative self-expression
Artistic expression (Flickr, YouTube)
Humor (YouTube)
Individual piece should be small
Can create sets & lists
Do Mashups
Simple, guessable URLs for everything
Leave room for games & social play
Appreciation
Stalking (some!)
Gossip

2. Symbiotic relationship between personal & social
Personal snippets > Social stream
Pictures > Organized by Events
Music > Organized by Playlists

3. Porous boundary between public & private
Earlier systems
Personal (Personal Desktop Software, e.g., Picasa, EndNote)
OR Social websites (Shutterfly)
Rethink public & private
People share for the right returns
Set defaults to public, allow easy change to private
Give user control
Over individual pieces & sets
Delete items from history
Reset /remove profile
Privacy settings on Flickr

4. Allow for levels of participation
Everyone does not need to create!
Implicit creation (creating by consuming)
Remixing—adding value to others’ content
Source: Bradley Horowitz’s weblog, Elatable, Feb. 17, 2006, “Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers”

Why do people digg/comment/tag? “ commenting, digging, burying comments, typing descriptions, reading hundreds of articles and… … for a lot of nerds, using digg is just a casual free-time activity. Entertaining. Fun. Engaging.”

How to encourage participation
Insights from Social Psychology
Highlight unique contribution
Allow for smaller local groups
Highlight benefit to self
Highlight benefit to group
Source: Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities, Ling et al. 2005

5. Let people feel the presence of others
What paths are well worn
User profiles / photos
Real-time updating
Like a conversation
Sense that others are out there
What people are digging right now!

6. And yet, moments of Independence…
Choreography: when alone, when part of group
Prevent mobs
Don’t make it too easy to mimic others
Incentives for originality & uniqueness

Allow for alternative viewpoints
Social sharing can lead to tyranny of dominant view
People of a group agree
Viewpoint rises to top (popularity lists, tag clouds)

7. Enable Serendipity
Don’t make navigation all about popularity
Access to some popular stuff (keep this fast moving)
Make the “long tail” accessible
Popularity as a jump off point to other ways of exploring
Provide personalization
Recommendations using collaborative filtering
Similar tags, content, others
Ad-hoc groups?

8. Most of all, allow for play

Challenges with social systems

Systems represent people who adopt them
Many social sites dominated by relatively few users
Systems represent their viewpoints & perspective
Types of biases
In-groups / experts use more specific tags than out-groups / novices

Surfacing minority perspectives
Minority views get lost. Consensus view bubbles up
How to give alternative viewpoints a voice?

How to surface expertise?
People can gain expertise within system
How to reflect outside expertise?
Weigh it differently?

Adoption by average user
People just want info, don’t want to participate

Structure of talk
Why now?
Design exercise

The object of sharing
The digital representation
Social practices around sharing
Mirroring them on SlideShare

Models of popularity based navigation
Single, simple metric (e.g., Digg)
Focuses driving stories up/down in short period
Single Complex metric (e.g., Flickr)
Multiple Simple Metrics (e.g., YouTube)
Let people decide which makes sense
Different metrics reflect diff qualities

Popularity based Navigation How many of these is too much? Remember stuff Tagging Share with your friends Emailing Share on your blog Embedding Watch it Viewing Decide what goes to front page Digging Interact with others Commenting Remember stuff Show others what you like Favoriting Goal Metric

Tagging on SlideShare
Started with author tagging
Added in community tagging
How to reflect back tags
Added into social stream
Strong user adoption

Zinging
Alternative to Most Viewed
Decide what goes to front page
Simple way to participate

SlideShare category strategy
Did not want to impose categories
Starting to feel need
Will have a few, top-level
Inspired by popular tags and content

Design Exercise
Timeline for exercise
Find a partner. You will complete exercise on your own and share feedback with partner.
10 mins: Think of below questions.
15 mins: Turn to person next to you. Describe your idea. Get feedback. Now, listen to their idea. Give feedback.
10 mins: Add short description of your idea as a comment to presentation on SlideShare
http://www.slideshare.net/rashmi/design-for-social-sharing-workshop/
Create a system for social sharing
Think of an object
An object that you’d like to share with friends & colleagues
That will reinforce the brand, build community or have some other business use
What will digital version of object be? How can you make it richer?
Individual and social
How does object enable individual expression?
How do people connect over it? In real life and on the web?
How will findability work?
Are tags / categories / popularity / social networks useful?
Other questions
How can non sharers participate? Is privacy needed?

Questions? [email_address] www.rashmisinha.com

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Design for Social Sharing Workshop

by Rashmi Sinha on Mar 21, 2007

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Design for Social Sharing Workshop — Presentation Transcript