Design for Social Sharing Workshop

Slide 1: Design for Social Sharing Workshop -some theory, a casestudy and a design exercise Rashmi Sinha www.slideshare.net www.rashmisinha.com

Slide 2: Structure of talk Why now?  Understanding crowds  Design for Social Sharing  Some design principles  Case Study: SlideShare  Design exercise  2

Slide 3: Part I: Why NOW?

Slide 4: browsing alone 4 Attributed to PIMboula on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pimboula/15256153/

Slide 5: The web has become a social sphere 5

Slide 6: Who is online Broadband  penetration is at more than 50% 6 From Pew Internet Research, for US only

Slide 7: 7 From Pew Internet Research, for US only

Slide 8: 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

Slide 9: The web has Massively become a multiplayer social sphere online games 9

Slide 10: 6.5 million people 10

Slide 11: 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

Slide 12: 240,000 users 12

Slide 13: 13 Wells Fargo StageCoach Island

Slide 14: American Apparel 14

Slide 15: The web has Massively become a multiplayer social sphere online games Rich interfaces enable richer interactions 15

Slide 16: Part II Social presence (integration of GTalk with Gmail) Real time collaboration with text documents 16

Slide 17: DiggSpy: real time updating 17

Slide 18: Structure of talk Why now?  Understanding crowds  Design for Social Sharing  Some design principles  Case Study: SlideShare  Design exercise  18

Slide 19: Part II: Understanding crowds

Slide 20: Designing for the individual Usability  Findability  Interactions and their flow  …  20

Slide 21: Designing for the group How people interact  Rules for interaction  Product of interaction  A community  A joint decision  Working together  21

Slide 22: Psychology of groups Social facilitation  Group think  Group polarization  Social loafing  22

Slide 23: Conditions for wise crowds Cognitive Diversity  Independence  Decentralization  Easy Aggregation  23

Slide 24: 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  24

Slide 25: 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  25

Slide 26: 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 26

Slide 27: 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  27

Slide 28: 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! 28

Slide 29: 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 29

Slide 30: “playing WoW is therefore like playing pinball in a crowded arcade, where spectators gather around the machine to observe the best players” Ducheneaut et al., 2006

Slide 31: “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” Ducheneaut et al., 2006

Slide 32: Structure of talk Why now?  Understanding crowds  Design for Social Sharing   Some design principles Case Study: SlideShare  Design exercise  32

Slide 33: Part III: So you want to design for social sharing?

Slide 34: Forget the ipod! 34

Slide 35: Give up control This is messy! 35

Slide 36: Beyond hand-crafted IA 36

Slide 37: Plant the seeds, let people connect 37

Slide 38: Design for emergent architecture 38

Slide 39: What is social sharing?

Slide 40: This is not it! 40

Slide 41: 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. 41

Slide 42: 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

Slide 43: 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

Slide 44: Tomatoes Dance performance Coffee 44

Slide 45: Second generation social networks Put objects at the center  Social sharing  Tagging  Viral sharing  Social News Creation  45

Slide 46: 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

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Slide 48: Viral sharing (passing on interesting stuff, e.g., YouTube videos) 1) I send video I like -> -> to you. You pass on --> --> to her, who sends on to her, who passes on… How it works •Individual to individual to individual •Popularity based navigation track “viral” items

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Slide 50: Tag-based social sharing (linked by concepts…) 1) I tag my bookmarks e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us Global -> you see my tags lebanon voices politics -->You share your tags -> Global technology voices politics science How it works •Saving & tagging your stuff (creating bookmarks). brain •Tags mediate social connections •Formation of social/conceptual information streams. Emergence of popular, interesting items JAVA science web CNN networks 50 blogs science

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Slide 52: Social news creation (rating news stories) 1) I find interesting story e.g., digg, Newsvine -> you rate story 5 -->Others rate stories 4 How it works •Finding and rating stories •Popular stories rise to top 52

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Slide 54: Objects invite us to Connect  Play  React  Reach out  54

Slide 55: Part IV: Some principles…

Slide 56: 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  56

Slide 57: 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 57

Slide 58: 2. Symbiotic relationship between personal & social Personal snippets > Social stream  Pictures > Organized by Events  Music > Organized by Playlists  58

Slide 59: 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 Privacy settings on Flickr Give user control  Over individual pieces & sets  Delete items from history  Reset /remove profile  59

Slide 60: 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” 60

Slide 61: 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.” 61

Slide 62: 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 62

Slide 63: 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! 63

Slide 64: 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 64

Slide 65: 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) 65

Slide 66: 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?  66

Slide 67: 8. Most of all, allow for play 67

Slide 68: Challenges with social systems

Slide 69: 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 69

Slide 70: Surfacing minority perspectives Minority views get lost. Consensus  view bubbles up How to give alternative viewpoints a  voice? 70

Slide 71: How to surface expertise? People can gain expertise within  system How to reflect outside expertise?  Weigh it differently?  71

Slide 72: Adoption by average user People just want info, don’t want to  participate 72

Slide 73: Structure of talk Why now?  Understanding crowds  Design for Social Sharing   Some design principles Case Study: SlideShare  Design exercise  73

Slide 74: Case Study: SlideShare The object of sharing  The digital representation  Social practices around sharing  Mirroring them on SlideShare  74

Slide 75: 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  75

Slide 76: Popularity based Navigation Metric Goal Remember stuff Favoriting Show others what you like Remember stuff Tagging Interact with others Commenting Decide what goes to front page Digging Watch it Viewing Share on your blog Embedding Share with your friends Emailing How many of these is too much? 76

Slide 77: Tagging on SlideShare Started with author tagging  Added in community tagging  How to reflect back tags  Added into social stream  Strong user adoption  77

Slide 78: Zinging Alternative to Most Viewed  Decide what goes to front page  Simple way to participate  78

Slide 79: 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  79

Slide 80: 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  80 How can non sharers participate? Is privacy needed? 

Slide 81: Questions? rashmi@uzanto.com www.rashmisinha.com