Designing for Web 2.0 (Version2)

Designing for Web 2.0 Rashmi Sinha www.uzanto.com www.slideshare.net www.rashmisinha.com

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

Part I: The rise of tagging (& the fall of menus)

Categorization & tagging cognitively speaking…

How categorization works

Artifacts of digital categorization

Analysis Paralysis

Balancing your scheme

Over time – category boundaries change, labels obsolete

Systems hide item – mistakes costly

Multiple concepts activated Choose ONE of the activated concepts. Categorize it! Object worth remembering (article, image…) Analysis-Paralysis!

How tagging works Multiple concepts are activated Tag it! Note all concepts Object worth remembering (article, image…)

Maps to cognitive process

Reduced load

Fun

Self-feedback, social feedback

No balancing of scheme

Tags make web a shared experience

Tags give you community – feeling of others around you

Other social characteristics

Social transmission of information

Social Play, e.g., stalking, imitation

…

Tagging and Wisdom of Crowds “ 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.”

Four Conditions

Cognitive Diversity

Independence

Decentralization

Easy Aggregation

Menus and TagClouds

Menus

Structured

Stable over time

Comprehensive

TagClouds

Unstructured

Relatively unstable

Not comprehensive

Let current stuff bubble to top

Part II: Rich user interfaces

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

DiggSpy: real time updating

Part III: Social sharing

This is not it!

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First generation Social Networks (Friendster, LinkedIn…)

How it works

Individuals connected to each other

Relationships can be marked, hubs identified

Concept of 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

Over “ coffee ” Watching a “ dance performance ” Over “ tomatoes ”

Second generation social networks

Put objects at the center

Watercooler conversations

Viral sharing

Social news creation

Watercooler conversations around objects (social networks with objects in between) e.g., Flickr, Yahoo answers

How it works

People share objects and watch others

Social connections are through objects

Formation of social streams of information with 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 helps track “viral” items

Social news creation (rating news stories) e.g., digg, Newsvine

How it works

Finding and rating stories

Popular stories rise to top

Objects invite us to

Connect

Play

React

Reach out

Part IV: So you want to design for Web 2.0?

Forget the ipod!

Give up control This is messy!

Beyond hand-crafted information architectures

Plant the seeds, let people connect

Design for emergent architecture

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

Self-expression

Artistic expression (Flickr, YouTube)

Humor (YouTube)

Professional (Slideshare)

Individual piece should be small

Can create sets & lists

Do Mashups

Simple, guessable URLs for everything

2: Symbiotic relationship between personal & social

Personal snippets > Social stream

Pictures > Organized by Events

Music > Organized by Playlists

3: Create 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”

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

7. Most of all, allow for play

Things to try at home!

Create an account on myspace.com

Read Emergence, Wisdom of Crowds

Play a Multiplayer Online Game (WOW, Second Life)

Play with an API (try GoogleMaps API)

Try a mobile social application (DodgeBall)

Ask your friends what they find “fun” on the web

Questions? www.rashmisinha.com www.uzanto.com We are hiring!

Designing for Web 2.0 (Version2)

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