Psychology of Social Media:Implication for Design

Psychology of Social Media: Implication for Design
Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D.
Oct 19 2009
IxDA

My Background: Industry R&D
Specialize in social media
Social networks, community, mobile
Early stage innovation
Extremely rapid R&D cycle
study, brainstorm, design, prototype, evaluate (repeat)
Career
PhD in Social Psych from UW
7 years Microsoft Research
4 years startup world
Personal Map

Research and Development Process
meeting social goals

Waggle Labs: Social Media R&D Consulting and Incubation
Pathable
Swaggle (group text messaging)
Zillow community
Trusera
CoCollage (Strands)
Facebook analysis
Social Web 2.0
Reality AllStarz
Teen Focus Group (MSR)
City of Seattle
Twitterdinks

Core Problem
Human social behavior evolved in different context than what we have today
We are still figuring out how to interact via tech
How is it different?
How do we make it better?

Why Interact through Technology?
At a distance, over time
Access to greater number of people
More frequent, continues access
Interactions archived
Integrate with digital content
Identity and context manipulation
Large scale collaboration, coordination

Social Psychological Approach
Understanding users
Individuals
Social dynamics: pairs, groups, networks
Phenomenological nature of social experiences
Social engineering
Technologies as social environments
Technologies as interventions
Focus on supporting social goals
Socially intelligent
Use understanding of social processes to inform design

Example
Design goal: a profile and matchmaking system to increase likelihood of two people finding each other and having a successful dating experience

Understanding Attraction
Predictors of attraction
similarity
frequency of exposure
Balance theory
Predictors of matching
matching hypothesis
Process
Reciprocal self-disclosure

Impact on Design
Match on similarity in demographics, lifestyle
Provide opportunities for frequent exposure, interaction
Match based on equivalence in desirability
Put in social context (see friends, friends of friends)
Varying levels of communication: pseudonymous, identified, asynchronous, realtime

Design Principles
Defining user’s goals
Social goals
To like myself
That others like me
Sense of belonging
Mastery, self-efficacy
Implicit vs. explicit

Design Principles
Take perspective of user
What is there, and what think is there, not always the same
People respond to what they *think* is there
Behavior is function of person and situation
To predict and change behavior, must understand all the forces
Some internal, some physical, MANY SOCIAL
http://synapticstimuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/force_fields.jpg

Design Principles
The best social technologies are invisible to the user
Need usability, to achieve sociability
Social translucence
Visibility, awareness, accountability

Influential Early Research
HutchWorld Study:
#1 reason patients used Internet was to interact with family and friends, not to meet other cancer patients/caregivers
Mall Study:
How do people naturally model their social relations?
Relationships and groups
In terms of importance to self
Dynamic and idiosyncratic

Social Networking, Community, Mobile
User studies
MSR Connections
Visualizing and interacting with personal and corporate social networks
Similarity based on interaction behavior, co-occurrence in communication groups
Users found graph visualizations too complicated
How extract meaning of collections/groups?
Personal Map
Point to Point
Wallop

Personal MapAutomatically organize contacts in a way that is meaningful/intuitive to user
Infers implicit social groups from communication behavior in email
Provide sense of who’s important
Dynamic, changes as levels of interaction change
Minimal maintenance required
Similarity (A B) = (sum (AB * significance))/sqrt(A * B)
Grouped using hierarchical cluster analysis
Shelly Farnham::Will Portnoy

Point to Point User Studiesfacilitate knowledge exchange by exploiting corporate social network information
At Microsoft:
75,000 mailing lists,
each person belongs to on average 11 mailing lists
Social network info presented relative to self
Shelly Farnham::Will Portnoy

Point to Point User Study I
39 employees completed task
Participants listed 15 closest co-workers, used to assess accuracy of point to point map
People most similar to the user were not crossed off map as not belonging.
People most similar to the user tended to also be on the user’s list of coworkers.

Point to Point User Study II
17 employees completed 16 choices using Point to Point
Study design: Participants decided between two randomly selected people whom they would like to meet for knowledge exchange
network information affected decision-making

Leveraging Social Media for Professional Social Networking
Whom do I most want to meet, in the limited time available to me?
Similar to me
Complementary skills/needs
Notable
How do I meet them?

Who is here? Who do I want to meet?

Social Networks
Social Scientist
Media Startup
Research
SocialTech
Community
RealityAllStar
BlogHer
Blogger
startup
community
social technology
blogger

Social Networks Online
LinkedIn, MySpace
Lists of who’s connected to whom
Visualizations
Graphs
Need more summarization!

Social Tagging
Add tags as you bookmark
Individual motivation
Across people, importance emerges
collective knowledge
Browse people and related content
Tags as pivots

Exploration at Seattle Mind Camp 3
75 people provided tags for self, organization, related people, related events

Pathable
Community and social networking tools for conferences

Design Themes
The event host is a connector and community moderator
Social tags are used as pivots of awareness, connection, and communication
Professional match matching for improved people finding
Incorporate communication back channels

Face to Face Integration
Using existing technologies:
Mobile
Badges
Printable calendar
Visualization

Personalized Badge

Match-making
Best matches possible, with minimal effort in profiles
Based on predictors of successful matches:
Common interests
Same roles
Job title
Host provided categories
Co-location
By geography
By events
Existing shared groups and communities
Weighted sum to produce ordered list

Why Host Cares about Community
We expect that sense of community at events increases attendee loyalty.

Pathable BarCamp Seattle Study
Questions:
how important is social networking at events
can Pathable help?
BarCamp Seattle is a free, two-day conference held for Web 2.0
280 people registered for the event using Pathable
78 people total (76% male and 24% female) completed the questionnaire, 18 at the event and 60 afterwards online

Primary Goal in Coming to Event

Correlations between Event Features and Intention to Return
Sense of community and event attachment highly correlation r = .81
Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05.

Pathable Usage
Everyone registered through Pathable, about half actively used the system
60% actively browsed directory
47% actively browsed messages
19% actively sent messages
43% intended to use directory after event
55% intended to use communication features after event
If they said they came to event only to learn, less likely to use Pathable (t = 2.6, p < .02)
The higher the usage, the more they said it helped them meet people (r = .65, p < .001)
No correlation between usage and count of people met
Usage correlated with count of professional friends at event (r = .36, p < .01)
**percentages for those who indicated at least somewhat or quite a bit

Impact on Professional Network

Impact on Attachment and Sense of Community

Impact of Usage by Feature
Pathable helped attendees meet others
the more they browsed the attendee directory
(r = .37, p < .005)
the more they browsed attendee messages
(r = .43, p < .005)
the more they sent messages
(r =.54, p < .005)
the more they used the match-making feature
(r = .66, p < .005)

Themes and Conclusions
Mission
Help people meet goals through social technologies
Incorporate psychology of social media
Clearly define user goals
Examine psycho-social context of technology to influence design
Prototyping and *early* deployment to assess technology’s ability to meet goals
Broad conclusions
Important to map natural social processes into social technologies
People are *always* seeking to develop social relationships, even in professional environments
Networking and community technologies can and SHOULD meaningfully impact face-to-face interactions

Psychology of Social Media:Implication for Design

by Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D. on Mar 05, 2010

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Psychology of Social Media:Implication for Design — Presentation Transcript