Putting Users First
Thomas Vander Wal
Presented to: Future of Web Apps
London, England :: 4 October 2007

Begin with the User

Wait...

Throw out the “User”

Focus on...

People...

With people

it is all about

Desires...

Interests...

Wants...

Needs...

Focus on Real People

Including...

the 95% who don’t live
their life on the web

Tech Pain:
Syncing Refinding
Taste
Identity
Ease of use
Portability
Privacy
Attention

Easing Tech Pain

Tagging &
Other Features

Tagging
Derived Value
Abstracts
Identity
Favorites Long Text Annotation
Titles
Ratings
Work Contributing

The “F” Word

Folksonomy

Folksonomy Definition
❖ Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of pages
and objects for one's own retrieval
❖ The tagging is usually done in a social environment (shared
and open to others)
❖ The act of tagging is done by the person consuming the
information

Folksonomy Triad
Object Identity
Interest
Definition
Vocabulary
Metadata

Dual Folksonomy Triad
Object Interest Identity
Culture Vocabulary
Definition
Terminology
Community Metadata

Finding More Objects
Object 1 Identity Object 2
Metadata

Social Bookmarking
Gets Social

Apple Group
(public/private)
Top Tags
Recent
Bookmarks
Recent
Discussions
Group
Members

Sharing and being social
is how we humans got
out of caves

Being social is how we
advance as a society

Getting to Real
Relationships

Spheres of Sociality
Mob
Collective
Selective
Personal

Directional Sociality

Not All
Relationships
Are Equal

Real Relationships
Self Friend
Self Friend
Self Friend
Self Acquaintance
Self ? ? Stranger

Unequal Access
Public
Private

Approaching
Real Relationships
Share Share
Listen
Public Private
Friend A X X
Friend B X X X
Friend C X X
Acquaintance A X X
Acquaintance B X

Granular Listening

Information is good

but, we need to be able
to do something with
the information

Twitter has Favorites

Ease of Use

Test early

Test often

Test with real people

Thank you!

URL: http://infocloudsolutions.com
E-mail: thomas@infocloudsolutions.com
E-mail: thomas@vanderwal.net
AIM: vanderwal
Skype: tjvanderwal