Social interactions are not designed

Earlier this week I linked to Adrian Chan's great article on social interaction design in Johnny Holland Magazine. It made me think of a few points that I think are worth a post in my own blog.

First I think the term 'social interaction design' is misleading. Of course, in our context, in this industry, it means designing social software that allows users to interact and share data with others. The interactions between users, however, are not designed by designers and engineers - only the software, that facilitates the interactions, is. A discussion between two people is social interaction - any event in which people attach meaning to a situation, interpret what others are meaning, and respond accordingly, is social interaction. Software can be designed to enable, motivate and encourage social interaction, but what users then end up doing (or not doing) with it is up to the users themselves. The further development of the software then needs to follow the users and their interests. Like Adrian pointed out in his article, twitter, for example, is not used just for SMS-Web messaging as its designers originally intended, but for several different things that the users have started to use it for because it enables them to do it.

The need to interact with others is very basic, common to all of us. That explains why social interaction software has quickly become the most popular form of using the Web. I think of my own father, a 70-year old with a PC and a cell phone, who would easily say no to buying flight tickets online. Not because he doesn't think it's safe, but because he's not willing to learn how to do it. He says he'll rather go to a real travel agent - he actually think it's easier than going online, and he likes the human interaction he gets at a travel agency. But when I have showed him photos that I share online, used Skype to call him or sent him free SMS from a website, he's always wanted me to immediately show him how to do it himself. Communication services that the Web has enabled - VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, and now social networking and microblogging - are the digital services that have managed to quickly gain popularity among not just the young and savvy, but also older folk.

When designing software that facilitates social interaction, the basic rules of how to design a usable service still apply. If a program or service is not usable, it doesn't motivate users to use it, even if it, at first, interests users because it promises to let them do something they desire. After enough people start using software they find usable, they need further motivation and satisfaction that they can get from recognition (status), reciprocity (I share, you share), sense of efficacy, and/or sense of community (Kollock's framework). In social software, they can get many of those things from other users, but the software system itself also needs to provide them.

Social software design could really benefit from anthropological study that put together what we know now about online and offline social behavior. The behavioral patterns that we see in social software now seem like very basic human behavior, but without the backing of actual studies that interpret the world we live in now, many social software designers are left to come up with the necessary conclusions over time, through trial and error.