What Is Social Interaction Design?

Social Interaction
Design
An Introduction to SxD
Adrian Chan
Gravity7.com

What is SxD?
• Design of social media

• Involves all web design disciplines: User Interface,
Interaction design, Experience design, Information
Architecture

• Social media include networked applications that permit
direct and indirect, private and public communication and
interaction

• Social media platforms may be computer-based or mobile,
even game platforms

• They engage the participation of users

• User participation produces mediated social practices

by Adrian Chan, 2007 Gravity7

Social media
• Social media are reshaping the marketplace for information
and knowledge, goods and services

• They supplement marketplaces with the power of
communication

• Communication unfolds in the form of conversations of
varying depth, reach, and speed

• Relationships inform the availability and value of information

• All of which is changing the way our culture produces and
consumes value

• And presents a challenge to mass media and the organization
of conventional media-based marketplaces


Social media
• Social media are not just websites, but are dynamic social
systems

• Their User Interface is a Social Interface

• Their content is people

• Their people are contributors

• Their contributions communicate

• That communication is a form of talk

• That talk is informed by design


The trade: Social Media


Socializing Media
• Social media = paradigm shift in marketing and advertising

• consumers participate in production and messaging

• messages are their own, and have authenticity

• using their relationships and social networks for
communication

• on the basis of their own interests

• How social media structure and organize talk changes
branding, marketing, and advertising

• At stake is how markets produce and consume value


Socializing Markets
• Social media cultivate culture

• Social media socialize consumption

• Social media democratize production

• Social media proliferate communication

• Social media network audiences

• Social media relationize connections


How is SxD different?
• Social Interaction Design approaches social media are “talk
systems”

• SxD shapes, informs, organizes, structures, and arranges this
talk

• Web 2.0 designs social applications for a ﬂourishing culture
of new content, new navigation, new audiences, new
relationships, new purposes and uses

• A shift to transactions as ongoing communication

• A shift of focus from user practices to social practices

• Emphasis on social practices as byproduct of design and
informed, not controlled, by design


SxD in theory


Main concepts
• Users of social media have:

• the ability to become self-involved online, and to relate
through social media to others (mediated presence)

• expectations of future interaction (commitment)

• a sense of self and a (self) perception of how they look to
others (validation)

• an intention to sharing their professional and/or personal
interests (social motivation)

• relationships they maintain online (social networks)

• trust and conﬁdence in the system (competence)


Interactions = Social
• Conventional user interaction and user interface approaches
address the user’s interaction with the device

• The designer designs the screen

• The interaction is User—Software

• The Social Interaction Designer also designs beyond screen

• The interaction of User—Software —User


User Needs = Interests
• Shift from task and goal-oriented transactions common to
traditional software use.

• Non-social software: users have needs

• Social media: users have interests

• Social media are relational media: users are interested social
participants

• Users not satisﬁed by success in discrete transactions and
actions, as in non-social software

• Users sustain interest in own participation

• Social media: emphasis on sustaining participation,
communication, and interest

User Needs = Interests
• The user’s psychological interests include acknowledgment,
recognition, membership, attention, respect, attraction,
citation, compliments, pleasure, self- satisfaction, popularity,
etc, and the avoidance of risk, failure, embarrassment,
disappointment, etc.

• The user’s communicative interests include visibility,
attention, organization of place and form of communication,
etc.


The mediation
• Technical media transform talk in signiﬁcant ways

• Modern technologies permit us to transcend physical
presence and stretch relationships across time and space

• Social encounters, as communication in (inter)action is
disembedded from place and time

• Communication is not an immediate and direct handling of
statements and relationship

• But is mediated and indirect transposition through a means of
production and distribution

• Online social interaction is a mediated, compressed, and
asynchronous experience


The communicative
• The medium screens out affective and communicative face to
face cues

• Its mediation of communication decouples the utterance
from the act of uttering

• Communication is captured and re-presented using text,
images, video, audio

• Interaction is decoupled from its performance

• Interaction is captured and re-mediated asynchronously


The sociological
• Our understanding of user behavior and social practices
beneﬁts from the insights of psychology, communication, and
social theories

• Online social interactions are a new kind of talk

• The social is a ﬁgment and an effect of individual user
contributions

• It is observed, tracked, and re-presented through usage and
data

• The togetherness of social media is simultaneous and co-
present but always interrupted, stretched, disassociated

• Social forces and power are transformed by mediation


The psychological
• Psychological views of identity, the Self, interpersonal
relationships, and the organization of social encounters
provide key insights

• Psychology offers insights into how users relate to others, be
they familiar or unfamiliar

• Is valuable to understanding the user’s interest in private and
public relationships and communication

• Helps us to value the ways in which users fashion themselves
through their online proﬁles and contributions

• And how they might become engaged in perceptions,
projections, anticipations, and expectations


The temporal
• Social media organize time

• Our experience of social time is episodic, eventful, and has
duration

• In communication, it may be deferred, interrupted, stretched,
or cut off

• We relate to this kind of time with anticipation and
expectation

• Social activity is temporal, has pacing and rhythm, speed and
intensity

• Any social technology structures time and is fast, slow, near,
far, and so on


The paradigm


Shift of paradigm
• From individual users to social practices

• User provides content, and content is people

• Grounded in the personal, biographical, and the everyday

• Personally and socially meaningful activities and mediated
forms of talk and interaction

• New modes of organizing attention

• New forms of value and differentiation

• New channels for messaging

• New means of capturing audiences


The Social Paradigm
• User as a social Self

• User as self-interested and interested in others

• All activity is social (visible to some others)

• Interaction is Participation

• Participation is a form of talk

• Talk has new forms and languages

• New forms include posts, comments, reviews, ratings,
gestures and tokens, votes, links, badges, video

• New forms are distributable and communicable


Social is represented
• Social media must create and represent social interaction
and community

• There are no direct faces or interactions -- only text, images,
video, audio, and structured activities captured in media of
re-presentation

• Users behave according to what they believe is going on and
what they believe matters to the audience

• Users establish a relation to the audience and community
based on its users, themes, and identity


Social Interaction
• In any social encounter a participant seeks to know:

• What’s going on?

• If the interaction is familiar, s/he will have a sense of:

• How to proceed

• What to do next

• Users of social media obtain this from the participation of
others on the site


It’s all talk
• Talk is addressed to an audience, of one, two, a group, or a
public

• Codes and forms of talk organize social media

• Talk is direct (to addressee) or indirect (in front of audience)

• Communication technology publishes and archives pages,
posts, comments, and media

• Interaction technology captures and transmits direct
interactions: IM, direct messaging,


Themes
• The identity of a social media service is thematic

• Themes communicate What’s Going On which tells users
How to proceed

• Career networking and passive job search

• Dating and ﬂirting

• Verticals: music, movies, books, pets

• Shopping, reviewing, “best of” and “new”

• Classiﬁeds, listings, marketplaces

• News, feeds, press, blog coverage


Activities are Social
• Social media are designed around social activities

• Activities structure the talk and the action

• Activities use participants, context, themes

• These organize who talks, about what, what happens, when
and how frequently, for how long

• All of which must be represented meaningfully

• And which must be self-sustaining and alive


Actions are social
• Social action common to social media is linguistic,
communicative, representative, attention-getting, inviting,
participatory, and responsive

• These are social acts and action (organized in activities)

• Ask, question, query, solicit, hint, wink, imply...

• Recommend, suggest, offer, declare, promote, advertise...

• Review, opinionate, show off, rant, challenge....

• Rate, rank, afﬁrm, conﬁrm, accept, approve....

• Favorite, tag, bookmark, link, share....


Assembling audiences
• Social media capture audiences

• Their challenge is to produce active and participating
audiences

• Around themed, topical, product or market-oriented content

• That is largely produced and consumed by the system’s
members


Organization
• The system organizes interaction through its

• Presentation of users (personal, professional, etc.)

• Their contributions (conversation, opinions,
announcements, etc.)

• Layout and navigation (focus on people, posts, media, etc.)

• Use of representations and visual languages (tokens, icons,
gifts, products, lists, etc.)

• Management of time (fast, slow, ephemeral, archived, etc.)

• Representation of collective use and community


Forms
• Social media borrow from common cultural forms

• Fashion, news, politics, entertainment, etc.

• These forms arrange and organize information, events, and
participation

• Which organize how we talk about and show: success,
celebrity, popularity, news, trends, relevance, etc.

• Each social media system is unique in its forms of talk and
formats of representation


People are Content
• Social media make users visible through their contributions

• They structure those contributions so that the system
reproduces itself out of its own participating members

• Communication is content

• Contributions communicate

• Contributions create navigation

• Social navigation communicates


Engagement
• Social media engage not just by capturing attention but by
engaging the psychological: users become self-engaged

• Users are interested in their appeal to others

• Users are sensitive to audience response

• Users are interested in their success and popularity

• Users seek acknowledgment and reciprocity

• All of which motivate their participation


Presentation of Self
• The user’s participation in online media is informed by his or
her sense of self and self image

• Individual users actively create, maintain, tweak, and monitor
their online Self

• They have a self interest in seeing their online presence
acknowledged and reﬂected

• They use social media as an extension of themselves, often
telling about and narrating biographical details and reﬂecting
how they would like to be seen

• May be sensitive to self image, self perception,
acknowledgment, status, position, success, and so on


Social Presence
• Social presence is about seeing and being seen

• Any social presence sets up the need to negotiate and handle
presence availability (to others)

• Presence can be maintained with a persistent online proﬁle

• Messaging and updating lend presence greater immediacy

• Presence tools vary in their organization of self talk, updates,
distribution

• Presence tools vary in their handling of interaction,
communication, and availability


Paradoxes
• Social = anti-social

• Communication = non-communicative

• Self = Self Image

• Other = Imagined Other

• Presence = Absence

• Identity = Changing

• Personal tastes are highly social

• Utility can be useless


Practicing SxD


SxD: The palette
• Design of the UI for social interface

• Design of the application for social interaction

• Design of communication for user generted content

• Design of navigation for social and cultural tastes

• Design of content modules for social navigation

• Design of interaction elements for social practices

• Design of media types for new forms of communication

• Design of interaction tools for new kinds of social practices


Functional dysfunction
• What functions is sometimes dysfunctional from a
conventional software perspective

• Communication and interaction are more than efﬁciency,
effectiveness, and success

• What is ambiguous compels

• What is withheld piques curiosity

• What is deferred sustains interest

• What is substituted feeds the imagination

• What is unclear solicits communication and help


Design levers
• Design of the screen (ﬁrst order) shapes overall user activity
and community (second order)

• Social interaction design anticipates second order effects and
outcomes of UI, IA, interaction design choices

• Social interaction design is indirect, informing, structuring,
ordering, and arranging

• Individual user actions and activities add up to social
practices

• It’s the interactions among users that design informs

• Social interaction design is the application of levers to steer
and guide emerging social practices


Users Own It
• The social media application platform is not in our hands —
it must be handed over to users and the community of users

• Shift of thinking from “what it does” to “what users do with
it”

• Users need to feel that it is theirs, need to own it and their
relationship to it

• Create the system so that it can become what it will mean
to each user, and as a result, service the community


Attention economies
• The attention economy addresses online activity

• It wants to capture user interest and attention

• But it is difﬁcult to measure attention as a quantity

• does the user communicate it? to whom? how often?

• does the user respect and like it? really? how much?

• does the user return for more of it? frequently? for the
same amount?

• Attention spent on a brand, a thing, event, or even an idea
belongs to one kind of attention economy


Attention economies
• On social media, the economy of attention is measured by
interest

• Attention in social terms is quantity but also quality

• Interest in social terms is not a thing, it’s a relation

• Relations have intensities, direction, ﬂux

• The attention that matters in social media can include:

• communicability; taste and preference; leadership and
deference; trust and respect; authority and credibility; etc.


Call to action
• Call to action is not always the conventional call to action

• call to action is social

• is often contributed (written, posted) by users

• can be a call to interaction

• can be a call to participation

• can be a call to communication

• can be a call on the attention of other users

• Galvanize users to continue to create content that serves to
mobilize others to do the same


Appealing to the Other
• Social media content must help users appeal to each other

• Personal style, online proﬁle, character and personality

• Appearance, looks, pictures, poses, qualities

• Knowledge, know-how, expertise, credibility

• Informal social position by friends, network, popularity,
testimonials, compliments

• Formal social position by profession, rank, status,
accreditation, employer

• Social capital by value to users and community


Common practices
• Social practices emerge on social media as use becomes
another way of maintaining and participating in relationships

• Tell by posting

• Show by uploading

• Talk by commenting

• Seek by querying

• Ask by questioning

• Opinionate by blogging

• Associate by tagging


Types of talk
• Different kinds of talk form different social practices,
identiﬁable by their common interactions, balance of private
and public, levels of participation, etiquette, seriousness,
formality, and more

• They shape the degree to which users refer to and involve
themselves as real people in communication

• Confessions, biographical and personal proﬁles

• Flirtations, compliments, friending,

• Advice, recommendations, reviews

• Opinions and discussions


Windows and Views
• Views of information, stats, trafﬁc, and activity measure,
describe, and show user and audience participation.

• Views create aggregate perspective

• Users look at views

• Windows containing user generated content are a selection
of relevant contents

• Windows contain

• Users look through windows

• Users take interest in others

• clickthroughs, rating, favoriting, friending, tagging, etc

Reflections and Mirrors
• Social media show users their own activity back to them

• Reflections show users their presence to others

• Users are interested in how they appear and how they
appear to others

• Mirrors show users their reflection

• Users need to see themselves represented

• Users take interest in themselves

• numbers, ranking, ratings, votes, friends, testimonials, lists,
gestures, winks, compliments all reflect upon the user


System Feedback
• It’s necessary to show users their own actions, particularly
the social consequences and reception of their actions

• Users need to establish trust in the system’s own functions
and features

• Users want to feel competent users of the system

• The system’s feedback is conﬁrmation of their actions and
recognition of their competence

• Much system feedback is provided by other users, displayed
and organized by design


Transference
• In the absence of immediate response and reaction to user
participation, users invent and project their interpretations
and assumptions

• Self involvement and involvement in others is mediated and
engages projection and introspection

• Projective: seeing

• Commenting, rating, digging, favoriting, tagging

• Introspective: being seen

• Blogging, recording video performances, journaling, proﬁle
maintenance and tweaking


Projection
• Users will project the other’s intentions, motives, interests,
desires, skills, and other attributes based in part on what they
hope for or wish to see

• Users particularly project into ambiguity and communication
and when user identities are concealed or only partially
revealed

• Projection can result in users over-communicating and over-
compensating

• Projection may be more Other-oriented


Introspection
• Some social media user practices primarily engage the user
with him or herself

• In these kinds of activities, users become involved in their
own ideas, perceptions, interpretations, and assumptions

• Introspection can result in users engaging primarily in telling
about themselves and crafting an online persona

• Introspective activities may appear as a distant and anti-social
performance

• Introspection may be more Self-oriented


Social networking
• Social networks are the maintenance and sustaining of
personal and professional relationships on social media

• Social networks limit content access to known, familiar, and
trusted associations

• Relationships embody trust in the ﬁrst degree

• Relationships extend conﬁdence in the second degree

• Social networks expand content access while limiting results


Distribution
• Some social media are built as destination sites and “walled
city” domains

• Some social media extend their presence through widgets,
badges, and shared data beyond their domain

• to the desktop

• to mobile

• to other networked devices


Folksonomies
• Flat and non-hierarchical navigation through content
categories, labels, and tags that reﬂect their popularity in use

• Self-reinforcing associations as use by communities of users
privilege tags used most

• Provide a view of the values and selections most popular
among users

• Permit change and news to continually reach the surface

• Are a snapshot in time and are thus current


Mini Me-dia
• Mass media inform the content and organization of social
media

• Cultural and social references and presentations are readily
available in the mass media and by virtue of digital
distribution are easily quoted and repurposed

• Social media are user-centric

• Personal is news

• Person is privileged

• Personality is popular


Trends: to date
• Web 1.0: publishing

• information was evergreen

• users browsed and searched

• Web 2.0: I can publish too

• users create their own home pages

• and socialize them with friends

• Web 3.0+: we talk

• the web goes social

• communication is embedded in all web, distributed to all
devices

Trends: the future
• Faster and lighter applications and tools

• Higher presence and immediacy of the user

• Niche social networks

• Fewer new attempts at all-in-one destinations

• Branded social media and social media brands

• Recognition by mass media, increasing assimilation and
integration

• Distributed and widgetized

• Non-browser based apps widgets and mobile


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