Social networking design: Designing a better online social experience

Article Description: social networking design will be a very important part of each interaction designer's professional skills building. Well, we need to understand some basic knowledge of human relations. If your user needs are strongly related, you should design something that is very different from a temporary relationship. Understanding the differences between strong relationships, weak relationships, and temporary relationships can help us design better online social networking

Phones and mobile phones have gathered 1 billion users for 15 years, while Facebook only took 9 months. We've seen more and more people start using online social networks, and this kind of network seems to be growing exponentially. But the reality is that social networks don't increase the number of people they communicate with. We've almost met all the people we've contacted on social networks. We also contacted these people under the line. Social networks just visualize this relationship. For example, we often contact old classmates, and then fill up a few posters. But as long as we have contacted each other rarely can we continue to talk, over time we forget the existence of these relationships. In fact, Facebook users usually have no interaction with their nearly 50%-person relationships. When we look at how people interact with each other on social networks, we find that the vast majority of communication is only a very small subset of people's interactions.

The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and some people have a lot. Despite the hundreds of friends, most people on Facebook regularly contact only 4-7 individuals. For 90% of Facebook users, 20% of their friends occupy 70% of their interactive interactions. We see the same thing in the use of mobile phones. We have a lot of friends in our cell phone contacts, but 80% of the phone calls were made to the same 4 people. We know dozens of people who use Skype, but 80% of Skype calls are allocated to 2 people. We play games online, but mostly with people we know offline.

We maintain a wide variety of communication with people we are not close to. We look for new jobs, not through our friends, but through friends. When friends of our friends friend lose weight, we also lose weight. We go to ebay, people we've never seen, buy hundreds of dollars of things, and maybe we won't be in touch.

We have a very diverse relationship with the people in our lives, even though the network doesn't support it very well.

On Facebook, all my friends are treated equally. I was given a very long list in alphabetical order. Some of them I can live my deepest secret, there are others I have not seen 5 times. Although they are assembled in the "friend" barrel. Many of the people on Facebook and me who are "friends" are not called "friends". I might call them acquaintances, classmates, or family, but they are not in the same category as my close friends.

In my phone, all the contacts are treated equally. I have a very long list in alphabetical order. My best friend and the guy that I haven't spoken to for 5 years. The same number of characters pixels. I can find the people I most often contact through the "favorites", but these people are the same as those who have lost contact with me. On the LINKEDLN, all my contacts are treated equally. Although there are some people who have worked together every day in recent years, there are some who I have met only once in a meeting.

Our design Network tools must recognize the strength of these connections, and we have a closer relationship with some people than others. We should adapt ourselves to this knowledge.

There are three types of relationships:

Strong relationship: People are very concerned about each other

Weak relationship: People have very few connections, like friends of friends.

Temporary relationship: People do not know each other, but temporarily contacted

Let's look at each type of relationship and think about how we can design for them.

Most people have less than 10 strong relationships.

For decades, people have said that social networks are made up of strong relationships and weak relationships. Think about the people in your life. Your closest friends, the people in your family who are closer to you, these are examples of your strong relationship. Strong relationship is the person you care about most. People's strong relationship usually refers to the people in the "Circle of trust." People with strong relationships often play an important role in the decisions of their friends. Most people have only a few strong relationships, usually less than 10. A study of 3,000 randomly selected Americans shows that the average American has only 4 intimate social relationships (4 strong relationships). Most people have a strong relationship between 2 and 6. People's strong relationship comes from a variety of different places. About half of strong relationships can be called friends. The remaining half includes spouses, partners, parents, siblings, children, co-workers, club colleagues, neighbors, career counselors or counselors. In 2002 and 2007, a study of 1178 adults found that the average person had 10 people who had met or talked to them at least once a week. So when we were designing for strong relationships, we were designing for a group of people.

Some people believe that the situation is changing, and the internet has made us close to more people. On the contrary, the study shows that a large number of social networking uses occur between strong relationships. We can easily see that there are 4-6 people on Facebook, 4 on phone calls, and 2 on Skype. When people play online computer games with others, they mostly communicate with people they know, play with them, or with people who live close to them. This technical model for strong relationship communication is not new. When the phone appears, it greatly expands and promotes strong relationships, rather than weakening them. A the 1970s study found that most of the phone calls were made to people who lived within 5 miles of the caller.

For strong relationship design

Think about the existing way of communication, mobile phone calls, text messages, mail. Our connection with strong relationships is because they are enhanced. We should thank them and don't try to replace them with our own information systems.

Showing more information about the 10 closest people may be more valuable than showing more people a little bit more.

Avoid general wording such as "friends". This is likely to lead to a larger number of groups, weakening their relevance.

Recommend relationships to people, but explain the impact of increased relationships.

People have a weak relationship with about 150 people daily

In addition to your strong relationship, think about your friend's friend. People don't know each other very well. They are your weak relationship. A weak relationship is one that you know but care little about. They have little contact with you. A weak relationship means you're stuck in the same elevator, you don't feel uncomfortable, but you don't get to be very close to someone.

In the 1970s, the sociologist Marc Granovetter wrote a very innovative paper on the strength of weak relationships. He infers that weak relationships are a better source of information than strong relationships. Because our strong relationship is a very small circle, weak relationships have more powerful resources for information and advice. Studies show that most people can only keep up with the latest weak relationships with 150 of people in real life. This pattern has been right for thousands of years. Once the Neolithic village reached 150 inhabitants, it began to be divided into two villages, so that everyone knew each other. Now this is also true, whether online or offline. We had something to do with more than 150 people, but we didn't keep in touch with them. We have hundreds of people on Facebook, but it's hard to say how they live.

Weak relationships are sometimes useful on social networks, for example, a relationship on LINKEDLN may help you find a new job, and a friend's friend may give you some advice on a professional topic. But sometimes weak relationships on social networks can also lead to embarrassing social situations, for example, receiving unwanted Facebook invitations from people you don't know very well.

Design for weak relationships

Consider trade-offs between communication and trust. Weak relationships may be more insightful to some of the things we are interested in, but we may not believe them. Weak relationships are important in demonstrating our other shared relationships and in demonstrating their intellectual resources, so we have increased our trust in people (weak relationships).

Make it easy for people to expose their networks to the people they believe in. This opens the connection between the weak links without losing user privacy.

To open a suitable communication channel between weak relationships. This may have a strong relationship that promotes or highlights common.

The network is promoting our interaction with the temporary relationship

When we talk about online relationships, strong relationships and weak relationships are not enough. We need a new kind of relationship--a temporary relationship.

Temporary relationships exist, but the web pushes them forward. Think of the people we've only talked to once. In fact, you don't know them. Temporary relationships are more common online than offline. They have no recognized relationship with you, just for a special reason and temporary communication. Once the task is over, the temporary relationship will no longer be contacted. In addition to the words they typed, you don't know them, no matter what kind of Internet information they have. Temporary relationships are becoming more and more important as online users generate content growth.

[1] [2] Next page