Social networks should deliberately be designed "imperfect"

On the design of social networking sites, the Internet blog is overwhelming, but the systematic compilation of the book is rare. The book "Social Networking Interface Design" was discovered in the library a few days ago. This book shares the author's experience of working in Yahoo, AOL, and other companies for more than more than 10 years, giving advice on every aspect of the site and setting out hundreds of principles dedicated to giving users the best interaction experience.

In the book, the author said: "We have to have the opportunity to let social networks," the social people themselves "to improve the" design

This view is really incredible, and all the websites want to be perfect, that's for sure.

However, the "imperfect" site is precisely a very ingenious design strategy. In the Web2.0 era, users have become accustomed to contributing content (China's basic users may need more time to develop their habits?). ）。 If we allow users to participate in the construction of the site, users will like this he "put the effort" of the site, the "Change for him" site. This approach, on the one hand more accurate to enhance the site's user experience, on the other hand, it will make users feel that this is a "focus on users" of the site.

We are pleased to see that in the last two years of China's Internet, a number of emerging network services have adopted a beta version of the introduction of the public test + invite registration to control the number of users of the strategy. Invite registration on the one hand, control the number of users and quality, to ensure that the server-side pressure controllability and feedback of high-quality; On the other hand, as a hunger and thirst marketing, the internet to get free advertising effect. However, once the service molding, it should be open to the vast number of users, such as some sites to a new user to give 100 of the invitation code is still not open registration practice makes it difficult to feel sincerity.

In the course of implementing this approach, three points are noteworthy:

　　I. The principle of improvement should follow a few times

Unless there is a fundamental change in the concept of a large version of the update, you should try to avoid a one-time change too much of the interface elements and functions, which may cause users to operate the interface of discomfort so that the user subconscious to the service resistance. The appropriate increase in the frequency of updates will allow the concern that the product is in the rising period, the development team is full of executive power.

　　Second, there must be a limit to the persuasive decision makers

Unlimited democracy is likely to become a mob spree, the site's development team must first build a framework, "these environments should be the most basic, stable, unchanging, reliable." In this case, when the development team disagrees with the user, it is particularly important for a decision maker to serve the public. This decision maker must be popular with users, and truly responsible for the product, with a unique vision and ideas (well, I'm talking about jobs like this, but will such policymakers not take the advice of this article at all?). ）。

　　Third, dare to screen, focus on the main function

There are 1000 social networks in the hearts of 1000 of users, and perhaps users will be able to make a variety of functional requirements. For the development team, the most important time is to be able to cool down the user's recommendations. It's tempting to make your service a variety of functions, but a complex interface, bloated functionality, and poor loading speed can make you lose the candle. The experience from Dropbox is to "only consider adding more than 80% user-required features."

In engineer-driven product creation, there are many great ideas that are not commercially applicable or potential for development. This is a wish to let users participate in the construction, expand the practical significance of the product. For example, the watercress is a good example, until now, we do not know the meaning of the application, even its founder of the North may not necessarily know what the future will look like. Just as Twitter's philosophy changes from "What are you doing" to "What's happening", many applications are quietly changing in the conflict between product positioning and user usage.

Source: Not quiet desk submission, original link.