Interactive design theory: A better online socialization experience

Original link:http://boxesandarrows.com/view/designing-for-social

Author: Paul Adams translator: Finger

Phone and mobile phones took 15 years to accumulate to 100 million users, but it took only 9 months for Facebook to do this. More and more people are being connected by online social networks, and the network seems to be growing exponentially. But the reality is that social networks rarely increase the number of contacts we have. Most of the contacts on social networks we've seen before. We have contacted these people online, and the social network simply makes this connection visible. For example, we often contact our old friends at school and contact them through wall stickers (wall posts). But once we have established a connection, we rarely communicate further, and we forget the existence of this connection for a long time. In fact, Facebook's users have never contacted 50% of their contacts. When we look at how people interact on social networks, we find that most interactions are made between us and a small segment of our contact.

The average number of friends on Facebook is 130, and many people have more friends. Despite hundreds of friends, most of the people who play Facebook interact with only 4 to 7 people at a fixed time. For 90% of Facebook users, 20% of their friends accounted for 70% of their total interpersonal interaction. We also found this in the use of telephones. We had hundreds of numbers in our phone calls, but 80% of the calls were made to the same 4 people. We know a lot of people use Skype, but 80% of Skype calls are for 2 people. Even when people play online computer games, most of the time they play with people they've known offline.

We also have a variety of interactions with people who are unfamiliar. We look for new jobs, not through our friends, but through friends, and when our friend's friends lose weight, we also lose weight, we browse ebay, people we never know spend hundreds of millions of dollars on things, and may never deal with them again.

We have different relationships with people in our lives, but the Internet does not support this very well.

On Facebook (left), all of my "friends" have been treated the same way. I'll see a very long alphabetical list. Some of them are my most trusted chums, some of whom I have only seen not more than five times. But they were all in a big "friends" group. There are a lot of "friends" on Facebook that I don't want to call "friends." I might call them acquaintances or co-workers, even family members, but they don't belong to my closest friends.

In my phone (right), all contacts are handled equally. I'll see a very long alphabetical list. My best friend's display pixel size is the same as another person I haven't spoken to for 5 years. Maybe I can find the most frequently contacted people through the "Common Contacts" tab, but the people in it are also sorted alphabetically, just like the people I never contacted. On LinkedIn (right), all of my contacts are handled equally. Although some of them have worked with me for several years every day, others I have seen only once in a meeting.

Our social Internet tools must begin to understand the connection strength, that is, we have strong connections with some people, while others are not. Based on this knowledge, social tools need to be adjusted.

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Three kinds of relationship connections

• Strong connection: We are deeply concerned about the people

• Weak connections: We are loosely connected with people, friends like friends

• Temporary connections: people we don't know but interact with temporarily

Let's look at each type of connection and how to design it.

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Most people's strong connections are less than Ten a

For many years, people have been talking about social networks made up of strong connections and weak connections. Think about the people in your life, think of your closest friends or the closest person in your family, these are examples of strong connections. Strong connections are the people you are most concerned about. The strong connections that people often mention are people in their "trust circle". Strong connections often have the greatest impact on people's decision-making.

Most people have only a few strong connections, usually less than 10. A study of 3,000 randomly selected Americans shows that Americans have an average of only 4 intimate social contacts (4 strong connections). The majority of Americans have a strong connection of 2-6. People's strong connections come from all kinds of places. About half of the strong connections are friends, and the other half includes spouses, companions, parents, siblings, children, collaborators, club followers, neighbors, and career advisers 8. In 2002 and 20,072 years, a study of 1178 adults found that an average of 10 friends were at least 9 people who met or talked every week. So when we were designing for strong connections, we were designing for small groups.

Some people think that the situation is changing because the Internet is making our relationship with more people closer to 10, but the study shows that the results are the opposite. Most of the use of social networks occurs between strong connections. As mentioned earlier, people usually interact with 4-6 individuals on Facebook, 4 on their phones and 2 on Skype. When people play online computer games with other people, they often play with people they know, often with people who are miles away from their homes. Technology is used to communicate between strong connections, and this pattern is not new. When the phone is invented, it is used more to extend and strengthen strong connections than to weaken them. A study in the 70 's showed that most calls were made to 11 people within 5 miles of the caller's home.

When designing for strong connections:

• Consider the ways in which they already exist, such as calling, texting, sending emails, etc. You must support the interactive way that strong connections have been used, and do not attempt to replace them with our messaging system.

• Displaying more than 10 people with the most intimate information may be more valuable than simply displaying a small amount of information about many people.

• Avoid using generic terminology like "friends", which can lead to overly large groups and reduce their dependencies.

• Advise users to contact others, but tell him the consequences of adding a new link.

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people keep up with the information synchronization for weak connections

Let's move the focus away from your strongest connection and consider your friend's friend. These people are not familiar with you, this is an example of a weak connection. Weak connections are people you know but don't care about, and these people are loosely connected to you. Weak connections are the ones you encounter in elevators that don't feel physically unnatural, but don't have a strong sense of closeness.

In the 70 's, the sociologist Marc Granovetter published a classic paper on the power of weak connections (seminal paper). He concludes that a relatively strong connection to a weak connection is often a better source of information. Because our strong connection is a small circle, a weak connection can serve as a stronger source of information and advice. Studies show that most people in real life can only keep up with 150 of weak connections. This pattern has been right for the past thousands of years. Once the Neolithic villages reached 150 inhabitants, they tended to be divided into two; the Roman army was divided into 150 men each, so that everyone knew 12. Until today this is still true-both online and offline. We are connected by more than 150 weak connections, but we do not have contact with them. We may have hundreds of contacts on Facebook, but it is difficult to tell the life of any one person.

In a social network, weak connections are sometimes useful. For example, a contact on LinkedIn can help you find a new job and a friend's friend can give you advice in a specific field. But sometimes, weak connections can lead to embarrassing social situations. For example, get a reluctant Facebook invitation from someone you're not very familiar with.

When you design for a weak connection:

• Consider the balance between communication and trust. Weak connections may know more about what we are interested in, but we may not trust them too much. In this case it is important to show our common connections or to expose their sources of knowledge, as this helps us to enhance mutual trust.

• Make it easy for people to expose their networks to people they trust. This will show how the weak connection is constituted without infringing the user's privacy.

• Allow appropriate communication channels between weak connections. One possible way to do this is to browse or highlight a common strong connection.

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The internet is increasing our interaction with temporary connections

When we think about online relationships, it's not enough to have strong connections and weak connections. We need a new connection category--a temporary connection.

Temporary connections are always present, but the Internet is bringing them into the foreground. Consider the people you've only had contact with once. You don't really know who they are. A store clerk, a call center operator, a seller you met on ebay, these are examples of temporary connections. Temporary connections are more common online than offline. They are people who have had nothing to do with you, but have been interacting for a reason. Once the task is over, it is unlikely that the temporary connection will continue to interact. Except for the words they typed, you don't know these people, no matter how their online profiles are written. As online users generate more content, temporary connections are becoming more important.

Below is 4 types of temporary connections that are common:

• People sometimes interact with temporary connections to get information. People who need information look for someone who knows the answer. Once the information needs are met, the interaction between these connections tends to end. You might ask people on the street, or look for information on Yahoo. This type of temporary connection is becoming more and more important for future Internet searches. People are answering specific questions by looking for others rather than other businesses.

• Temporary connections are also present in situations where people need to interact temporarily to complete a task . Once the task is completed, the interaction is terminated. For example, interact with a salesperson in a store, or have a plumber enter your home to repair leaking pipes. Many of these tasks are now happening online. For example, interact with a call center customer representative to arrange a wire, or buy something from a temporary connection on ebay.

• Temporary connections can be formed around a common interest that is taking place (e.g. a sports team or a hobby). Interactions often take place on community sites, such as a sports team's forum. The true identity of these connections may still be unknown. People who post on the website often get to know each other's behavior. Although they may never have met, their relationship can gradually turn from a temporary connection to a weak connection. Temporary connection online interaction, online meeting, such examples are gradually increasing.

• People often form temporary connections with people who have the same physical space as themselves. These connections can be as simple as a 1-minute street conversation, or complex enough to have a three-day uninterrupted conversation on a music festival. Although not at the same time, technology now allows us to communicate with temporary connections that share the same physical space as we do. We can use our own phone to see who has been to the restaurant we think of, what they ordered, and whether they feel good.

Because we don't have a history of connecting to a temporary connection (unlike strong connections and weak connections), demonstrating authenticity and credibility is critical to successful interaction. We need to know ebay sellers are trustworthy. We need to know that the medications we're reading are from a real doctor, not a fake doctor. We need to know that restaurant reviews are from food-savvy people, and Amazon's comments aren't written by a company employee.

In Yahoo FAQ, people can build their credibility in a variety of ways. On the left, "Messykat" is gaining credibility by trying to provide the most accurate answers. She may be helpful in 20% cases, but we still don't know much about her as a specialist in 3 special areas (cats, dogs, weddings). On the right, "Ruthann" is building up her credibility by claiming that she has "40 years of dog training experience". This only adds a surface qualification, but we're not sure if it's real.

On ebay (left), "Jmjenkins" is building credibility through positive feedback from past temporary connections he has dealt with. Some of them still leave a similar "goods in accordance with the description, safe and sound delivery, thank you!" Positive evaluation of a++ ".

On Amazon (right), "w.todd Dominey" is building credibility by providing helpful comments (665 out of all 711 cases). He also builds trust by using real names and sharing his place. However, like "Ruthann" on Yahoo's question and answer, we have no way of knowing how "w.todd Dominey" understands the subject of these comments. We have no way of confirming his qualifications.

Most people's motives for helping their temporary connections are not money. You can't create a great temporary connection community with money rewards. Yelp tried to do this, giving each commenter a 1 dollar reward, and then they tried a 15-dollar 1-hour reward to get people to comment on old posts or make new comments. Yelp eventually got a lot of low quality reviews of 13 14, and a lot of bad pressure. Part of the temporary connection the real motives include being recognized as an expert, altruistic, and feeling that they belong to a community. All of these actions need to be understood and considered in our social web design.

Support for temporary connections is good for business. A study has shown that "positive reviews of a mobile phone product are often increased by a or two months of 15 earlier than the market share of the handset." Another 7-month study showed that sales also increased over the next one months when online promotion activities (an online chat assessment is likely to result in a recommendation) increased, and sales decreased by 16 when activity was reduced.

When designed for temporary connections:

• Excellent system should give priority to establishing credibility. Allow people to give feedback to each other.

• Encourage people to expose content that increases their authenticity. This includes real names, real photos, not avatars, or things that prove they qualify.

• A good system should give priority to building trust between people. This may include highlighting common contacts, common groups, or shared interests.

• Do not use money to stimulate people, to stimulate them to build their own credibility.

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Conclusion

Social web design will become one of the key skills of each interaction designer. In order to do it well, we will need to understand some basic human relationships. If your users are focused on a strong connection, you need to make a different design with the user focused on the temporary connection. Understanding the differences between strong joins, weak connections, and temporary connections will help us build a better online socialization experience.