[From OM]

When Friendster, et. al. were the hottest thing on the block, hordes of people jumped online to articulate their social network for everyone to see. Analysts thought that they were buying in to the “goals” of the services – dating, job seeking, classified, etc. There’s no doubt that many people gained value from these services but is this why everyone was so keen on articulation?

Articulation is not new. Building an address book is a form of articulating relationships. The address book is considered to be a tool of memory, yet what assumptions are being made when an entry is created? I would guess that anyone who scribbles a new name in assumes that they will have some reason to contact that person again. There is an assumption of a future connection aided by the knowledge of a current or past connection. Address books are an articulation of our connections to others with pointers for locational reference. The primary purpose of an address book is to look up an individual. It is our own personal people dns.

In the technology sphere, there are plenty of tools that incorporate articulated relationships into their application. Consider LiveJournal or AIM. In both applications, one articulates the people one wants to keep in touch with and uses each application to connect with others voices either through static or synchronous text. Both are tools for presence and communication – the articulation is key to engaging with these people.

What then are the motivations behind articulating relationships in publicly articulated social networking tools? Certainly, many participated simply because it was the cool thing to do. For some, PASNTs offer a nouveau address book where people can have access to a collection of one’s relationships for future use. For others, it is a mechanism to keep in touch with others’ evolving representations of self. Yet, the public aspect of this articulation takes on an additional role, that of signaling connection (a topic that Judith Donath and i took up in Public Displays of Connection).

Because the public signaling is so deeply rooted in PASNTs, this is off-putting for some people. Not everyone wants to engage in this practice which can be seen as pretentious at best. This is not necessarily an empowering feature for everyone, particularly those who keep their relationships dear to their heart and see no value in public signaling.

While all social people maintain relationships, there is nothing consistent about how people maintain them, yet these tools require some consistency. Who does this limit and how?

For some, private articulation for a particular purpose (memory, reference to a connection, presence) can feel quite comfortable and thus the people engaged in tools that permit this may not feel nearly as comfortable in ones that require public performance of relationships.

I would be very curious to know what motivates others to articulate their relationships and in what situations. If you think about your blogrolling habits, your be-Friending on PASNTs, your address books, your IM buddies, why do you choose to put people there? What purpose does this serve in your life?

[From OM]

In September, Joel on Software crafted a blog entry entitled It’s Not Just Usability that can be read both as a positivistic call to action and a scathing critique on the current methods used for understanding how design should connect with people. Personally, his words brought me great joy and should be deeply considered by designers, technologists and users of technology.

In design, there’s a desire to understand the relationship between the human and the computer. Interface designers are often trying to understand the psychology of the “user” so that they can offer an interface that will make the tasks at hand easy to do. This is the reason that cognitive and quantitative psychologists have been so involved in human-computer interaction.

Social tools don’t fit well into the HCI paradigm. While the interface is important, it is not as important as the way social relationships are negotiated. Napster was not a good interface, but the social desire to share overcame that. Many of the Articulated Social Networking tools are the same – a pain in the ass to use, but worth it because of the social component.

The ways in which tools for mediated sociability are conceptualized and analyzed must shift. No longer can we simply study how the user interacts with the tool, but instead we must consider how people interact with each other and how the tool plays a part in that interaction. Note: people, not users. The tool is not a primary actor in sociability, but a tool that mediates. People should not be framed in terms of the tool, but the tool framed in terms of their use.

This means focusing first on the types of social interaction desired and THEN on the technology necessary to instrument that interaction. A technology first approach is a crap-shoot. It can work simply because people may find a way to repurpose the tool to meet their needs. But without an understanding of the social behaviors that should be supported, one should not expect the technology to be valued simply because it is good technology.

Focusing on social interaction does not mean simply focusing on an activity unless you broaden the term activity to include identity construction, play and reputation management. These are all aspects of sociability and part of why people use these tools. Think about the role of an architect. An architect designs a public space not for a limited number of activities, but for an increased possibility of social interaction that will be extensible enough to support the diversity of ways in which people wish to interact. This is the kind of mindset that is needed.

Focusing on sociability means understanding how people repurpose your technology and iterating with them in mind. The goal should not be to stop them but to truly understand why what they are doing is a desired behavior to them and why the tool seemed like a good solution. A park bench wasn’t made for stretching but just because people do stretches on it rather than sitting on it doesn’t mean you should stop them. Taking away the park bench stops the sitters as well as the stretchers. Figure out how to support the stretchers and the sitters so that they are not in conflict but both appreciative of the park bench.

Think about Friendster. Friendster was built for a very specific activity, yet people’s interactions with the technology were about a whole range of social management. Their activities grew from their conception of how Friendster fit into their social lives. They did not see it as a dating site, yet the company kept trying to force them to see it that way. This was foolish. Instead, the company should’ve tried to support the wide ranges of behaviors in a way that was not conflicting. Consider the pub. Some people go to the pub to be voyeurs, some to date, some to socialize with friends, some to just drink. Pubs rarely try to make everyone have the same agenda – why should online services?

Much of this has been said before but not much of it has been heard. If we want to thinking about designing social tools, we must be prepared for a shift in mindset. If you find yourself thinking “those stupid users”, you’re in the usability frame not the sociability frame. Just as there are no stupid questions in the classroom, there are no stupid users in technology. People who use technology are offering a roadmap to different social behavior around technology than we normally consider. Pay attention to them.