presence, identity, and attention in social web architecture

Presence, identity, and attentionin social web architecture

IA Summit, Miami, April 13, 2008

Christian Crumlish, design.yahoo.com

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about xian

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Power of many - new senses - telepresence

“Is this a good time for a call.”

“When is a good time?”

“How long do you have?”

“Here’s the five-minute version.”

“Here are some good times to call me back.”

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Social this and that

• Social Network

• Social Graph

• Social Media

• Social Moment

• Social Object

• Social Gesture

• Living Web

• Live Web

• Read-Write Web

• Two-Way Web

• Human, Humane, Humanized

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YASN mockery

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Social Design Patterns, Social Patterns

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Obligatory venn diagram

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Identity or “Appears as”

source: Ted Nadeau, dotline.com

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Four senses of the word ‘Presence’

1. Online place, shingle, brand2. Curriculum vitae, blog, lifestream3. Availability

• online, taking calls, playing the game• Status, what you are, were doing

4. Mindfulness, paying attention

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Presence type 1 (brand, shingle)

1. There's the old concept of a presence as a persistent "place" online where a business or project can be found - a sort of euphemism for a website. (“We need an online presence” / “We need to improve our online presence”). Often said in a keeping-up-with-joneses sense in the turn of the millennium. (kind of boring)

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Presence type 2 (living resume, lifestream)

2. The human equivalent of this is the interesting bit, since it relates to the sense in which a blog, for instance, can create an ongoing sense of a person and its currency can help create the sense that the person is actively "present" in that space and can be found

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Presence type 3 (availability, status)

3. Next there is presence in the sense that instant messenger and twitter theorists discuss it. IM programs have an online presence indicator that indicates to the whole world or to one's connections or to those from which one is not hiding that one is currently online and available for communication, so present not in a physical sense but in an availability sense. This is synchronous, realtime presence. to be distinguished from the asynchronous sense of (1) and (2). Here we also get statuscasting (so beyond "Available" there start to be free-form choices - often with limited character counts - for indicating what we're doing or how we're feeling at the moment), and thus the phatic communication others have written about: "meaningless" at time bits of communication designed more to signal presence and connection and attention.

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Presence type 4 (mindfulness, paying attention)

4. Last, there is the concept of being more or less present (up to "fully present") through whatever available channels of communication are open. I would contrast this sense with the continuous partial attention of multitasking.

This means pouring your undivided attention into the phone connection, the IM connection, the video connection, etc., and using it as a surrogate for full realtime f2f presence. This isn't easy to do, but it's possible. It is helped along by negotiation of time boundaries and setting of expectations.

It starts to shade into more spiritual concepts as it relates to mindfulness and awareness and wakefulness.

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gd 2055: Announcements#1693 of 1694: martin corey gonna be my name (xian) Wed 28 Feb 2007 (10:55 AM)

it's funny sometimes how our public postings, our projected persona,our online presence can be a better repository for our old thoughtsthan our personal storage devices, which seem often to be moreephemeral.

gd 2055: Announcements#1694 of 1694: *%* (jewel) Wed 28 Feb 2007 (12:14 PM)

Yup. Most of what I read, I'd forgotten. I've been on the Well since I was26, and now I'm 45. Most of my adult life is chronicled here somewhere oranother. Also striking how much my projected persona has changed, mostlybecause of the change in demographic on the Well.

All our past lives

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Stalking, inviting stalkers, tracking yourself

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Where in the world is peterme?

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Preferences, privacy, configuration

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Permission-based stalking

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Social gestures (flavors)

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Community Moments (experiences)

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Oh hai! Will u be my frend (y/n)?

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Relationship antipatterns

High-level antipatterns

• Explicit “Will you be my friend” requests

• Teach a man to be phished (adactio)

• Don’t break email (do-not-reply)

• Auto-faux-pas (notification of rejection / unsub / delinking / re-follow)

• Having to spam my friends…

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Friends you may know / power-law

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Portable social networks?

Let’s start saying “personal social networks”

• Let me take my network with my wherever I go.

• Don’t make me reassert everything each time I go somewhere new

• But beware the unintended consequences that come from removing data from originating context

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Social architecture patterns

• Interop (antipattern: lock-in)

– Read-only, read-write, write-only

– De-duping, unencoding (pipes)

• Open APIs

• Honest broker

• Provide utility

• Build on existing practices

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Cowpath, crowdsourcing

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“Social” design (design via social network)

• As a designer

– Ask your users for feedback, live

• As a user

– Report on interfaces while experiencing them

– Assume someone’s listening (getsatisfaction)

– Request features

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“social” design, guerilla usability

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asking slideshare for features

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baratunde’s user feedback for jing

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baratunde’s user feedback for jingBaratunde Thurston, a video blogger, comedian, and writer for The Onion, doesn’t go to Jing’s website or call their customer service relations phone farm, or even go set up an account at GetSatisfaction.com.

In the immediacy of his frustration, he posts his “bug report” on twitter.

Is Jing listening?

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I’m looking for an intern

How Big Can You Think?

• The Internet is a big, busy place, and we at Yahoo! are proud to stand out in the crowd. As the world’s number one Internet brand, servicing over a half billion people, we’re determined to maintain our commitment to delivering news, entertainment, information and fun… each and every day.

• In order to maintain our position as one of the world’s most trafficked Internet destinations, we’re always on the lookout for people with big ideas and big talent to help us provide our visitors with the innovative products and services they’ve come to expect from Yahoo!. We’re looking for people like you.

Interaction Design Intern – Yahoo! Developer Network• Yahoo! Developer Network is the company liaison to external / third party developers. • The YDN UE staff is responsible for designing and maintaining the YDN website, for developing

and maintaining the Yahoo! Pattern Library (both internal and external) and for creating component designs and mashups for YUI and Yahoo! APIs.

Project overview and job responsibilities:• Design interactive components to illustrate Design Patterns and Best Practices or code examples.• Additionally, help curate the Design Pattern Library, write design patterns and best practices and

work closely with interaction designers across Yahoo! • Will work closely with the Design Pattern Library curator and other designers on the Yahoo!

Developer Network.

Requirements:• BFA / BA and in MA / MFA program with a concentration on Interaction Design / HCI.Preferable Job Qualifications:• Work experience in website and/or application design a plus.How to Apply:• Please apply online to requisition # 13577 http://careers.yahoo.com

http://careers.yahoo.com

http://careers.yahoo.com

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Thank You!

Christian Crumlish

http://design.yahoo.com

http://tagsona.corp.yahoo.com/userxian






presence, identity, and attention in social web architecture

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