A talk I gave at XTech08 looking at the psychology behind technology adoption, looking particularly at OpenID and OAuth using RSS as a guide. This is a slightly revised version of the original talk.
How relevant is the data portability of social networks to those who don’t knowingly have an OpenID already? Millions of OpenIDs are deployed but how many are actually used? What about microformats, ever tried explaining why the hCard is a good idea? It makes a smart demo if you have the right plugins installed, but the holy grail of browser adoption may never come for many people.
Defining the problem is the real issue; yes, solving it is hard, but we need to assess whether we are solving the right problems or just satisfying our own curiosity. The psychology of why non-geeks need data portability etc is murky. However understanding the needs of the rest of usHH them will mean these innovations take root.
We live in a small tight circle of people who care about a new beta of Firefox. We are more prone to criticise a website for not being fully buzzword compliant than on its actual merits as a project. We don’t make sites to show off new technologies, we build them for people to use to do something relevant to their lives.
How can we ensure that we include their needs and expectations along side the buzzword tick list? We are no longer building software components which are aimed at other developers, this is no CSS or XHTML. The last mainstream new web technology aimed at the general population was RSS. OpenID, OAuth and their kind are much more social in their impact, we expect people to use their OpenIDs in multiple places, we expect them to allow OAuth to enable access to their data.
Happily, there is already plenty of research into how people understand and process information. It is called psychology. I’ll give an overview of cognitive psychology and how the learning from this subject are can be applied to the kinds of systems we are developing. How people form models of the world, how they handle change. How people setup expectations and what happens when we break these. Come, find out about how the people you are developing for function as individuals and as a group.
1. Data Portability for
whom?
Some psychology behind the technology
Gavin Bell
gavinbell.com
8th May, XTech 2008
1
Three topics - exploring who are we building things for?
Technology adoption
Psychology
Identity and social network portability
Basically this is me getting to the bottom of something that keeps bugging me
Some comments and reviews of the talk
http://blog.gardeviance.org/2008/05/xtech-review.html - Simon Wardley!s generous review
http://adactio.com/journal/1467/ - Jeremy Keith!s review of my talk as given
I!ve revised the talk a bit and given more context in the notes so that this stands up on its own
Ian Forrester videoed the talk if you want to see the original http://blip.tv/file/894551/
2. 2
A bunch of clever technologies aimed at making the web a better and more manageable place
All good things, but we are starting to build a common infrastructure for the web with these tools and the integration is not yet
clean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OpenID_logo.svg
How has an OpenID
Who has used OAuth (outside Flickr!s similar system)
Who has implemented OAuth?
(most people had, making the point that the technical audience of a web conference is quite different to the average person on
the internet.
Brad Fitzpatrick had similar thoughts http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/ last year.
3. Desktop access to web data via OAuth with OpenID
Desktop Application Web Browser
OAuth OpenID
NO
Requesting data Sign in on OpenID
Is user signed into
from website provider
website
YES
View request from
Approve access to
desktop
relying party
application
Confirm request
and set options
When user clicks
Website grants
on confirmation
request to
link, access token
application
is saved
Application has
access to external
data or media
Relying party Identity provider
The important aspect of this is the second jump to another website, a 3rd party is involved in access
to data via OAuth if OpenID is used, this is a potentially confusing user experience.
3
An example of the kind of thing that I find troublesome
This is the “better than the other options” version of authenticating a website from the desktop
Two things about this are odd, the jump from the OAuth data provider to the OpenID identity provider.
Secondly the requirement on the part of the person to request the access token with a second click on the
application, we are making the individual request the both aspects of the token based authentication.
4. The chasm
4
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rethinking_crossing_the_chasm.php
We are making products, collectively on the internet, Defining a common feature set for the new web
The chasm shows the process that technologies generally go through to become adopted.
Too much focus on the other side of the chasm can result in ill thought out technology. Or premature ideas of adoption rates
I!m not saying that OpenID or OAuth are like this, but allow me to give a different example.
Slide borrowed from Tara Hunt
5. RSS adoption
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Feed-icon.svg
1999 things started with RSS, but it took until 2006 to become “evenly distributed” and embedded
Why is this significant, RSS was the first major change to web browsing behaviour.
Technology adoption takes a long time.
See http://www.slideshare.net/mickstravellin/universal-mccann-international-social-media-research-wave-3 for detailed
research on web adoption and demographics.
the alpha geek crowd were making RSS by hand in 1999 and following the bitter arguments over the specification process
Yet there are many people even now who have no idea what RSS is, but they can understand a web feed in GReader, or
netvibes or a macosx widget.
6. Cognitive
surplus
6
Other people are thinking and working in this space too, Kathy Sierra and Clay Shirky
Clay gave a great talk about the Cognitive Surplus
http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html
Which the web is unlocking as we escape TV... And adjust to our free time (society takes time to adapt, a theme I!ll return to)
The things we can do with the web, given time and encouragement, many of these will be about collaborative content
creation. We are planning the services and systems which will manage this collaboration, identity and content management.
I!m an optimist, these other people are not stupid, they just have their energies invested in other places than making the
internet happen.
So if we are to encourage them to discover the internet as we feel it will become, then we need to enter with a respectful
manner.
So how is this cognitive surplus arranged and managed in our heads.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/1399862175/sizes/l/
So how do people process information.
7. Psychology
7
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/1932306220/sizes/l/
Cognitive = thinking, Psychology = study of the mind
The process of understanding and processing information
internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology
The field is 40 years old, same age as AI, 1956
We are all systems of human behaviour
we make decisions based on the information we extract from the radiation bouncing around this room
we understand other people on the basis of this processing,
we form social relations on the basis of these decisions
Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook (5th Edition): A Student's Handbook (Paperback)
by Michael W. Eysenck (Author), Mark T. Keane (Author)
8. Schema
Congruence
Adaption
8
A schema is a model of understanding of the world
It helps us manage expectations of the world
eg a restaurant schema
cutlery plates waiters menu food
however some restaurants serve different types of food so we have some ability to vary
chopsticks rather than knife and fork still works as everything else is present
Congruence is the degree of fit between the external world and our schema
that it meets our expectations
The email update with no content
Eg x updated, click here to read. (too many social web apps do this)
Flash websites and no bookmarkable urls
barlett schema and correction we can ignore the things which don!t fit in to a degree
teddy bear with missing leg is still a teddy bear
But a teddy bear head, is that still a teddy bear?
http://www2.qeliz.ac.uk/psychology/Barlett1932.htm
Also a take away is not a restaurant
or if we went to a restaurant and they didn!t serve food -
we might decide it wasn!t a restaurant maybe that is a bar or a coffee shop
We can deal with change, this is termed adaption in schema theory
9. 9
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianblack/371301544/sizes/o/
Expanding on adaption
schemas are not set in stone, they adapt according to experience
We are all now comfortable with the idea that we can browse the web on a phone, yet three years ago it was uncommon
Older phones on the left it was hard to use the web
The iPhone makes it easier, Imagine Apple had launched the iPhone three years earlier, it would have had a slower adoption
rate I think
People felt the phone was for making calls.
We can take gradual changes in our schemas, too fast or too big a change will feel incongruent.
society takes time to adapt too,
jet packs might take a while to fit into our lives. See Fusion man http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/15/5
10. Stability
10
what does schema theory tell us about how we approach web development
two things
ONE
Firstly offer some stability
Gradual change is better as it lets our users adapt their schemas to fit the new world
iterative development,
not large scale changes to site structure, navigation or layout.
TWO
Bridge the gap
Schemas come into our world as mental models,
Secondly we need to design our products to support existing mental models we have of the everyday world
so we get shopping cart and filing systems and message boards, the “desktop metaphor”
Completely new will not fly very well, except amongst the geek crowd
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64672616@N00/190596601/sizes/o/
11. Notice board
11
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndunster/61856886/sizes/o/
Social software is a good example of schema change
the church notice board or newsagents window is a long way from punBB, but the underlying traits are still there
the concept of a bulletin board is based on these notices in the window
we have added to the concept with replies etc
yet we still know what is happening
Even our language has shifting to the more modern usage over the past 15 years
bulletin board for most people no longer means the physical board
Also the language changes that Simon Batistoni spoke of earlier, surfing and surfing.
See http://www.slideshare.net/hitherto/ni-hao-monde
Flickr!s very successful blending of video is a great example of how to do it well
And how passionate communities can react to change. (but that is another talk)
Now on to a few more slides of psychology
12. Consistent or
Coherent
12
Slightly change in topic now
A good debate can be had about the relative merits of one vs the other.
I would argue it is impossible to be both coherent and always consistent
consistency is rule following, we!ve always done it that way
coherency values context more and through following this you may end up breaking consistency
people often debate this and strict usability people often push a hard line consistency line,
where as a coherent choice can be more appropriate. Consistency is not wrong, just over rated.
Be consistent, but decide when to be coherent
Another viewpoint on these issues is simplicity vs complexity
Many things can be simple, some things are complex, if you give a simple interface to a complex issue, then you give up
control where it maybe required
John Meada!s book Simplicity is a good one to read.
In terms of identity, most people think email = identity, with OpenID we are changing this
The change is coherent in our minds, gavinbell.com is my website, but not consistent with their schema, I!ll return to this later.
13. Affordances
J.J Gibson
The Ecological Approach to
Visual Perception
13
A useful way of relating to simple physical objects and the environment
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception From http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~masanao/affordance/
gibson.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
He defined affordances as all quot;action possibilitiesquot; latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the
individual's ability to recognize them,
they are perceived relationships, so not quite the same as schemas
a door affords an opening, a glass holding wine, a chair sitting.
computers in general only offer perceived affordance, though the iPhone is changing that slightly
useful in terms of visual metaphor
use common conventions, we have a history of usage with these items, cf a basket and a bin similar function, different
representations
however they are contextually bound the basket vs bin metaphor see later
words and images are better than images alone, the words confirm and strengthen the message
be coherent in their usage, people should be able to take something learned in one place an reuse it elsewhere on your
site.quot;
eg the plus symbol adds it to a shopping basket,
Then don!t use the same metaphor to mean “give me a bigger image”
Our moves towards gestural and touch based computing make this much more important
Identity for most people is about email
Urls are places you go to read something.
14. Operant
Conditioning
BF Skinner
14
Slight diversion, but relevant to the discussion of social software, normal programming continues in a couple of slides.
BF Skinner ran a series of experiments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
rats and bars to press for food.
comparing always giving a pellet of food in exchange for pressing a bar
vs
giving it on a regular schedule, say evey 5 presses
vs
Give them food randomly
In the random condition they will press the bar a lot more than often during the training
once the training is over in the random condition they press the bar for much longer
this is about expectation, the rat is never sure if the next press of the bar will produce a pellet of food
Pigeon video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA
remind you of anything?
the web, email and RSS all exhibit intermittent reinforcement
Where is the new information?
we never know when there is an update so we keep checking and checking.
15. Social Software
15
checking facebook or flickr or twitter to see who has updated
usually there is some sort of update, but is it new content from others or content directed at us.
We get a stronger reward from the content aimed at us
most of us have broken Dunbar!s 150 limit, the predicted maximum number of people we can socialise with comfortably based
on the size of our brains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
However some of the updates are less satisfying, as they come from people we are less close to, or those we feel “obligated”
to follow
friends vs contacts as on Flickr, gating the amount of information we receive
we even provide lossy updates, the deniability of not receiving every update is important,
it aides social relationships and stops us drowning in information.
Deniability as Adam Green said in Everywhere
So we are very prone to wanting more from these kinds of systems, so we need to factor this addiction into our designs so that
we do not create an unsatisfactory experience for them, unsatisfied desire is not healthy
16. Experience vs features
16
Or features vs service as Simon Wardley mentioned - http://blog.gardeviance.org/2008/05/xtech-talk.html
Being feature led is a poor idea.
There is much to learn from the ideas behind experience design and service design approaches.
Imagine your app as a small part of someone!s overall interaction with other people and the world.
Your app is not the centre of the world
CF the iPod, focus on the one thing it needs to do well and ignore the rest, then iterate.
17. 17
Anne Asensio, then Head of Design at Renault.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Scénic
http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/7407.html - it wins design awards
– The judges praised the Scenic's quot;thoroughness and thoughtfulness of interior designquot; and the quot;orgy of surprise-and-delight
featuresquot;. According to Ged Bulmer, editor of Wheels Magazine, quot;The Scenic possessed innovation, visual impact and appeal,
detail design, control location and clarity”.
Keyless entry - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMH1qVIf0sU
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/03/15/video-renault-keyless-entry-keeps-you-from-freezing-your-nuts-o/
Automatic handbrake, level open tailgate / boot for sheltering from the rain
---
In the move from experience to feature list to copycats something gets lost along the way.
There is a strong aspect of this which is the “right feeling”, an experience. However it needs to be one for the people who!ll use
the product, not one for the people who are making it.
The hard part is to be able to continue to improve the experience so that you can continue to sell products. Staying still is fatal,
you need new product ideas / product design. To return to the iPod five years ago it was a music player, now it is a web access
device, camera and phone.
Still no radio, voice recorder, dozen preset buttons and the rest of the 2003 MP3 player noisy feature list.
18. The beta addiction
18
We live in a small tight circle of people who care about a new beta of Firefox.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16851909@N00/93136022/
How many have you signed up to, how many have do you think the general person on the internet has joined.
Have you lost count?
Do you think they have ?
19. Install this and then...
19
Anytime you need to say, firefox only, install this plugin then you!ve lost people, many people.
Our ways of thinking are different, we experiment, we hack about with things.
Other people just want the web to work, the web has a different schema for them,
it is a place to find information and utility, for us it is a place to play and explore.
Like satellite TV or a mobile phone, it is something they use.
20. Itches & Artisans
20
http://flickr.com/photos/rgordon/190575944/sizes/o/
The scratching an itch is a core driver for open source software
Or there is the more artisanal design approach, build something you like and others might like it too
Do distributed efforts like open source do UX well?
Atom and AtomPub are marvels of technology, but they are back end technology
OpenID and OAuth are placed directly in front of a non-technical audience,
plugins are hard to get people to install Flash and Quicktime etc, but with considerable effort and widespread content for their
usage.
How many stock Firefox installs are there (the majority?)
We are changing the model of how people use the web, making the term browser redundant perhaps, certainly encouraging a
more active role for them
How do we get these tools taken on board?
Not focusing on the technology helps
21. Get Satisfaction
21
Lovely interface from Leslie Chicoine
No technology is mentioned on the page, no mention of hCard or identity transfer,
just simple language describing the process and items in terms that people coming to the site will understand
22. Anti patterns
22
This is UX on a distributed scale, we!ll try many approaches and some of them will suck badly.
Eg the password anti-pattern
Signups where you give you account details for another third party site to create your signup.
Not nice.
23. Deployment
23
OpenID - hundreds of millions of deployed accounts, mostly latent
Mainstream consumers / relying partners, scarce on the ground
Oauth, some great examples, but they are all in our bubble.
What about the rest of the web?
http://static.flickr.com/175/397708723_e106fdb996_t.jpg
Technology takes a long time to get deployed and then uptake is slow too.
24. The h’internet
24
Mean joke I know.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peteashton/69395016/sizes/l/
There is another web out there,
These are the people who will never own a domain name
They share email addresses, because they can!t make XP do a second user account.
They don!t have webmail, they are not small in number but they are invisible.
They might be your parents or your friends, it is not just an age differential
They use things like hotmail or photobucket, snapfish.
They can!t write html or buy domain names
They don!t want to, nor should they.
25. Web of people
vimeo.com/zzgavin
twitter.com/zzgavin
del.icio.us/takeoneonion/
freebase.com/view/user?id=/user/gavin
flickr.com/photos/gavinbell/
25
We are already partly online, there are lots of bits of me all over the internet from the various places I put things.
So some questions
Who here ego-surfs
Are you number one for your name (yes for about 5 years)
We are highly visible and represented on the web
This is coming for other people and it is a shock when it does, eg the scientists on Nature Network, or the please take me off
google twitter FAQ
What about for the rest of them, how does the internet work for them?
26. Delegation
• <link rel=quot;openid.serverquot; href=quot;http://
www.myopenid.com/serverquot; />
• <link rel=quot;openid.delegatequot; href=quot;http://
gavinbell.myopenid.com/quot; />
26
OpenID delegation
Who can do this?
Who has done this?
Do you think the people on the previous h!internet slide can do it
I doubt it
So we are heading for a two tier web.
The new age of identity provision is upon us,
The first was the yahoomail / gmail / hotmail here is your identity phase.
Now we are offering OpenIDs (note the numbers of providers vs relying parties)
So if you cannot delegate, then you cannot migrate from one identity provider to another
27. Portability
27
So if I exist on the internet which bits of me are being moved about.
Identity, content meta data
What is portable,
My data?
What about the context, too much focus on the data, example follows
28. 28
I can move this picture, but I can!t recreate the context of him being born.
I can!t move the 30 odd comments about his birth to another system.
I don!t own them and I can!t make these people move.
(side point from Q&A - I can do this with my own blogging software, but not services which host identity, you need an account
on Flickr to comment, the comments belong to the commenter)
Also I don!t think the general internet population think this would even be possible.
There is a regular pattern which danah boyd identifier of people ditching old identities and moving nothing over.
This is present in the teenage market at the minute.
How will this behaviour carry forward into professional life?
29. Domain centric
29
A lot of our tools are domain centric, there is an expectation that you!ll want to own a domain.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoneppink/2370841575/sizes/l/
This would be a simple model, everyone with their own domain, email, openid etc, but I hope you have gathered that the world
is not like that
There is a second aspect to this.
They!d never think of buying a domain name, they use the internet, they don!t make the internet.
Like having a phone or a tv, it is a service. Sure they might have a myspace or facebook page, but a hosting account no
They have a different schema for the web to us.
30. http://
30
Following on from domains, urls are anther tricky issue.
People are getting better about URLs, they can remember domain names, they don!t need the http://www bit anymore
However our precious hackable memorable, lovely urls are foreign to them
The idea that you can use the url as a command line is alien to them, well outside their schema for how the web works.
Many people hide the location bar.
Portability in terms of urls is odd too.
We can get our data back, but no service I know of will create redirects from one service to another. Eg blogger to typepad to
wordpress?
(blip.tv will map across to archive if they go out of business)
So data portability breaks our precious urls and the general internet population find them hard to deal with.
31. Larry Tesler
Law of the Conservation of
Complexity
31
http://www.flickr.com/photos/protohiro/413972313/sizes/l/
http://www.designingforinteraction.com/tesler.html
Larry Tesler came up with this Law of the Conservation of Complexity to explain the need for the MacOS toolkit in 1984.
It was to explain to Apple senior management. It encapsulated the File, Edit, Print services into a single Apple provided set of
tools.
I think we need a toolkit for our distributed web ambitions.
32. Complexity
32
I think we owe it to the people who use our sites to give them a common experience.
More than that I!d argue that we need a common web experience.
We now have years of experience of developing web applications, latterly we have experience in developing web applications
that represent people on our sites.
Essentially on the third iteration
We can make the web
We can make money from the web
Now making the web something that people inhabit.
Given the mixed level of current applications how can we create a common experience when we have tens of thousands of
providers.
Oauth and OpenID are important aspects of this development.
Yahoo design patterns and patterns in general are a good approach to this
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/page.php?page=lifecycle
There is a need for healthy competition and no Apple like company which can set a single standard.
for the back end to this, see Matt Biddulph, Kellan Elliot-McCrea and Blaine Cook talks on asynchronous messaging passing
message passing via Rest and AtomPub & Oauth will help to break these monoliths down
Polling rss vs XMPP message passing (less human checking too would help with the CPA)
new patterns of development which are still a good fit for the current schema in web users heads
33. Tailored
33
there are a range of small single purpose apps which are very focused
The 37 signals apps, twitter, blinksale etc
this new breed of app tends to do one thing well and stays focused on it
Often they *are* framework based apps coming from small companies, but they stay small
they exhibit good behaviours in being small and remixable
The schema for these apps is easier to relate to
However why can!t I integrate these web apps into my desktop based work flow. (should I care if my workflow is desktop or
web based, if I!m offline perhaps)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/munir/358093259/
34. I should be able to use highrise to manage
contacts synced to my macosx address book
and then raise invoices on blink sale via highrise
on the basis of a complete task in basecamp
34
I should be able to use highrise to manage contacts synced to my macosx address book
and then raise invoices on blink sale via highrise on the basis of a complete task in basecamp
If these were desktop apps I could do this,
So as the web bleeds further into our computers,
I think we are setting these expectations up with our audiences
35. Blurring
35
What we are making and what the web is becoming is blurring
Desktop web applications can offer better perceived affordances than running a web app in the browser
Eg the unread mail count on MailPlane, the bouncing from Pyro etc
http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/1629269/
Ajax and AIR muddy the water, then add in widgets, embedded webkit or prism, fluid or weave and it isn!t clear what is being
made other than something that can render information from the internet on a screen
Marsedit and blogging apps - which bits are on the web
MacosX widgets - delivery status
Devices that measure power consumption and put it on the web
Initiaitives like Fluid show this desire for a clear and simple approach to making the web easier to use
It changes the experience to one of not using the “web”, I!m reading my email or reading campfire - the task changes and
focus returns
A version of Fluid holding basecamp has become essential for me.
What the web comprises is changing, we are moving back to the internet and the web as part of this.
I!m really excited to see what will come from RubyCocoa, but I!d expect many people to have to look that up on google.
36. Brokerage
36
I think that brokerage services are going to become a large part of how the web operates in the future.
OpenID is one of these
Services like Fire Eagle too are part of this shift, location management as social software, but without the social network. It
plugs into other services.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbk/294045879/sizes/o/
37. Science author
disambiguation
37
To give an example from the science world, where I work at Nature.
There are identifiers for papers commonly available, they come from Publishers, often as a DOI, or a pubmed id
However there are no such services for people.
Such a service would be very useful for finding collaborators etc
Arguably Linkedin performs this kind of service but not widely in the science sphere, nor tied to the publications.
38. Identity brokers
38
Which leads me to an idea to throw out to you all.
Do I know you services
Last year I proposed idsix.com, then ran out of time to actually build it.
However friendfeed, socialthing etc have appeared and the Google Social API
So this year.
Services that consume and rank those myriad invites you get.
We already do this for one another - can you introduce me to...
One of the reasons Tim O!Reilly holds foocamp is to do the introductions.
Probably an email based service in the first instance.
Later an API
39. A walk through
39
Assesses the person requesting a relationship.
Already a friend on other services => make friend relationship
Friend of a friend on other services => score for later approval
For none friends there are a range of metrics to look at and then rank
Not a friend, but included an akismet approved message
Not a friend, but included a domain name (query domain name)
Not a friend, no message, but real looking name
Not a friend and user=real name
Send a once a day / week summary and action email
40. A distributed future
40
We are making a smarter more complex web. Less monoliths, more small parts.
People are starting to live amongst the data.
Projects like Diso from Chris Messina and Steve Ivy are interesting experiments in what it might look like
Intelligence on the web
Connected selves
But we do not own this playpark, it is the web for everyone.
So learning from the RSS and plugin experiences how can we make the coming transitions better.
Sharing best practice as much as possible is vital.
Making sure the best patterns thrive and the anti patterns die out.
41. Making sense of the
web for them
41
We need to make sure that we are making a web that non-technical people can inhabit.
If you need to write code to make it happen then it is outside the general schema and it will not happen.
That is not to say that we need to make things for stupid people.
They will use more than one openid, once they get the idea.
They will take to OAuth, but we need to hide away the technology and work on the transitions between states.
A lot of this is about the details. Kellan Elliot McCrea mentioned passing the name of the person
and their permissions back as a parameter to the clients.
So that you can have the Thanks Kellan, you can upload pictures to Flickr now welcome.
http://www.slideshare.net/kellan/advanced-oauth-wrangling
This kind of step by step reassurance makes things trustworthy.
It is our responsibility to make this work well.
42. Good common
User Experiences
42
We are starting to hide away the OpenID branding
You and I both know that several of these options are openids, but no-one else needs to know that. It is just their LiveJournal
id.
The address book import tools which are now available from nearly all the main companies.
There is no competitive advantage to be gained in having a more clever authentication or authorisation system,
when the base systems are now distributed.
Adding / denying / inviting contacts could be a good one to standardise next?
There are others I!m sure, but these may be more subject area dependent.
43. Sharing content,
not making friends
43
A further shift in the web is the move from making friends on the web
To sharing data, Dopplr (the new web poster child) does this most explicitly
Twitter does it less explicitly.
This might seem like language changes for the sake of it, but there is depth to these ideas. They work particularly well for the
more focused single social object sites. Once could imagine a reworking of flickr as sharing photos, not making friends. (not
that I!m suggesting this is necessary)
The change being to have private photos and non-private photos which you choose to share with certain groups of people.
More like the Pownce approach to people management, which they borrowed deliberately from how email works.
Essentially we are social creatures and we share different things with different people. So we should design our newer apps
around the objects, not the friends lists.
44. Gradual change,
scaffolding
44
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ldm/14296081/sizes/l/
Scaffolding is another psychological concept and the last one to leave you with, as a concept for the future.
It comes from developmental psychology and is the process we use to learn hard things.
Two apples and three apples makes how many apples.
Remember that, well that is a scaffold,
2+3=
I!ve just taken away the scaffold.
We need to some how take the general internet population to this place,
so that the ideas that identity is email based move to a resource based future.
Remember people still share email addresses and have difficulty with any url more than bbc.co.uk/something
To get them to where we are headed will take years
45. Building Social Web
Applications
New book for O’Reilly
45
I’m writing a book for O’Reilly Media Inc entitled Building Social Web Applications.