An overview of a social psychological approach to the design of social technologies, with design principles and a brief review of how I applied these principles to several R&D projects in the past few years. This presentation was given to the Seattle chapter of IxDA in October 2009.

1. Psychology of Social Media: Implication for Design Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D. Oct 19 2009 IxDA

3. Research and Development Process meeting social goals

4. Waggle Labs: Social Media R&D Consulting and Incubation Pathable Swaggle (group text messaging) Zillow community Trusera CoCollage (Strands) Facebook analysis Social Web 2.0 Reality AllStarz Teen Focus Group (MSR) City of Seattle Twitterdinks

5. Core Problem Human social behavior evolved in different context than what we have today We are still figuring out how to interact via tech How is it different? How do we make it better?

6. Why Interact through Technology? At a distance, over time Access to greater number of people More frequent, continues access Interactions archived Integrate with digital content Identity and context manipulation Large scale collaboration, coordination

7. Social Psychological Approach Understanding users Individuals Social dynamics: pairs, groups, networks Phenomenological nature of social experiences Social engineering Technologies as social environments Technologies as interventions Focus on supporting social goals Socially intelligent Use understanding of social processes to inform design

8. Example Design goal: a profile and matchmaking system to increase likelihood of two people finding each other and having a successful dating experience

9. Understanding Attraction Predictors of attraction similarity frequency of exposure Balance theory Predictors of matching matching hypothesis Process Reciprocal self-disclosure

10. Impact on Design Match on similarity in demographics, lifestyle Provide opportunities for frequent exposure, interaction Match based on equivalence in desirability Put in social context (see friends, friends of friends) Varying levels of communication: pseudonymous, identified, asynchronous, realtime

11. Design Principles Defining user’s goals Social goals To like myself That others like me Sense of belonging Mastery, self-efficacy Implicit vs. explicit

12. Design Principles Take perspective of user What is there, and what think is there, not always the same People respond to what they *think* is there Behavior is function of person and situation To predict and change behavior, must understand all the forces Some internal, some physical, MANY SOCIAL http://synapticstimuli.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/force_fields.jpg

13. Design Principles The best social technologies are invisible to the user Need usability, to achieve sociability Social translucence Visibility, awareness, accountability

15. In terms of importance to self

17. Similarity based on interaction behavior, co-occurrence in communication groups

18. Users found graph visualizations too complicated

19. How extract meaning of collections/groups?Personal Map Point to Point Wallop

21. Provide sense of who’s important

22. Dynamic, changes as levels of interaction change

23. Minimal maintenance requiredSimilarity (A B) = (sum (AB * significance))/sqrt(A * B) Grouped using hierarchical cluster analysis Shelly Farnham::Will Portnoy

24. Point to Point User Studiesfacilitate knowledge exchange by exploiting corporate social network information At Microsoft: 75,000 mailing lists, each person belongs to on average 11 mailing lists Social network info presented relative to self Shelly Farnham::Will Portnoy

25. Point to Point User Study I 39 employees completed task Participants listed 15 closest co-workers, used to assess accuracy of point to point map People most similar to the user were not crossed off map as not belonging. People most similar to the user tended to also be on the user’s list of coworkers.

26. Point to Point User Study II 17 employees completed 16 choices using Point to Point Study design: Participants decided between two randomly selected people whom they would like to meet for knowledge exchange network information affected decision-making

27. Leveraging Social Media for Professional Social Networking Whom do I most want to meet, in the limited time available to me? Similar to me Complementary skills/needs Notable How do I meet them?

28. Who is here? Who do I want to meet?

29. Social Networks Social Scientist Media Startup Research SocialTech Community RealityAllStar BlogHer Blogger startup community social technology blogger

32. Social Networks Online LinkedIn, MySpace Lists of who’s connected to whom Visualizations Graphs Need more summarization!

33. Social Tagging Add tags as you bookmark Individual motivation Across people, importance emerges collective knowledge Browse people and related content Tags as pivots

34. Exploration at Seattle Mind Camp 3 75 people provided tags for self, organization, related people, related events

35. Pathable Community and social networking tools for conferences

36. Design Themes The event host is a connector and community moderator Social tags are used as pivots of awareness, connection, and communication Professional match matching for improved people finding Incorporate communication back channels

37. Face to Face Integration Using existing technologies: Mobile Badges Printable calendar Visualization

38. Personalized Badge

39. Match-making Best matches possible, with minimal effort in profiles Based on predictors of successful matches: Common interests Same roles Job title Host provided categories Co-location By geography By events Existing shared groups and communities Weighted sum to produce ordered list

40. Why Host Cares about Community We expect that sense of community at events increases attendee loyalty.

41. Pathable BarCamp Seattle Study Questions: how important is social networking at events can Pathable help? BarCamp Seattle is a free, two-day conference held for Web 2.0 280 people registered for the event using Pathable 78 people total (76% male and 24% female) completed the questionnaire, 18 at the event and 60 afterwards online

42. Primary Goal in Coming to Event

43. Correlations between Event Features and Intention to Return Sense of community and event attachment highly correlation r = .81 Bolded items are statistically significant at p < .05.

44. Pathable Usage Everyone registered through Pathable, about half actively used the system 60% actively browsed directory 47% actively browsed messages 19% actively sent messages 43% intended to use directory after event 55% intended to use communication features after event If they said they came to event only to learn, less likely to use Pathable (t = 2.6, p < .02) The higher the usage, the more they said it helped them meet people (r = .65, p < .001) No correlation between usage and count of people met Usage correlated with count of professional friends at event (r = .36, p < .01) **percentages for those who indicated at least somewhat or quite a bit

45. Impact on Professional Network

46. Impact on Attachment and Sense of Community

47. Impact of Usage by Feature Pathable helped attendees meet others the more they browsed the attendee directory (r = .37, p < .005) the more they browsed attendee messages (r = .43, p < .005) the more they sent messages (r =.54, p < .005) the more they used the match-making feature (r = .66, p < .005)

48. Themes and Conclusions Mission Help people meet goals through social technologies Incorporate psychology of social media Clearly define user goals Examine psycho-social context of technology to influence design Prototyping and *early* deployment to assess technology’s ability to meet goals Broad conclusions Important to map natural social processes into social technologies People are *always* seeking to develop social relationships, even in professional environments Networking and community technologies can and SHOULD meaningfully impact face-to-face interactions