We can no longer make sense of social software and related applications from a user-centric model�at least not the model that has come out of cognitive science. That model has insisted on a rational user, a goal-oriented user interested in achieving his or her objectives. An application would either satisfy or confound the user, and designers could set about improving UX and UI until users were all happy.

But social technologies are different:

• We often end up engaging in something that wasn’t on our minds when we started.

• Transactions are not discrete, they’re ongoing and episodic.

• More often than not we’re communicating with others, and communication clearly exceeds rational actor models of analysis (it’s psychological, it’s meaning-based, it involves self, other, performance, and so on).

• Interaction with others is mediated and so therefore we need new practices and new etiquettes, or codes of conduct and behavior (even when these are tacit, as most of them are).

• These technologies seem to have a relationship of observation and supplementation to real cultural phenomena and practices. Online dating does not replace dating. Online discussions do not replace real conversation. And the topics found in many of these services relate to real world news as if they are commentary on it.

• These tools enable direct interaction with others but often in a kind of public context.

• The activity on these applications is captured and then used by them, making social media dynamic (updated as they’re used): in short, a production medium that records as it produces.

• Much of the social dynamic here, because it’s rooted in social action, involves attention: paying attention, sharing attention, getting attention. Attention is the scarcity of these economies, not goods and materials.

• Where user interaction with non-communicating and non-social media is discrete, social interaction is ongoing. User actions don’t end with a function or operation’s conclusion; they solicit response from others. It is other users that pick up and continue a user’s action (that action being a communicative one: blog posting, video posting, commenting, etc.)

• These media are distribution media as well as content media, and their distribution is handled in part by web protocols, in part by communication (email, sharing, etc.), making them quick to create or to lose audiences.

• Any medium of experience structures experience according to its intervention in reality. Some part of our interaction is with the medium itself. For this reason we can’t ignore such simple things as pictures, text, links, etc., anymore than architects would ignore differences between surface materials like concrete, stone, glass, and wood. (Not to mention 50’s era carpeting.)

• It’s possible that social media operate in a kind of tolerable and sustained failure mode, by which I mean that people often get engaged because they can’t tell what’s happened to their participation (dates don’t happen; jobs aren’t obtained; friends don’t communicate; blogs aren’t commented on). But the possibility of missing an opportunity, combined with the fact that there’s no way to know what’s going on online besides going online to check, creates traffic in and of itself!

I could make more distinctions here but the point should be clear now: architecture, design, and implementation of these things puts them in a category of their own, an admixture of social and technical practices best approached from a socio-technical orientation.

(via Klastrup)

This workshop advanced HCI aesthetics into a research agenda. It concluded by formulating foundations of HCI aesthetics (chiaesthetics?). These centred on developing a new vocabulary of interactive experiences that defines the material of presence grounded in research involving experiment, analysis and intervention.

John Knigth from BIAD UserLab, has put out a summary of the Nordichi 2004 workshop Finland on Aesthetic Approaches to HCI on Usability News. Yours truely is cited among a bunch of others excellent people working from a variety of fields, but none the less in the same direction of “chiaesthetics”, hmmm. John sums it up pretty good! go read it

Point well taken! Following the entry on Social Tools at the ubiquitous Anne Galloway I was directed to some interesting thoughts at the Operating Manual for Social Tools and on to the very enjoyable read on Tracing the Evolution of Social Software – Browsing is great fun, and it makes you think! Following these fine entries, I might say, that from any perspective Social factors seems to have grown equally important than factors of i.e. Usability. Take the SMS service as an ample example of this, to my opinion it basically defies any law of usability and human factors, but still it has brought a multitude of smart-mobbing endavours, that in many respects lead and creates human culture. But how can we ever plan or design for these occurrences.
Firstly demystify technology – it’s nothing without people (- formerly known as users) coming together around it, we need human actors rather than human factors“.
Secondly we need more critical and reflective approaches to technology, no aspect of technological fit to users, is more precious or justified than the accidental social contextual (mis)use of technology.
And thirdly (and perhaps importantly) we need to deeper study of the true nature of human use of technology phenomenon! Care to join!?

Having returned from the NordiChi conference in happening Tampere where the picture above is captured (+ a bit of Photoshopping) – things are slowly coming back to me. I truly enjoyed most of the sessions (all though there where also a few powernap-inducing once as well), but getting the opportunity to meet a lot of good, fun and clever people was an exciting honor.

The workshop was a success and promises a lot for the future of aesthetics in HCI approaches. We got (at least I think/hope we did) past the discussion on aesthetics as mere beauty and simplicity, a common definition in HCI that fits so nicely into the governing paradigms of traditional HCI i.e. usability. Rather the discussions circled about what kind of values, vocabulary, methods, ideals etc. are currently used about the use of information technology, and wheter this is a fruitful environment to understand, design and evaluate technology from or if new paradigms and other displines are in a better position to do this!? My own small contribution to this, the “excitability” term was well accepted, allthough I was ensured that it needs a lot of work to become a valuable contribution…!

The discussion from the workshop tied very well into the keynote speeches by professor Krisitina H��k (SICS Sweden) and especially the peptalk by Research Chair Gilbert Cockton (UK) raised the voice on a shift of paradigms in HCI. Having now read Gilberts paper in the proceeding, I think he sums it up nicely. Just to let you in, here’s the bit of the abstract:

“HCI is misdefined. We need to redefine it. HCI is misfocused. We need to refocus it. HCI has a window of opportunity to recreate itself as a design discipline. It must focus on the intention of gifted design, which is to improve the world by delivering new sources of value (…) We need to change because we must and because we can. We must change because we have exhausted all current intelletual trajectories. Our luck is running out with guidelines. Usefullness cannot be achieved solely through quality in use..”

If I’m getting the message here, I migth take the impression from Finland a little further in the polemic direction (correct me if i’m wrong). HCI is no longer JUST about ensuring that users hit buttons right on a website or find the easy way through a menubar without mental workload (refering to the current discussion on please-make-me-think). Usability is not enough to create values, in fact it may even devalue use. More over the future of HCI lies in handling the question on how i.e. a website or any system creates a value for the people (formerly known as users) who has a stake in it, and whether it creates valuable contributions to problems/opportunities that are identified – and perhaps even goes beyond and creates or “donate” (i like that word) unexpected new values to these ideals, and even invites new stakeholders to enter. This means that HCI needs to get an attitude, and not continues to beleive itself to be a indifferent, neutral, descriptive science – It is not!

Design is about creating a life-world value for the relevant people – nothing more or nothing less – it’s about making a different in the real world, by putting subjective, value-centered ideals into practice of the design. Understanding by measurment ease of use and fit to context factors will not do it, but taking the design into the messy world does – and that’s where it matters to people. HCI is still much based on the objective error-finding-correcting-validating of the measurable factores in the quality of use, this approach tends to look purely at the measurable. This is by any definition no longer a way to fully ensure peoples expectations and experiences to a design is meet. So all the usability heuristics and guidelines in the world can gather together and give me a transparent and smooth interface, but it means nothing to me if the design doesn’t add something “gifted” new and creates a value opportunity to my everyday life – many system designs does so by pure luck – but as Gilbert emphasized, luck often has the unfortunate virtue of running out!