Quic k Ti me™ and a
T IFF (Unc om pres s ed) dec om pres s or
are needed to s ee t his pic t ure.
What is social interaction design?
Can we even speak of designing interaction, when the interaction is social? When
Time magazine stamped “You” on its “Person of the Year” issue at the end of
last year, it was, as the mass media tends to be in these matters, already late.
We in the web and interactive design community have been thinking about
“you,” modeling and wire-framing “you,” and designing for “you” for several
years now. In fact we’ve moved on to “us” — but whether that warrants a cover
issue is for Time to decide.
In this paper designer Mike Tam and I will present a design framework for social
interaction design (SxD). The paper and presentation will compare a number of
social media sites and services to cover variations across sites by:
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Theme and thematic organization (jobs, dating, social, reviews, etc)
Social interaction codes and rules
Temporal organization
User contribution types and modes (podcasting, blogging, IM/chat,
discussion)
Culture and transactional economies
Communication regimes
The social interaction design approach suggests taking social media as talk
systems with a difference. Sociological, psychological, linguistic and performative
dimensions of self-presentation, presencing, statement-response structuring,
gestural communication, turn-taking, and other aspects of facework and social
interaction can then set a framework of human interaction offering rich insights
to social media designers. While we embed technical mediation within this largely
sociological framework, we refuse to give it any deterministic leverage over
interaction. Rather, we suggest that social media involve emerging sets of social
practices and a developing socio-technical competence on the part of users that
work around the failures and extend the successes of these technologies.
Gravity7 & Mike Tam
Supple Interface Paper Submission
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We will suggest that many social media sites today may resemble communication
and social interaction in failure mode, spawning an excess of communicative
attempts and attention-getting gestures, comments, and posts precisely because
these sites create opportunities for interaction, but facilitate them only poorly.
Our focus however, will be to look at services in which the archiving of
communication as searchable discussion and talk allows users to homestead
online, thus maintaining a substitute or extended identity and sense of self. We
will suggest that social media fit within a set of self-reflexive and self-monitoring
behaviors that increase the probability that certain biographical milestones can
be addressed if not solved by increased exposure to the marketplace (online
jobs, online dating, online friends).
After positioning social media within social and cultural practices, we will attempt
to articulate a design framework through which designers might approach
traditional design issues with greater insight and preparedness for the second
order effects that emerge from any, even marginally-populated, social software
site. The framework addresses:
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User needs, goals, expectations
Actions as interactions
Contributions as communication
Temporality as forms of talk and rules of play
Visibility as attention
Participation as mediated facework
Embedding of systems within cultural narratives and social practices
Competing claims of normativity and differentiation
The screening and bracketing of meta-linguistic cues and communication
Finally, we will solicit feedback and discussion around the portability of soclal
theoretical persectives to social media and communication technology. We will
ask for reactions the framework’s core insights and claims, as well as its
organization and utility as a set of design guidelines.
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Bio: Adrian Chan, www.gravity7.com
Adrian Chan is an award-winning web developer and former multimedia content
designer. White papers and reading notes on social interaction design (his
coinage) are available at www.gravity7.com. He maintains a social software blog
at www.gravity7.com/blog/media/. He was a panelist at the Milken Institute’s
Global Conference in 2006.
Adrian graduated with Honors a BA in International Relations from Stanford
University in 1988. He is a member of the Philosophical Reading Group there,
and sustains ongoing and active interests in contemporary philosophy,
comparative literature, sociology, communication theory, film theory, and media
theory, which he applies to social interaction design with unmethodological
enthusiasm and occasional perceptiveness.
Social interaction design clients include:
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Goingon.com (UI and partner customization efforts)
Click.tv (SxD consulting)
France Telecom-Orange RD Labs (SxD consulting, with Mike Tam)
Greatnonprofits.org (UI design, with Mike Tam)
Brickriver (social networking site for the United Methodist Church)
Jacknyfe (product visionary, with Mike Tam)
Thompson Learning (online learning application)
SxD on Gravity7
 White Papers
 Reading Notes
 Testimonials
 LinkedIn Profile
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Bio: Mike Tam, www.Miketam.com
Mike Tam is a design consultant who works with organizations to develop
brands, visual communications and user interfaces. Along with his understanding
of traditional design principles and his extensive experience in a broad range of
interactive technologies that range from content rich websites to consumer
mobile devices, he focuses on creating meaningful experiences for users and to
help them understand complex systems and information.
SInce 1996 he has designed many successful projects for some of the world's
leading companies and cultural institutions that include AOL, Design
Management Institute, HP, IBM, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Plantronics, Sony,
Symantec and Yahoo. The results of these projects have added great value to
the organizations and their ability to deliver a better expereince for the people
who use their products.
Prior to becoming a consultant, Mike was a User Interface Designer at IBMRational, and a Senior Visual Interface designer at AlbenFaris, one of the
pioneering design firms in User Experience Design.
He holds a BS in graphic design with honors from San Jose State University, and
has taught a BFA graphic design course in user experience design at SJSU.
Awards, Publications, and Presentations
My work has been written about, talked about or appeared
in the following:
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Design Management Journal
DIS2000
Dreamweaver 3 for Dummies
How Design Magazine
I.D. Magazine
Interactions
Loop (AIGA)
Make IT Easy 2003
Monthly Design (Korea)
San Jose State University, 2004
VanUE (Vancouver, BC.) 2006
Wall Street Journal
Webby Award, 2000 (Monterey Bay Aquarium)
webtechniques
XHTML by Example
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