Bibliography:

1. Aral, Sinan, Identifying Social Influence: A Comment on Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion. June 7, 2010. Marketing Science, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1621780
2. Adams, Paul. 2012. Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends are the Key to Influence on the Social Web. Berkeley: Pearson Education.
3. Burt, Ronald S. 2005. Brokerage & Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. New York: Oxford University Press.
4. Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Back Bay Books.
5. Grenfell, Michael, ED. 2008.  Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. Durham: Acumen Publishing Limited.
6. Lin, Nan. 2001.  Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
7. Schaefer, Mark W. 2012. Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
8. Small, Mario Luis. 2009. Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
9. Watts, Duncan J. 2011. Everything is Obvious* Once You Know the Answer. New York: Random House.
10. Watts, Duncan J, Peter Sheridan Dodds.”Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation.” December 2007. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/facseminars/events/marketing/documents/mktg_03_08_dodds_paper1.pdf

Cited Websites:

1. Aral, Sinan. “Influence in Social (Media) Networks”. November 29, 2011 – Miller Theatre, Columbia University, NYC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkZhPQcI1ZU
2. Chandrasekaran, Vali. Correlation or Causation? BusinessWeek. December 2011 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/correlation-or-causation-12012011-gfx.html
3. Haas, Gilda. “Social Network Analysis”. Dr. Pop. October 2011. http://vimeo.com/30926345
4. Garber, Megan. Nicholas Chistakis on the Networked Nature of Twitter. Nieman Journalism Lab. December 8 2010. http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/12/nicholas-christakis-on-the-networked-nature-of-twitter/
5. Solis, Brian. The Rise of Digital Influence. Altimeter Group. March 2012.http://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/the-rise-of-digital-influence
6. Rowan, David and Tom Cheshire. “Commerce gets social: How social networks are driving what you buy”.Wired.CO.UK. January 18 2011. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/02/features/social-networks-drive-commerce?page=all
7. Sifry, David. “State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 2: Beyond Search”. Sifry’s Alerts. February 13, 2006. http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000420.html
8. Thompson, Clive. Is the Tipping Point Toast? Fast Company. February 1, 2008. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html?page=0%2C5 

Interesting links:

• http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/04/04/klout-wrong-everybody-inluencer/
• http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/03/27/brian-solis-says-klout-does-not-measure-influence-he-is-right-and-wrong/
• http://www.networkweaver.blogspot.com/2011/09/building-business-case-for-influence.html
• http://blog.jamietie.com/you-are-not-an-influencer-oryour-klout-score-wont-get-you-into-heaven-anymore
• http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/04/25/what-your-klout-score-really-means-and-why-it-doesnt-matter/
• http://www.restlesscommunications.co.uk/when-is-a-tweeting-clock-more-influential-than-the-editor-in-chief-of-the-guardian/
• http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/30/actually-klout-is-a-great-tool-for-hiring-digital-natives/
• http://alexbraunstein.com/2011/06/01/why-your-klout-score-is-meaningless/
• http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/04/klout-is-evil-but-it-can-be-saved.html?mbid=social_retweet
• http://poptech.org/e1_duncan_watts
• http://nodexl.codeplex.com/releases/view/86222
• http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/ff_klout/all/1
• http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/what-fuels-the-most-influential-tweets/255453/http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120329/srep00335/full/srep00335.html
• http://corp.klout.com/blog/2011/10/a-more-accurate-transparent-klout-score/
•  http://emergentbydesign.com/2010/03/06/social-capital-is-not-the-same-as-whuffie/
• http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/klout-influence/
• http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/influencer-marketing-influencers/233125/
• http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/influence-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-does/255453/
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Capital-in-Online-Social-Networks&id=738864
• http://dashes.com/anil/2010/01/nobody-has-a-million-twitter-followers.html

Though I’ve been able to do my share of juggling, it’s finally time to bring on someone to help me out.

We’re looking for someone who has enough skills and experience to understand how static web sites work, with an emphasis on how screens appear in the browser and other devices, not necessarily how data or other content appears on the screen itself.

In other words, NASDAQ needs a contractor who can design and code static sites.

While a portfolio of some work is required, 3-5 years of formal experience is certainly not mandatory.

The position is ideally suited for someone interested in working in a mentoring relationship with me–I’ll do my best to include the candidate in UX activities, including research interviews, usability tests, and understanding the nuances of content’s relationship with design.

We’re also not looking for a polished Photoshop artist when we say we need visual design skills, but we hope someone can take existing PSDs and create new mockups based on prior work if necessary.

I don’t think I’m going unicorn hunting here–I think we have an opportunity for a person who is looking to get a good foothold on the inner workings of a corporate product team who can, with any luck, either be hired full time in a few months or move onto a mid-level UXer, designer, or general maker of digital things when the time is right.

The position is located onsite in downtown Manhattan and telecommuting isn’t an option (for now). I’m also working on the dress code for the candidate.

Qualifications:

If you’re interested or know someone who might be, email me a link to your portfolio or web site to christopher.avore@nasdaqomx.com.

If this isn’t clear or you have any questions, I’m happy to answer as best I can.

Overall the conference did a lot of things right, foremost of all in assembling a diverse program of speakers and topics, and perhaps as a result the agenda attracted what appeared to be an audience comprised of many different skills, employers, and skill levels.

The program allowed local attendees who may not have the opportunity to travel the country–or in some cases the world–to see a few regulars on the major conference circuit deliver their polished message alongside peers who are eager to share their own ideas.

The host restaurant’s seating arrangements encouraged everyone feel to comfortable  and as if we were among friends sharing a common goal to simply learn stuff–as far a cry from stuffy convention hotel lecterns and podiums with paisley drapes and worse coffee as Asbury Park can feel to the scenes of MTV’s Jersey Shore.

While it was great to see Whitney Quesenberry discuss storytelling in user research, it was a bit unsettling that it was really the only mention of extensive research the entire day. If you missed Whitney’s presentation and were grabbing coffee when my pal Jeff Gothelf was discussing serial usability testing during his seminal Lean UX talk, you could have easily attended Asbury Agile and never heard a syllable of how to gain empathetic understanding of your users’ behaviors, goals, and motivations beyond wondering how your mother would use what you’re building (a pretty terrible barometer for usability if you’re creating anything for a specialized domain or market).

There was also a strong vibe of “because this works for me, it will work for you” that I find disconcerting in conference programs, blog posts and Twitter conversations. While I understand this is derived from speaking what you know well, there are too many variables, factors, constraints and opportunities to recklessly toss advice in bite-size nuggets to some members of an audience who may take such a message to heart.

In one instance, it was ‘quit your stuffy corporate job and do cool shit at a startup, or start your own’, another instance was the aforementioned ‘just imagine your Mom and if she can use what you design’, and another classic case involved designing an interface directly in the browser.

Now in my own personal experience, I’ve worked at multiple startups, have relied on zippy research, and have basically designed in the browser since that’s pretty much all you could do 12 years ago, so I completely understand why they think that message can resonate with a crowd of designers and developers. But such a message may prove harmful, either to the individual, team or product if put to use where it may not be the appropriate fit.

These local community conferences should be the test-bed to identify what speakers have a story to tell and can communicate that message, and for attendees to provide the feedback and critique to those speakers. I hope to see many of those speakers at future events–some next year, perhaps others a few years from now, but I unequivocally hope to see Asbury Agile on the schedule next fall.

The discussion, Social Media: Social Uprising, was moderated by Helga Tawii-Souri, an assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at NYU, and the panelists consisted of author Clay Shirky, Arab and Muslim issues expert Mona Eltahawy, and WNYC/NPR’s “On the Media” producer Sarah Abdurrahman.

At the onset of the event, Mr. Shirky was quick to establish he was tired of hearing the mainstream media label the uprisings the Facebook Revolution or the Social Media Revolution, noting these channels are simply tools and countries like Syria are still engaged in unrest without these social tools.

But diving into the unique characteristics of these revolutions without acknowledging the role of social communication channels is also folly; after all, these social tools are disrupting fundamental aspects of political power and control: knowledge, access, influence, and proximity.

Shirky rhetorically asked the panel what are the characteristics of the insurgents’ social tools? (sidebar: Shirky was using the term ‘insurgent’ to simply represent a person rebelling against the current government and did not imply the heavily negative connotation of the word when used to refer to violent anti-American terrorists).

Shirky answered his own question by claiming the most significant characteristics or these social tools were the ability to:

• Synchronize publicly around shared goals (noting that every autocrat works to desynchronize communication)
• Coordination of action
• Documentation of results (most autocrats still don’t want to kill people on camera)

The panel noted that much of the above characteristics were initially experienced in blogs beginning around 2004 and reaching significant adoption around 2006 by challenging state-run media that only covered stories that stayed on message or theme.

Whereas blogs disrupted how news was broadcast to groups as reported by an individual, the social tools of today can effectively break down even that bottleneck of information by giving everyone a voice. However, reach and audience is no less important: such voices have to be heard by others outside their immediate network, as the panel noted “if everyone [at Tiananmen Square] is tweeting to everyone else at Tiananmen Square, it just doesn’t work”.

The panel also examined how social tools are also similar to “an arms race” between the establishment and the insurgents, citing how some governments have created Facebook groups and organized events claiming to be part of the opposition, only to round up all the attendees and place them under arrest.

The resulting paranoia and distrust could have been a fascinating discussion into the networks of both the deceptive establishment and the revolutionaries.

Specifically, could network analysis identify who was a mole versus who was authentic? Could an government spy’s behavior and social interaction within rebel social structures tip his hand to his motive?  Was the spy emphasizing connecting to bridges in rebel networks? Or people more at the hub of the rebel organization?

I would also have been interested to see how other social interactions were influenced by perceived trust such as what information was told to whom, and of course how. Was Twitter, a public channel, used for requesting supplies to a camp, but Facebook or other channel used more for critical private exchanges of information?

In addition, often in product strategy, one of the more difficult but significant tasks is to imagine and build for how your product or service may be used for alternative purposes other than your primary business goal, audience, or feature-set.  Certainly the leadership teams at Twitter, Facebook, or other toolmakers weren’t taking into account every possible use of their respective terms of service agreements.

It’s good policy to require groups have points of contact with real names, especially to dissuade nefarious hate groups (or worse) from organizing via their platforms. But such details can also mean life and death consequences for rebels organizing against totalitarian regimes. How can corporate policy enable some and not others? When is an activist organization blessed as official, and how is it managed?

The panel discussion was a worthwhile overview into understanding the role social tools can play in social uprising as communication channels. Though I would have enjoyed deeper discussion into the social structures of the people using the tools instead of just how the tools are being used, it was an enlightening experience to be exposed to discussions of social tools that weren’t exclusively tied to my day to day work.

Whereas last month I ventured uptown to attend a lecture on Erving Goffman and technologically mediated social identities, this time I headed a few miles south to the Rutgers School of Communication and Information to attend another discussion tangentially relevant to my daily work responsibilities as a social interaction design strategist.

The School hosted Dr. Gustavo Mesch, a senior lecturer and former chair of the departments of sociology and anthropology at the University of Haifa in Israel, where he presented “Media Use and Social Capital: Results from a Longitudinal Study in Israel”.

As his research is still underway, Dr. Mesch discussed the patterns he is already witnessing throughout the initial months of his investigation.

The discussion focused on the results of a survey Dr. Mesch has been collecting that asks students to self-identify their use and engagement with social tools and the benefits derived from participating in these social interactions and social relationships—to some people those benefits are defined as social capital (others agree it’s the availability of otherwise inaccessible information or opportunity based on your social structures and your standing in those structures and not necessarily the fruit of those connections).

The study is comprised of survey questions asking the participants to rate their relationships with the people whom they send emails, exchange instant messages and for whom they leave comments on Facebook posts and blog articles. The survey asked questions about how the participants trusted the people they were involving themselves with, including prior to the computer-mediated exchanges if relevant.

Dr. Mesch’s concluded that the people using email and IM with people they identified as friends people they know well reported greater bonding. But on Facebook, various blogs, and also email, they reported greater bridging of weaker connections.  Greater study over time, however, was necessary to validate his findings.

As a dilettante hack who hasn’t attended a formal sociology class since the 1990s, I feel a bit insecure voicing questions about the material, the findings, and the decision-making involved in arriving at the presented conclusions, but nonetheless I have a few concerns regarding the study and what else could have been (or should be) investigated further. I should also note my reactions are based only on what was presented in the lecture.  I haven’t read nor am I aware of any published analysis of the research since much of it is still underway.

Questioning Facebook and Instant Messenger

For instance, there doesn’t seem to be much depth in claiming IM strengthens connections you already have and a social platform like Facebook bridges new connections between friends of friends. After all, most instant messaging tools require you know you you’re going to communicate with in one-to-one dialogue, or among groups of people with whom you likely are already connected. Rather than using closed-network tools such as IM, I would have liked to see how public networks influence participants’ perception of social capital and what they disclose to strong and weak ties.  From a personal standpoint, I would be quite interested in reading a similar study as Dr. Mensch’s analysis but investigating a system similar to Yammer, where there is already closure amongst networks but holes to be crossed via social tools).

Facebook also has problems as a tool to identify weak ties and their influence on a person’s social capital within his or her network. Facebook networks are by nature homophilous, particularly, I would venture, among teens who have yet to move from one region to another or who have changed multiple jobs over time. The study’s subject and the weak tie may not know each other, but it’s challenging to argue Facebook is bridging network holes—it’s simply introducing people within an existing social structure.

The trouble with Facebook continues because the study doesn’t identify how participants established their privacy settings and their motivations for applying those settings. As a result, we miss key understanding into how they perceive people they don’t know who know their friends.

I’m also having trouble understanding why Dr. Mesch elected to use blogs to mediate connections between people instead of other technical systems or platforms. But even if the study had its reasons for not using Twitter, Instagram, or even MySpace, the presentation doesn’t address other questions that could directly influence the conclusions. What are the topics discussed on the blog? How is traffic driven to these blogs? Are there already existing weak connections between the authors and the audience?

Questions of Trust

I also have my reservations with a few of the survey questions. Specifically, there were multiple questions that seemed to ask how participants expected to “trust” the people with whom they communicated via these tools.

My friend Thomas Vander Wal’s concerns with trust stem from using the word as a catch-all for other terms that more accurately portray how a person really feels about the pending interaction. When combining ‘trust’ as a catch-all term and understanding how it relates to social capital, we venture into murky waters where we may be find conclusions drawn on obfuscated testimony.

By retreating to ‘trust’ we strip out nuance and detail into the relationship between the study’s subject and the person with whom he or she communicates.  Is this ‘trusted’ person one of authority or influence? How does trust reflect the ability for the subject to access resources otherwise unavailable for someone else?

Often I refer to Nan Lin’s definition of trust when applied to social capital as:

Defined as confidence or expectation that an alter will take ego’s interests into account in exchanges. It represents faith that an event or action will or will not occur, and such faith is expected to be mutual in repeated exchanges (Lin 147)

But again we are left to fill in the blanks since the study doesn’t describe any analysis into what future interactions may have been reasonably predicted or what interests are mutual. Even simpler, the study doesn’t establish an agreed upon definition of trust across participants.

Questions of Motivation and Benefit

If the premise of social capital is an investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (Lin 19), I would have expected the study to probe deeper into why the teenage participants were motivated to communicate via Facebook, IM, email, and blogs beyond conversation or collaborative co-working.

With a clearer understanding of why the teens were posting, we could then understand more articulate insight into the benefits as a result of communicating via social tools.

Javier Velasco’s presentation Posting Our Hearts Out: Understanding Online Self-Disclosure for Better Designs at the 2011 IA Summit explored the personal motivations of why people (Velasco’s research focused on experienced adults who publish intimate information in public spaces—a potentially significant difference than those participants in Dr. Mensch’s study) use social tools to communicate, including such benefits as reciprocity, impression formation, relationship maintenance & formation, and social influence. Those benefits, of course, all can shape social capital, but go unmentioned in the Mensch analysis (and likewise, are not referred to as influencing social capital in Velasco’s presentation either).

Similar to my trip to Columbia for the Goffman discussion, I left with more questions than when I arrived on campus, which, ultimately, is worth the price of admission.  Reacting to what I perceive are gaps in the analysis, or looking for where the study could be more clear or more direct, helps me attempt to articulate and clarify the ideas that previously have been locked in my head. Though I hope I’m not completely off base, sharing the ideas in this venue is a reflective practice, if not necessarily an accurate account of an academic experience (so please take a second if you find my arguments thin, uninformed, or unclear).

The next field trip is April 18, when I’ll visit the Princeton sociology department to attend Princeton Dialogues: The Entrepreneurial Group: Social Identities, Relations, and Collective Action by Martin Ruef.

Much of the programming followed themes of measuring value, understanding and interpreting analytics, and the career path of the practicing user experience designer or information architect (which presumably, if the sessions are any indication, will require far greater analysis of quantitative and qualitative data to maintain practicing status). Friday’s session alone opened with Nate Silver exploring how data should and shouldn’t be used, and Jared Spool closing the day questioning how user experience designers can be valued, and what is truly valuable.

But in addition to those themes, I also enjoyed sessions that strayed slightly from the data path, such as More than a Metaphor: Making Places with Information, which explored themes of place, space, and architecture in information architecture and design. Discussing theoretical concepts such as how information is understood over time and place, and the influence of context and environment is often heady stuff, and I thought that challenge was evident in the first two parts of the presentation, but Andrew Hinton succinctly connected themes of physical architectural design to the environments we as digital designers design every day, including the goals and challenges we often face on many projects.

I begrudgingly missed Dana Chisnell’s Rethinking User Research for the Social Web, as the topic resonates with much of my work today designing social interfaces. Fortunately, we already had dinner scheduled with a number of other conference attendees that evening, and with a mile walk back to the hotel I listened to Dana discuss her work and her approaches.

I also found much of Javier Velasco-Martin’s presentation Posting our Hearts Out: Understanding Online Self-Disclosure for Better Designs to be an intriguing analysis of his work into how people share personal, intimate messages using established mainstream social tools. Even his presentation was on theme as he shared much of his primary research findings mined while completing his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina.

My UX Show and Tell workshop was the following day and reaffirmed the event has a place at a global conference. This IA Summit workshop was a different experience than the three other conferences we have been fortunate enough to have been invited to (Interaction10, Interaction11, UX Russia), as it was actually conducted just like the usual workshops that occur monthly throughout the world. Four people showed their work ranging from an existing web site to a early-release Drupal service to high fidelity comps. A few people approached me after the workshop to let me know they enjoyed the laid back feel of the event when they were ready for a break from some of the sessions, but I’m debating whether the workshop should be run concurrently or distinct from the rest of the conference presentations.

Even though I had to leave the conference early, I still enjoyed the opportunity to meet colleagues I’ve only traded tweets with or read a blog post or two. And it’s safe to say there’s nothing like leaving the conference lunch to walk elsewhere with friends and just grab a drink in the sun (though when Aaron Irizarry’s daughters made an appearance it only made me miss my two girls even more).

Next year’s IA Summit will move to New Orleans, hands down one of my favorite towns and a place I’m confident will inspire designers to challenge and understand our surroundings, whether those surroundings be the data with which we work, how we engage with place and architecture, or our own community of practice.

Laisser les bons temps rouler!

I’ve found much of his perspective aligns in step with the long term paths of veteran user experience designers who step further away from artifact delivery and closer to recommending strategic design decisions based on UX methods and practices.

Perhaps more importantly is that in most instances, Martin, currently the dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, isn’t selling books or speaking time to UX practitioners or conferences, but to the people who will ultimately be depending on–and hiring–these problem solvers.

His March 2011 column, “Don’t Get Blinded By the Numbers” examines the critical interpretation of data and not just the analysis of such data. He recalls an example citing survey data that inferred detergent consumers weren’t sold on a product change that would yield significant production efficiencies and cost savings, yet comments suggested most consumers were simply indifferent and not against such a change to the product. He advocates for primary research into where the data comes from, citing ethnomethodological practices that are familiar to many user experience professionals (or at least on their radar if not yet in practice). By no means is he advocating making up research to meet an expected or desired outcome, but he warns strategic business decisions shouldn’t be founded on data that may not tell the whole story.

Martin nails it when he asserts:

This kind of approach requires completely new capabilities. The successful strategists of the future will have a holistic, empathetic understanding of customers and be able to convert somewhat murky insights into a creative business model that they can prototype and revise in real time. To do all that, they’ll have to be good communicators, comfortable with ambiguity and ready to abandon the quest for certain, single-point answers.

Though Martin never uses the words design (or as he’s frequently linked, ‘design thinking’), or user experience design, it’s clear such a summary refers to many of the skills, processes, and actions we as both strategists and practitioners continue to hone today. So while Martin advises us not to get blinded by the numbers, let’s also open our eyes by evaluating, questioning, whatever–the features, functionality and scope of the products we build, ideally before we build them. Those murky insights are the raw material we need to craft the experiences we’ll be expected to provide for years to come.

Such an exploration was a welcome extraction from a comfort zone of reading about cool tricks to try with new software or novel tactical approaches to designing whatever it was I happened to be paid to design.

But aside from a few 140-character conversations on Twitter or over drinks at conferences, it can be difficult to hear other interpretations of what can be complex material.

Likewise, I also realized I was really only having these conversations in my own close circle of colleagues and friends. I needed to branch out.

Branching out, in this instance, meant attending a New Pathways for the Social Sciences event hosted by the Institute for Social Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.

Cornell University’s Trevor Pinch led a discussion titled “Goffman and Technology: Online Interaction and Material Peformativity” where he explored themes he recently published in his article “The Invisible Technologies of Goffman’s Sociology”, published in 2010 by Technology and Culture, and his research informing an upcoming book.

The event attracted about 30 students and faculty, and was open to the public as evidenced by letting me play Ivy Leaguer for a day, and consisted of about 50 minutes of lecture and another 20 minutes of question and answer.

I’ve read my share of Goffman and a few scholarly articles about his work so I had a good fundamental understanding of where he stood, and I also absorbed the Invisible Technologies article prior to the lecture, which allowed me to focus on the implications of the material and not just the material itself.

I didn’t have to travel uptown to make the leap applying many of Goffman’s observations to digital social interaction.  His famous observations and conclusions from the United Kingdom’s Shetland Islands hotel regarding the front of house/back of house staff at first glance seem to easily translate to our online and offline identities.

But the lecture examined concepts such as materiality and role distance in Goffman’s work that came to life in the discussion. Pinch referenced the swinging kitchen kickdoor as a technological solution to a situated material problem: that  “the two spaces [the kitchen and the dining room] must be bounded enough to permit participants to change their behavior accordingly as they enter or leave”. He then referenced modern restaurants where the kitchen is now exposed to the guests. I thought, mistakenly, that the discussion was going to continue down a path with the exposed kitchen as a metaphor for the blurring of offline and online identities and mental models of privacy, but the discussion led to the referencing Latour’s sociology of doors instead. Interesting, yes, but with my interests it was ultimately a lost opportunity.

There were similar instances where I was teased with where I thought discussions could lead but was taken down a different path. For example, Pinch also discussed his research investigating social behavior in the AcidPlanet.com web community, touching on themes of copresence and mediated asynchronous interaction (based primarily on reciprocation, peer norms and obligations).

As someone knee deep, hell, shoulders deep in developing social tools for communities of practice, I was genuinely excited when he discussed “scopic foccussing”—staging parts of content such as ranking and voting systems which he referred to as “doubly social” since these devices enroll users to participate, and the users ultimately determine the outcome.  But I was again left wanting more depth into the sociological underpinnings of the ranking, voting, & reputation systems Pinch mentioned.

Specifically, these tools seemed either rudimentary or susceptible to simply gaming the system to achieve an outcome, as many tools in the marketplace are today. When Pinch mentioned the R=R for voting reciprocation, I anticipated some criticism of such a model since it may lead to inauthentic conclusions. But instead the discussion shifted to how the system awards prizes to music tracks with the highest number of votes and most played.

The professor also touched on how AcidPlanet.com community members can create multiple profiles to suit different genres of music they uploaded, but did not discuss the ramifications of a social system enabling multiple profiles without verified user names or identies, though there were mentions of numerous trolls in the community. Could there be a relationship?

I realize looking back that it sounds as though I was disappointed in the event or that I was expecting it to be a more academic flavor of the tactical books I had been digesting a few years ago, but that’s not entirely the case. It’s also not any indictment to claim my interest in reputation and social behavior in communities is different than that of the professor’s work. I knew I was out of my element participating in such an event, and my expectations weren’t bound to the agenda at all (so by no means did I think this was a bait-and-switch).

But it was energizing, if not initially uncomfortable, to find myself challenged to think about these ideas without direct correlation to my work. This lecture won’t be the last time I take a few hours to leave what I know well to dig deeper into the harder questions.

As a user experience designer wrangling how activity streams, status updates, conversations, and other activity are displayed to the enterprise workforce, I can attest that what Mr. Roth calls attentional experience will ultimately be a critical product differentiator as we see more dashboards, content aggregators, activity streams and other collaboration platforms deployed.

I’m not sure it needs its own name though, particularly when he writes that a “business… [is] disadvantaged even if the individual user’s experience is fantastic.”  I think such a statement inadvertently reduces design (and UX) to merely decoration to provide a less-prioritized “sense of happiness”.

I’m sure we agree effective enterprise system design solves business needs and provides the information worker efficient, predictable steps to accomplish business tasks.  If a person interacting with the system loves the icons, color scheme, and transition fades but isn’t seeing business critical information, the design is a failure, pure and simple.

I’m also concerned that using yet another name in stakeholder meetings or even amongst the product teams can splinter alignment and lead us into more “define the damn thing” conversations that distract us from designing quality work. There are enough misconceptions over what the creative department delivers versus the user experience team and who owns what without further obfuscating expected roles and responsibilities.

But again I’m relieved to see Mr. Roth call attention to what so many software vendors have failed to do in their design process: prioritize what functionality is at the ready to solve business problems, instead of simply providing a laundry list of tools with no implied or suggested importance of one feature over another and no consideration for which task may be at hand.

As we  see more demand for social curation of content, updates by hundreds of connections, and multiple activities in a single action, understanding how to prioritize information can quickly distinguish companies from others more than just a checklist of features alone.

Note: this post was originally a comment on the Gartner blog post itself, but never appeared on the site.

I faced a number of challenges when writing the presentation. With only 40 minutes (including questions and answer time) I struggled with balancing how much to address business strategy, defining design strategy, and how to make the presentation practical and applicable to the audience.

Choosing to keep the presentation about how practitioners could begin creating design strategy using skills and methods already in their UX toolkit, I didn’t include many examples of how I’ve successfully used design strategy to understand and articulate what will be built before addressing how it should be built.

After hearing a few of the questions asked by the audience, I’d probably reconsider a similar approach if and when I present the topic to a different audience. It seems some of the audience thought it was challenging to connect the ideas to real business situations without a case study, which, in hindsight, is understandable.

It’s also clear that though I’ve facilitated more than a dozen UX Show and Tell workshops and have spoken to audiences of up to 50 people, I still need to continue practicing my delivery and stage presence.

Based on conversations before and after the event, over lunch at the Information Architecture Institute’s IDEA conference a few weeks earlier, and elsewhere, design strategy and its influence on business strategy is an important topic the UX community must continue exploring.

If I can ask or answer some of those questions during that exploration and share the results, be them positive or negative, I’m happy to help.

Big thanks to the programming committee and everyone involved who made the UserFocus conference such a success. It was great to see friends Dan Willis, Kim Bieler, Michelle Marut, Jimmy Chandler, Rob Fay and Ellie O’Connor in the crowd–thanks for your support, gang. Special thanks to Lynne Polischuik and Chris Palle for offering to help, and to Lis Hubert and David Panarelli for reviewing my presentation and offering fantastic feedback.