Social design: the new rules of engagment
Florian Geiger found a great article by Robert Fabricant on the future rules of engagment in terms of design. For years, UCD (User-centered design) has been the staple of every experience planner, information architect and interaction designer. In the light of the current crisis, Robert asks some tough questions, pushing to innovate in the experience planning and design areas and challenges the very basics of contemporary design practice.
We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences? But what if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem?
In his article, Robert discusses new dimensions of social value that currently are not considered in the design process. After web2.0 it would be easy to agree that this is more than necessary. I agree with him that the holy grail of experience design cannot just be a quotient of user tasks completed and pain points eliminated on the single user journey to a successful transaction. Moving from the individual to the collective brings with it a focus on joy points derived from social value. Hence, as Robert call out, we have to plan and design for scial systems from the get-go. But how?
But engaging with communities is fundamentally different. We are not merely substituting one center (the user) for another (the group). With communities, the means of engagement and influence exist across the participants not within a single person. Value is created and shared dynamically through cooperative activities that are not often apparent from the outside. They emerge from within.
Yes, and it isn’t new. Old-school discplines such as PR have understood that engaging communities is driven by an inside force. While a rational decision making process of an individual (or a single user) is usually based on only one’s own black or white processing of the experience, dealing with a community means being part of a phenomen where everyone has a different experience, even if they are at the same time and place. Hence local relevance and offering a communual benefit, even if is not black and white is always part of a social force. Grassroot movements are good example of this. He continues…
As much as we can look at the external symbols of communities (such as status and reputation) we cannot appreciate the nuance of social behavior without participating. Certainly not to the degree that is needed to support effective design solutions.
To learn more about his techniques on how to design from “the inside out”, check the rest of the article here.
This should be interesting not just to experience planners.
