UIE Virtual Seminar Presentation
Social Design: Designing for the Social Lives of Users
Joshua Porter, User Interface Engineering
Length: 90 Minutes
Price: $129.00 (includes handout)
Would you like to have lifetime access to the most groundbreaking thinking in the world of Experience Design? Instead of traveling to a training course, you and your colleagues can hear the latest insights on the most important design topics right from your office.
Watching a UIE Virtual Seminar couldn't be simpler. You'll view the presentation in your web browser and listen to it with your computer speakers. (We've tested the seminar using Firefox and Internet Explorer on both Macs and PCs with great success.) All you'll need is a web browser equipped with the Macromedia Flash Player (version 6 or newer) and a connection to the Internet.
Seminar Description
Web sites and apps focusing on social interactions are growing like wildfire. MySpace, Facebook, and Craigslist all sit in the top twenty most used web sites in the world. What is the secret to their success? What can we learn from them to apply to our own designs?
To tackle these questions, Joshua Porter, UIE’s Director of Web Development, has put together an information-packed presentation that delves into the common traits of these successful web sites: they all focus on Social Design, or design that focuses on the social lives of users.
Social Design deals with the activities, behaviors, and motivations of people who work and play together through software interfaces. In recent years, we've seen more and more designs that allow users to collaborate and share what they're doing with others. But only recently have design teams started to understand the complexities of dealing with thousands (and sometimes millions) of users who want to connect with their peers and coworkers in new and exciting ways. Several prominent incidents, such as the Facebook newsfeed blowup, have shown just how complex the social issues are.
In this Virtual Seminar, Josh will discuss:
- Why creating powerful social software is not as simple as adding features like a "friends list" or a "product review".
- How sites such as Flickr, Craigslist, and MySpace take advantage of social design principles, including the notion of designing for constant change.
- How knowing a little about social psychology can go a long way toward providing valuable social environments.
- How the most successful sites and applications balance personal value for users with the opportunity to provide social value for others.
Instructor Biography
Joshua Porter is a leading member of UIE's research team and writes extensively on topics such as Social Web Design, Web 2.0, Ajax, and web standards. He shares many of his design thoughts and commentaries on his personal blog, Bokardo.
Josh is responsible for overseeing the development of the User Interface Engineering's web sites, and managing UIE's top-notch team of web developers.
Josh received his Master’s degree in Information Technology and his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He brings with him extensive experience and knowledge in the areas of human factors, usability testing, and web site design and development.
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