SXSW Panel – Social Design Strategies
By jmj1. Sunday, 9. March 2008, 16:08:01
Apparently, it was a late night for everybody. The parties and time change seemed to be catching up with people as they dragged in to the "Social Design Strategies" panel at 10 a.m. on Sunday. At the beginning of the session, the room was only about 20% full, but by 10:30 it was packed, so much so that attendees were lined up along the back wall.This panel was led by Chris Messina of Citizen Agency and Joshua Porter, who founded Bokardo Design. Also on the panel were Todd Sieling, an interaction designer and web strategist for Ma.gnolia, and Daniel Burka, Creative Director at Digg and co-founder of Pownce.
The presentations were focused on the tension between creating an open, inviting social community and managing that community in such a way that users feel safe and want to contribute to it.
Porter began the session with a discussion of how designers can create social sites that encourage users to "proper" behavior; that is, behavior that helps to promote the site's core mission. However, the panel didn't really seem to come alive until Burka's presentation on privacy and community. The panelists became engaged with the question of how web services should manage complexity and preferences. Burka argued that users want fewer preferences, so adding too many new features—particularly ones that affect users' privacy—is likely to turn them off to the service, particularly if users have to continuously manage their preferences in order to keep their online activity private.
The other panel highlights were Sieling's talk on controlling spam on Ma.gnolia, which ended with a discussion of user altruism. Sieling pointed out that some of the best spam control on the site was provided by "Gardeners," users who can flag accounts as spam. Sieling initially claimed that Gardeners are motivated by altruism, but other panelists suggested that most users aren't motivated by absolute altruism. This conclusion was supported by audience member and Ma.gnolia Gardner Alex Jones who claimed that his gardening was motivated by his desire to keep the service useful.
