An article companion to part of the talk I have been giving is finally up at Boxes and Arrows. The topic – 5 steps to building social experiences – covers the 5 practices section of the talk. Taken together with the article Christian wrote for ASIST, on the 5 principles and 5 anti-patterns, you have [...]

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neighborhoods and subcultures in social design

12.16.2009

In writing our book, Designing Social Interfaces, we challenged ourselves to creating a social pattern language, much like Christopher Alexander created a pattern language for building and architecture. We have followed the evolution of design patterns but looking back into A Pattern Language, there are some concepts that Alexander talks about that are directly applicable [...]

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The Questions We Ask

12.04.2009

A couple of weeks ago I gave the 5 Principles, 5 Practices, 5 Anti-Patterns talk to the IxDA Los Angeles group. It was a great group of people and they asked me some really tough questions at the end of the talk. I thought some of them were so good, I have been thinking about [...]

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Unintended Side Effects

11.21.2009

I have been presenting the material from our book over the last several months and have been asked questions about some of the anti-patterns and how we avoid or solve them. Most recently at Web 2.0, I was talking with a bunch of smart, interesting people and a few things have bubbled up that I [...]

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Web 2.0 NY – Designing Social Interfaces Workshop

11.19.2009

I attended Web 2.0 NY Expo this past week as a workshop presenter. I took the talk that Christian and I did at IDEA 09 and that I did at IxDA SF and fleshed it out into a 3 hour, hands on workshop. I believe it went well. Here are my slides:
Designing Social [...]

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Speaking about social interfaces at IxDA SF

10.30.2009

Designing Social Interfaces: 5 principles, 5 practices, 5 antipatterns
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Last night I spoke at the IxDA San Francisco October event. I did a little longer version of the talk than what Christian and I did at IDEA09 and I think it’s a better talk. The expansion riffed off what Christian did [...]

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Diagramming the Social Ecosystem

10.08.2009

One of the things we have been doing since way before we started the book, was to visualize the social ecosystem and the inter-relationships between categories, patterns and principles. Back in 2007, when I was still at Yahoo! and Bryce Glass was on my team, we developed a diagram for our general manager to talk [...]

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Unveiling Social Mania: The Game at Idea 09

09.27.2009

What a rush!
As part of our (mine and Christian Crumlish) presentation at Idea 09, we were presenting from our book: Designing Social Interfaces – 5 Steps, 5 principles and 5 anti-patterns. The talk went well but the big deal was unveiling and playing the game.
While we were writing the book, we had discussed doing a [...]

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Slides from our talk

09.20.2009

Our talk at Idea09 touched on a few key steps for building social experiences, a few of the most salient principles and a handful of the anti-patterns covered in the book. A 40 minute talk barely taps into the breadth of content from the book, but it’s a nice teaser.
Designing Social Interfaces: 5 steps, 5 [...]

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The Book is on the press

09.10.2009

Designing Social Interfaces book cover
We got the final mechanical of the book cover in color a couple of days ago and then shortly after word that the entire book was sent to press. A couple of weeks from now I should be holding it in my hand. In the meantime, here’s the front and back cover.

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Join me at IDEA2009 on Sept 15-16

08.30.2009

A couple of weeks from now I will be attending the IDEA conference, put on by the IA Institute, for the first time. Over the years I have heard about the previous versions of this conference but was never able to attend (working for the man, I was only allowed one conference a year and [...]

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New design, new patterns

08.20.2009

The Yahoo! Pattern library has launched a new design – to match the revamped design of the Yahoo! Developer Network. This was a project that originally started way before I left Yahoo! and was supposed to be part of the YDN overhaul project I led. But life and other projects often get in the way [...]

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Time to Vote for SXSW Presos

08.19.2009

It’s that time of year to slog through the long list of thousands of ideas for SXSW presentation.
Fortunately, you can cut to the chase and click this link right now to vote for my idea.
Christian and I want to bring the Social Mania – Social Patterns game to SXSW.
Relief from panels and boring talks. [...]

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Welcome Area

08.06.2009

Many of the patterns in Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language offer advice and food for thought when designing the social experience.
Pattern #149 in A Pattern Language is “Reception Welcomes You” which I find quite relevant when thinking about designing for the web. It is applicable for the social experience but is also appropriate for other [...]

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The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design

08.05.2009

My coauthor for the book, Christian Crumlish, has recently published an article in the ASIST Bulletin in which he shares some of the principles we talk about in the new book. Additionally he fleshes out the framework we cover and talks about the kinds of patterns found in each node of the architecture. It’s a [...]

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