“If you really don’t want to share….DONT PUT IT ON THE NET!”

I am not a technological determinist, but we are crazy if we don’t realize that there is a lot of pressure to put things on the Internet. And we can’t just blame people for being uninformed. People do it because they don’t feel like they have much of a choice due to the impending social pressures of being “on Facebook.” Of course they do have a choice, just like how we have a choice not to fill out every single field when we create one of our hundreds of profiles in the digital sphere. But there are a lot of people who happily fill out every single field, unknowingly giving away lots of information that they don’t have to, because that is what the interface is telling them that it wants. Of course we should try to inform ourselves about these things, but we can’t really expect every person to become “Facebook literate.”

Think back to filling out doctor’s forms when they used to be on paper. Their officialness and connection to our personal health told us that we should fill out every box and not skip anything. In remediating the fill-in-the-blank form onto the computer screen, many people still feel the same way when they are presented with things to fill out on profiles. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen fill out every field when they created a profile for Skype, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Sometimes they go back and eliminate things from the profile, paring it down because they wished they hadn’t included some of that information, but not everyone does this and sometimes it is too late anyway.

We should stop blaming people for being “stupid enough to put things on the Internet that they don’t want known” and acknowledge the role that the design of the interaction itself plays in this. We have finally gotten away from interactions that force people to provide information by at least allowing people to opt out (even if this is still poorly done with an asterisk or a buried drop-down menu somewhere). However, interactions as simple as filling out fields in profiles or engaging with a variety of interactions on Facebook are still telling people that they should provide the information. As designers it is our responsibility to critique and question this status quo – and stop assuming that filling that database with as much discreet information as possible is in some way adding value to how people experience technology.

Ultimately, the profile fill-in-the-blanks is just one example out of many where we blame users for making bad decisions, when the design itself was telling them that it was ok to do so. It is like putting an “OPEN” sign on a locked door, and then blaming the person after they bumped into it when it didn’t open.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not angry because I am naive about virtual worlds and their economies. As matter of fact I am fascinated by real money trade in virtual worlds, and I understand economics well enough to see that real money trade is not only an inevitable facet of virtual worlds, but is in some ways a beneficial one. Having attended Indiana University, I have even had the pleasure of sitting down with Edward Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, and who was mentioned several times in Dibbell’s book. And I agree with both of those guys that the production and trade of virtual goods should be viewed more seriously as a legitimate economy. However, because of this I also think that people who hack and exploit code in order to make money should face harsher consequences that just having an account banned.

But when it comes to this book I am disappointed in Julian Dibbell. Sure, he spent a lot of time learning a lot of very interesting things about virtual economies and working to shine a light on the whole phenomenon. Now I am not trying to crucify Dibbell here, and if he ever reads this I don’t mean for this to sound offensive towards him. But during his self-experiment with learning to make money in Ultima Online, he made partnerships and deals with dishonest people, and engaged in activities that negatively affected a lot of people – glorifying them for reasons I can’t understand. The fact is, for all the heralding of this grand new virtual space where currencies and economies are more democratic and we inch closer to bridging the digital divide – the people who end up at the top of the food chain do so by breaking the rules and negatively affecting other people’s experience. When I say rules, I am not talking about “user agreements” – we all know that the logic and fairness of these are shaky at best. I am talking about real money traders who hack the code, exploit unintended game mechanics, and run bots to create their product.

Dibbell even mentions that virtual world economies don’t work on the same rules of supply and demand that “real world” economies do. However, the main reason for this isn’t because of some new branch of economics that the world has been blessed with now that technology has given us virtual worlds – it is because of people who break the integrity of the game world for their own monetary gain. What would we do in the “real world” if someone actually figured out a way to turn lead into gold? I bet we wouldn’t let them set up a website and hire young people in China to dig up lead for them.

And this is the main reason why I will never play MMORPGs again: Currently, real money trading ruins the integrity of the game space. I remember back when I played Final Fantasy XI, and my friend and I loved going around and farming for resources to sell on the in-game auction house. However, because the real money traders in the game had so successfully figured out how to generate income they inflated the economy to a point where it took us months to farm enough money to buy the items we needed to proceed. We couldn’t hunt a monster or farm for resources without running into gold-farming bots. I don’t mind if someone is making money off of the game, but when gold farming bots are preventing players from making any money in the game, that is wrong. When a gold-selling company holds 90% of a virtual economy’s currency, that is wrong. When players must compete with trained employees of gold-farming companies who don’t care about interfering with the game experience, that is wrong.

I know the gaming industry is concerned about this stuff, but I don’t think they are nearly concerned enough. The websites that sell gold, items, and accounts only make money by exploiting things in the game to the detriment of the game economy and the experience of people who actually want to play the game and interact with other players. The mafia-style business antics detailed in Dibbell’s book loom on the horizon, providing a very disenchanting vision of the future of our digital lives. It will be interesting to see if eventually the IRS, law enforcement agencies, and the game companies that provide these games will start treating the trade of virtual goods seriously – and criminalize resource production methods that disrupt the integrity of the game space.

It has taken me a long time to figure out what I think about Facebook, and I have read enough articles to make me yearn for a nice 20-page End User License Agreement. In this post I will respond to the Schrage article from my perspective as a human-centered designer, in the hopes of shining a light on why Facebook never seems to get it right.

For many people, Facebook represents the way they define their lives, and I mean that to be as profound as it sounds. Because of this, Facebook should seek to cultivate a better understanding of society and culture – Facebook as a social space in 2010 is a far cry from its origins in 2003′s Facemash. I may be wrong, but it seems that Facebook understands people and culture with all the nuance of a 19 year-old Mark Zuckerberg illegally accessing student information and photos in order to evaluate students based on if they were “good-looking.”

I don’t mean to suggest that Mark or Facebook haven’t matured since then, but I do think that Schrage’s response conveys a Facebook that doesn’t acknowledge its social and civic responsibility. It is absolutely true that Facebook has created a social space that adds a lot of value to people lives, but it is clear that the service and company still have a lot of growing up to do. One might make the case that Facebook has no responsibility to “do the right thing,” however that is not the message that Schrage delivered. Not to mention that a non-attempt to do the “right thing” is essentially a conscious choice to do the wrong thing.

I think the first step is to stop assuming so many things about people based on “user data” and “user activity.” It is good that they care about their users, but they seem to only see them as “users of Facebook” instead of individual people. No amount of digital data in the world will tell you why someone “liked” something, it will only tell you that they clicked a button. No amount of options, drop-down menus, or “Facebook Site Governance Pages” will provide the transparency and user-centeredness that Schrage claims to have.

Here are a few suggestions that I think would work, although this is hardly an all-encompassing solution. They should 1) bring in some designers who are trained in real empathic research methods (not just developers and graphic designers), 2) allow them to carry out qualitative and quantitative research about users, culture, and society, and 3) actually incorporate the findings about what people as a culture (not just users) care about into a long-term plan to make Facebook a social space that enhances our lives instead of complicating them.

“If you consider Human Computer Interaction Design to be “designing the relationship between humans and technology, then to do it well you need nothing less than an understanding of the depths and expanses of the human condition, and the ability to work in situations of co-creation. To understand the human condition you need to understand experience, language, culture, and emotion. To understand co-creation you have to understand how to enable, educate, and empower others to design.”

“When attempting to teach someone something new, it is better to say “We aren’t here to change you, but to challenge you.”

“The principles of design thinking are the keys to organizations solving problems that arise from disruptions.”

Interaction Design is about:

• thinking critically
• making something from nothing
• getting stakeholders to evaluate their own risks and goals
• focusing on people, understanding them while you navigate the process and learn how to listen
• knowing your process, making it transparent, and creating a situation in which everyone takes part
• designing for the user to promote inward-facing dialog in the organization

Here are 3 different levels of what human-centered design could mean, each of which is important:

• looking to the user for inspiration of design instead of the technology
• looking to the user for the evaluation of good design, usability, and “rightness”
• cultural theory and cultural critique methods to “humanize” the process

“HCI/d relies on understanding people. You can’t design or do anything of value unless you understand people first. Get the right design before you get the design right.”

That was actually quite enlightening for me to put all that here. I think I actually synthesized a bit for myself. And I got some Twitter fodder.

“Some people read books, some write or share their experience or thoughts on blogs or by simply reading some famous author’s blogs to upgrade their knowledge. Share your most preferred blogs or books to improve and update latest trends on User experience.”

This is a common question to find on LinkedIn or on forums like IXDA. However, I typically find that these are the wrong kind of questions to ask, especially since the question is concerned with “the latest trends.” Also, responders almost always view user experience or interaction design as web design, software usability, or graphic design (a dilemma that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon). Indeed it does include these things, but I feel to do it well one must take a broader perspective of what it means to design technology. In any case, I thought my response to this question was decent, so I decided to re-work it here.

I am about to graduate with a master’s degree in HCI/d from Indiana University, and from what I have learned during my education, work, and research is that the key is to first define what you mean by “experience” and “design.” Admittedly this is a bit biased by my education, but without evaluating how you are defining these two words, it is easy to be at the whim of whatever flavor of design that IXDA or boxesandarrows is tossing around at the moment. There is a lot to read or listen to with regards to both of these concepts, and the definitions of the two could fit on a spectrum with “build a GUI interface in Photoshop” on one end, and “understand the fundamental components of what it means to be a human being” on the other.

For me, I view experience as holistic, all encompassing of culture, language, and people. Design I view both something fundamental to being human, as well as a way of approaching complex problems. It is something that when understood can be a powerful tool for creating meaningful works.

To be a good interaction designer, you need to be able to navigate multiple perspectives, and walk the philosophical line between natural science and social science. And it isn’t easy. If I have to point out some people to read, then Jon Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design, Bill Buxton, and Elizabeth Churchill are a few good reads for a rounded intro to interaction design. Erik Stolterman and Elliot Eisner are perhaps my favorites for design in general. For understanding experience, I recommend Heideggar, Gadamer, and McCarthy & Wright.

But ultimately, it isn’t the reading or the fancy philosophy talk that leads to understanding. Reading can help us to fine-tune our perspectives and the lenses that we see through. It is up to us to put our knowledge to practical use, because only in doing do we truly start to understand.

So how does someone improve or update their knowledge on user experience design? Read anything that blows your hair back, but don’t think that you can passively take it in and “gain” the knowledge you need. Start with yourself. Learn to think beyond yourself, don’t be at the whim of trends, and be humble. Then get out there, practice designing, and be reflective about it.

This reminds me of all of the pregnancy ads I have gotten when my girlfriend calls me “baby” in an email. Thanks, Google. Your short-sighted view of what the Internet can be has created a situation in which we all either are forced to deal with the shockingly horrid “context-aware” advertising that reduces the subtlety and complexity of language to a pathetic hackjob of irrelevent and sometimes insulting drivel, or we can self-edit ourselves. Either way we lose, and so do you.

In systems of language, the meaning of words comes from the other words and concepts we associate with them. What happens to our language and methods of expressions when all of our words become predominantly associated with organizations that can pay to have a word associated with them? Take a word like “progress” for example. Type this in Google Search and you get Progress Lighting, Progress Software, and Progress Energy. In GMail you might get ads for Progressive Insurance or any other number of businesses who have chosen to create a brand for themselves based on the concept of “progress,” which is to move forward in a positive way.

Are we headed towards a future where our language is entirely constructed of meanings defined by companies and businesses? I could be argued that we are already there. And I don’t know what the solution is.

End of rant. For now.

At each meeting two group members are given five minutes apiece to present their topic and kick off the discussion. Some members choose to present some of their current work for critique, discuss tough class assignments, or introduce the rest of the group to an elective that nobody else is taking. Doing it this way, we have gotten to discuss topics ranging from multi-touch technology to visual color design to sculpture. See Burr Walker’s blog for some more.

Thalith and I started this group to continue cultivating a culture of sharing and openness in our program at IU, and it is something that we hope the industry will do more of. Many forums such as CHI and other conferences embrace this approach on a large and academic scale, but even individual schools, programs, and business can greatly benefit from taking the time to tap into and share the wealth of knowledge within organizations.