Designing for the Social Web

The most important lessons I learned?
If I would have only 2 seconds to explain to you the most important part of the book IMHO, I would say: “Identify your desired users and have an authentic conversation with them.”

Make it easy for your users to send you a feedback or to contact you and listen to what they have to say. At the end everything turns around the user: Design for signup, design for ongoing participation, design for collective intelligence, design for sharing, this are all tools/actions the user will be using/executing.

Joshua creates a framework called AOF (Activities, Objects and Features), which sets what you should prioritize when you’re in the designing/planning process. To wrap the idea in a few lines: Focus 90% of your energy in defining the main Activity you will be doing (what your users are/will be doing) and making sure it always kept in mind through the planning process.  Identify the Objects that people interact with while doing the main activity. Define the core Feature set after having an activity and objects defined, think of it as the actions people perform on the objects.

What did I learn from the book?

• I learned that the real value of Amazon is the products reviews section.
• Everything that you think you know but you don’t really apply it very much, he breaks it down and explains it with real life examples, helping you get a more solid concept of what you already know.
• Your application is not based on the features it has, it’s based on the main activity it supports. When you’re thinking of your application, don’t define it like this: It’s going to have a blog, it will also support user registration and profiles pages, the user can subscribe to the news letters, etc. As the AOF method says, define your activity first and that should be the main thing.
• Respect the power of an authentic conversation with your users. That’s the path to create passionate users.
• How to make the user feel unique and at the same time make him feel like he belongs to a common-likes group.
• How to encourage your users to participate by reciprocity laverage.
• How you create signup friction through forms and how you can reduce it (this section of the book was really good!).
• How to measure your success with numbers (although is not very specific, it gives you a nice introduction and overview of it).

I’m currently reading a new book called ‘Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works’ by Janice Redish, it seems pretty promising, I’ll post my review as soon as I finish it (and a link to buy it from the amazon store so I make money *Muhuhuhahaha – Laughs with evilness*) .

Have you read designing for the social web?

Tell me what you think about it!
Did you hate it? Did you love it?
What did you learn from it?
What was your favorite part?

Want to read this book?

Write a comment if you have any questions about it, or if you want to know something in specific.
If you’re decided to get the book, get it here Designing for the Social Web, it’s better than all the other places where you can get it. *Muhuhuhahaha – Laughs with evilness again!*

Have questions?

I’ll be happy to help you, just post them as a comment and we’ll discuss it!