As part of Social Media Week, frog Strategist Adam Silver hosted a workshop, "Designing for a User-Hijacked World" at the NY studio. His workshop focused on how design can use social media to build more inclusive, adaptive and relevant user experiences.
60. Get started:1. Look at your card, locate your number2. Locate your group (signs are on the walls)3. Grab a packet of worksheets from the front (1 per group)4. Get started! Frog moderators are floating around to helpYou have 20 minutes for the first phaseWe will find you for the next…Good luck!
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Thanks so much for comingName’s Adam, strat, frogHere’s how the night’s gonna break out. Let’s get started.
At frog, we think users rule. We got our start taking apart things like televisions…
And computers, and rebuilding them to be more user-friendly. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we do today.----- Meeting Notes (2/10/11 16:34) -----scooch it down
This is the way you used to (or maybe still) navigate through your music. And this is on a piece of Apple software. This is iTunes. It’s pretty awful.Who wants to browse music this way? So someone decided to go out and hack it, create their own experience that was more like browsing through your music collection at home. His name was Andrew Coulter Enright.
His name was Andrew Coulter Enright. This is what he designed. Apple liked it so much, they decided to buy the software and integrate it into iTunes. Now you can browse your entire computer this way. It never would have happened if someone hadn’t acted on a failed user experience.
(SINGLE RAINBOW, MORE 80s)I want to take you back a bit, to what the Internet looked like 20 years ago. I was young, but out of diapers, and I definitely remember it well.
The 80s.
We made stuff for ourselves.People weren’t really making a lot of money with this stuff. They were mostly just building things that they liked.
They built their own worlds A lot of the games in particular that came out during that time were amazing. Kinda weird, but also amazing. And completely unique, completely creative, ----- Meeting Notes (2/9/11 20:17) -----take opacity out
BBS = Bold, Badass, & SurlyThe first modern social network emerged. The bulletin board system. So I had one of these Commodores, they were great machines. [image of tape recorder?] And we did use it to connect to the Internet. And we did use this one bulletin board system. It was pretty rudimentary, but I remember how much fun I had back then tinkering with the thing.
Some of the first modern-day Internet nerd movies came out. Not very successful (yet).Nerds hadn’t quite found their moment…that would have to wait for Mark Zuckerburg years later…but it was the beginnings of a new subculture for sure.
And then…
AOL
Compuserve
Prodigy
The first online ad was launched.And that day, the users slowly lost control.
The user became a commodity. A number. Just a another driver of revenue for a new business model.
Users slowly ceded their rights, their information, their privacy for the promise of better experiences.
In 1991 Prodigy began banning anynegative comments about advertisers, profanity, “flame wars” and eventually mentioning any member by name.http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classic-tech/prodigy-the-pre-internet-online-service-that-didnt-live-up-to-its-name/214
CompuServe was inundated with advertising. It was just a taste of the soon-to-be-common pop-up ad, but it degraded the experience significantly.
Even Apple’s service, eWorld, kinda sucked. It launched and died in the mid 90s. It used a confusing town-hall metaphor; high-rise tower blocks were the Business & Finance Plaza. The people of eWorld were called ePeople. People didn’t get it, and it failed.
They crashed and burned.
But it wasn’t to be.One closed system was replaced with another. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook
But something else happened. Something that no one really expected.
Everyone got really smart. They learned to program. They began to invent the Internet anew.Things started getting way better.
A lot more of us this time.
We figured out how to use the internet to fund our passions.A service called Kickstarter started by a few kids reinvented the way we think about funding the things we care about.
Diaspora…just started a few months ago and it’s amazing how far it’s gottenLearning how to create Facebook anew
Flipboard designed by some Stanford students who wanted a custom version of their news in a graphically rich format. They used a Starbucks to do ethnography and created this amazing thing.
And think about all the amazing apps that are being designed by people. Just for fun.
The bottom line: users are hijacking the Internet.
How can you benefit from this new environment?
Ask the following questions:
How?Hand back control to the userThe solution is to give up control to have a seat at the table.
Help people achieve their goals.
Can you shock and surprise people? Can you cut through the clutter?
Then give it all away. For free.
These things are great by themselves
And totally rad together.
Hotmail sucks, but they have a ton of users (even still) and a successful business model. Because it’s free.
Dropbox added utility, and created a service that is incredible. They just received another round of funding.
Posterous added adaptability to the equation. Now suddenly you could blog via email, from your smartphone, from your laptop…anywhere.
And look at Twitter’s accomplished. Totally amazing.
How?
Don’t overdefine your experience.
Instead set the stage for users to build amazing new things out of your service. Things you’ve never imagined.
Then let people hijack them.
You’ll be shocked at what people create. When you design it to be hackable…
The products just keep improving.
The goal is to get people to use your stuff. If they’re using your stuff, you’re going to make money.
----- Meeting Notes (2/10/11 21:11) -----thanks for stayin gso latewanted to give you a few shards of inspirtion and in typical frog fashion look to our partners to inspire us...you definitely didthanks a ton to my team to you for your time etc.