Web, a public place just like restaurants, libraries and pubs, has rapidly developed into a new phenomenon – I hope not many people have doubts over this statement. Who doesn’t want to build the next Facebook or Twitter? However, considering the complex interactions in social behaviour, designing for social web is definitely no easy task.
The book starts with an introduction of ‘Part Interface Design, Part Psychology’ and the typical rudimentary web ‘Usage Life-cycle’ to raise readers’ awareness of what hurdles social web design may face and the ultimate goal: ‘Better Design’.
Besides clearing all the hurdles in the following chapters, there are lots of insights and clichés scattered across its 187 pages, some you may completely agree with and some would make you think. Overall, it was an intriguing read for me. Just like the famous Don’t Make Me Think from Steve Krug, this book is more about common sense. It’s not rocket science, but you just don’t happen to have collected and have systematised all the simple bits and put them in good use. Comparing the style of drawing conclusions from author’s own experience in Don’t Make Me Think to providing more results from research in Designing for the Social Web, this book suggests less detailed description of how to apply the insights into practice, which means you may have to combine your own experience with what the book says to find the best solutions on your own. I felt the author carried out very good research into the subject and represented it compactly yet coherently in a conversional style.
In the London Web Standards meet-up, we discussed this book and someone found that the chapter “Authentic Conversations” is a bit out of topic. Interestingly enough, I found this chapter is particularly useful and I would like to research it more. After been working for a media company, which runs several high profile social web sites for a while and based on the observation on how the publishing team runs the sites, I can see how we can improve and hopefully to put the knowledge learnt from the book in use in the future. It has been said, if you combine your own experience with what the author presented in the book, most likely you will find something interesting and useful.
If you grab this book before going on a trip or jumping on a commuter train, it could make you journey.
Author: Joshua Porter
ISBN-10: 0321534921
Thanks to London Web Standard and Jeff Van Campen for the book.