Sociability & Design

Crystal Metcalfe & Co of Motorola have done some fascinating ethnographic research (presentation here) around the use of mobile technologies by people within their social contexts.

Their findings caused them to shift focus in the following ways:

From:

• Focus on the sender
• Support the task mechanics
• Send more/all of the facts
• Conversation and consumption

To:

• Recognize the receiver
• Support the intent of the message
• Provide the capability for storytelling
• Design for creating shared activities/experiences

This presents a challenge for traditional usability lab testing. Labs typically take people out of their own lifeworlds* and dump them as isolated individuals. Which is fine provided you are 100% sure people do not socially interact with each in the course of using your technology.

If they do, the lab will probably give you a wrong picture of how your technology is used. Observing your tech "in the wild" is a much better option (frankly, I think ethnographic training should be mandatory for all designers) and bring groups/teams into the lab might be an acceptable (but not ideal) half-way house. Identifying who should be in those teams might require some form of SNA.

Not all technology is about enabling communication - but if it is used in a collective manner then understanding how that happens may make or break your implementation...

Source: Mark Earls & Josh Porter

*Yip, phenomenology is in da house.