Our Public Private Lives

Recently, a blog post about a Yelp comment gone wrong circulated through the office. Despite being fictitious, this isn’t something to be written off. One doesn’t have to look far to find legitimate instances of social media blowback in our real-world lives.

What does this mean? Do we, as social media participants, need to craft all our posts to the lowest/most-agreeable common denominator, avoiding any possibility of offense (or individuality)? After all, it’s becoming a given that your online activity will be examined fairly early in the courting process, whether by a potential employer or partner. Or, will society mature, acknowledge the merging of personal and public, and evaluate people as a whole; on both their skillset and ability to conduct themselves as appropriate given the setting? If you put any stock in this CareerBuilder survey, it seems like Corporate America is at least a few years away from such an enlightened stance (and if you ask me, that’s being generous), so either get editing or get ready to defend your life.

While I like Kit Eaton’s take on the CareerBuilder survey and issue in general, I feel like he’s missing a fourth option: let it all hang out. Being a reader of this blog, I’m going to assume you’re an intelligent, well-rounded, and high-performing individual who contributes a lot to their organization and/or clients. Employers are lucky to have you and clients want to work with you. Do you think their opinions would change if they found your mullet-adorned, beer-swilling college photo? What about last week’s salty tweet about Mel’s, ahem…opinionated…voicemails? If so, maybe that fit wasn’t as good as you thought. However, if truly putting yourself out there means posting stuff that would turn off even the most open-minded of us, maybe you need to reexamine your life.

This seemed like a good idea at the time (on multiple levels)

That’s a tough stand to take in such tenuous economic times, but do you really think this whole social media thing is a fad? Me neither. So let’s be the ones to jump in with both feet and show the way. If we’re to do that, there’s definitely some reorienting of expectations needed by all players.

Users: Expect everything you post will be discovered. By everyone. Forever.
Employers: Learn and embrace the new sharing. Focus on the whole person and their ability to be a professional in professional situations.
Parents/Educators: Orient your charges to the impact/permanence of online posts. Help give them the perspective they inherently lack.
Creators: Manage participation, but don’t suppress opposition. Use your power to build communities.

Nobody’s going to argue that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook sure have some things to learn in the PR department. And while what the Facebook creator said in January about privacy no longer being a social norm could have been phrased a bit better, I think the idea behind it is right on. People are sharing more and more of their private lives online for the world to see and despite threats to the contrary, nobody’s leaving because of privacy controls (especially Phil). We like the idea of privacy, but when push comes to shove, we’re pot-committed to our social media lives even if we’re not ready to admit it.

Social Media: No Spectators Allowed

How many times have you heard a key stakeholder in a digital initiative throw out a broad statement like “we need to include some social media in this”?

“Well Duh” Statement #1: Many folks who say these kinds of things can’t really quantify what they mean or what the value proposition might be.

“Well Duh” Statement #2: Many folks who say these kinds of things do so in the same manner that they might say “what the heck, let’s super size it too” or “can we throw some racing stripes on there too? That’d be cool, right?” Obviously, they don’t get that there’s a whole discipline of business strategy emerging around the phenomenon. It’s not nearly as simple as “turning it on” – especially because with social media there’s not simply the potential for great uptake vs. no uptake, but also for self-destruction. You need to curate and shape your social presence, not just “set it and forget it”.

Illustration by Mike Colibraro

But there’s also something more subtle going on that I’ve recently come to see as a trend: too often we hear these folks (particularly those in higher positions at larger organizations) talk about social media as if it’s something that will occur at ground level and they’ll watch it unfold from above. They talk about it as if it’s something to delegate to others. They talk about it as something that might perhaps be good for some other class of folks but not for themselves.

If social media is good for your business, it’s good for you. It is not good enough to read articles about how social media is influencing the business landscape and to know some of the buzzwords. If you don’t have accounts in the various types of outlets and you’re not actively using them, then no, you don’t get it. Period.

I’m not saying that all executives should be engaging in social media on behalf of their brand, per se (though when done right, there are benefits to be derived). But they should be engaging at least on their own, and here’s why – if you’re not in the thick of it, you simply can’t understand the dynamics of the interaction, the manner in which things trend, the way news breaks, the way brands are made or destroyed, and the real dynamics behind things like crowd-sourcing and cyber-bullying (of people, brands, or otherwise). That’s important because, “duh” again, if you’re a decision-maker for initiatives that may have social components, you need to be familiar with how these things work in order to effectively manage, direct, and lead in this space.

Not Even If You Dedicated All Day, Every Day

But, let’s put some parameters around this too – you should be familiar with the different flavors of social media, but being everywhere (see above) would be impossible even if it was your full time job. The key is to be informed and participate in a qualified subset and to leave their opinions and preconceptions about those channels at the door. It’s OK if you “don’t get why it’s so popular”, but it’s not OK to let that be an excuse for avoiding it. That’s the same as a 1940′s advertising executive saying, “this TV thing is a fad, newspapers aren’t going away – that’s where we should be focusing our business.”

The good news is that getting up to speed is free – it just requires some of your time and dedication. What it all boils down to is that you can’t effectively answer the question “how can we harness social media?” until you’ve answered “how can I?”

An Overlooked Enemy of Good Design

Today I did something I don’t get to do very often: I turned off my email. Aside from three pre-scheduled check-ins to make sure nothing was melting down, I was off-line almost the entire day and able to focus on a single design assignment. Toward the end of the day I reviewed my work with the client to collect their feedback and tomorrow we’ll start the review process with other stakeholders.

It later struck me that eight consecutive hours of focus is a rare thing. In this case I was making significant changes to two months worth of work due to a very wise decision made by a very wise executive. That is not sarcasm – a good decision was made, and to be successful we needed to take three steps back in order to take four steps forward. It was refreshing to do this kind of rework and feel like I was “doing the right thing” rather than diluting something as a result of design-by-committee.

I’m a huge fan of theoatmeal.com, but when Matt Inman vents over idiot clients or copycat design methods, I feel like he’s missing the point. In my experience, one of the greatest enemies of good design isn’t what we typically blame: clients, technology, time, money, or even nepotism. I’m calling out the turf war.

illustration by Mike Colibraro

We do a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies and much of my efforts focus on helping clients communicate important information to physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. I’m not talking about your typical marketing site for a new drug, but the volumes of clinical information that pharma companies provide to the medical community free of charge and without any marketing messaging. This information gives your healthcare providers the data they need to make informed decisions and, without question, it saves lives. The sad fact is that the medical industry doesn’t always trust information coming from “Big Pharma.” There are a lot of reasons that have contributed to this situation over the years. The pharma industry has been spending a lot of energy trying to remedy the situation, but fixing trust issues is a hard game.

I can’t meet physicians without grilling them about how they use technology in their practice. A while ago I ended up sitting next to an ER doc at a baseball game. We got to talking and I asked him about the electronic medical record systems at his hospital. I was not surprised by what I heard, but it’s a great example of how turf wars are the enemy: a series of battles between medical departments, vendors, healthcare systems, and their IT departments leaves many ERs with multiple systems. Sometimes they have multiple screens up for one patient: charts, radiology, labs, research, etc. Many of these systems don’t talk to each other because they’re built by competitors who want to dominate the market. None of these decisions were made to improve usability or achieve better patient outcomes; they were all made to “protect” someone’s group, market share, or position.

So…back to my entire day of focus: the reason why that’s so rare is due to the unfortunate reality that in my typical day, much of my time (and I suspect yours) is dedicated to dealing with the fallout from turf wars. Over time, those successful in these wars become unable to function any other way – they default to tactics of offense or defense. The wisest don’t contribute to the wars. Fueling that fire means you’re not doing what you do best: focusing on good design. Less time spent on design means less time collaborating with your friends and colleagues over in Content, Development, IT, and Testing. It also means missed opportunities reaching out to users and stakeholders for critical feedback.

David Maister wrote a book called “The Trusted Advisor” that every UX designer should read. Much of the book is dedicated to trust building. You don’t build trust by getting sucked into the turf war, you build it by doing the right thing.

Motivation-By-Numbers

In case you missed it, our last post declared Stephen Anderson’s “Serious Play: Designing Seductive Business Apps” our favorite talk from the Philly stop of the UIE Web App Masters Tour (not that there weren’t plenty of other highpoints!).

I made a note during that talk to revisit Malone & Co.’s Theory Of Motivation, because although that model was first proposed in the context of instructional design (specifically, in the early days of computer-based instruction – we’re talking like mid-1980′s here), the concepts that Stephen was employing seemed to be the same universal ones captured and organized by Malone & Lepper all those years ago.

Illustration By Mike Colibraro

I found some great practical discussion on motivation and a Spartan but incredibly useful chart (content is king, after all) in the course notes for one of Edward Vockell’s Educational Psychology courses at Purdue Calumet. Check out the chart here, and pay close attention to the Related Guidelines column…because IT’S ALL RIGHT THERE! One little chart, and it’s the instruction book on how to design for motivation – no matter the technology or the channel. These are the keys to the kingdom, friends!

P.S. If this stuff brings out your inner geek the way it brings out mine, be sure to click through some of the links below the chart as well.

Simple Things That Are Awesome

Sometimes you stumble on things that are simple and awesome. This Gmail feature is far from perfect, but I stumbled over it the other day. I was sending an email and referred to the attachments in the email, but forgot to attach anything. When I hit “send” I saw this:

Gmail

I played with the feature a bit and there are some holes in it… for instance, if I write, “In the attached files…” and don’t attach anything, I don’t get the same warning.

Perhaps it is looking for generic phrases that indicate attachments or perhaps they’re looking at my linguistic tendencies around attachments. Regardless, I’m sure the feature will improve over time. The main point is the intent is there. We know Gmail is looking at the content of your emails to place ads (hooray). While they’re there, they may as well do some good (non-sarcastic hooray).

Google Labs has a slew of lab features you can add to Gmail, including two of my favorites, “Don’t forget Bob” and “Got the right Bob?”. Pretty much any feature that involves Bob has to be good – everybody likes Bob.

We have been spending some time with our clients talking about the Google Labs model. Google didn’t invent the idea of fostering small R&D projects from within. One of the best examples of how lab projects can benefit a company is the story of 3M and Post-It Notes. Few people realize Gmail itself was a lab project as well. Fostering innovation from within and freeing it from the typical bureacracy of your organization can result in simple, awesome things.

Then, once you’ve built it, you can name it Bob.

Information = Action!

Recently I watched a highly recommended video of Eric Topol discussing the future of smartphones in health care and wireless medicine. The potential inherent in the technology he discusses is enormous…but it got me thinking a little more deeply about how this type of technology might affect human behaviors – and more specifically, how this type of information might affect them.

One of the issues with leading healthy lives is that people know that there are things that are “Good for You” and “Bad for You”, but they have traditionally had no way of conceptualizing and internalizing just what that really means. In most cases, that kind of knowledge only comes with experience – sometimes when it’s already too late to change things. There’s a lot of wiggle room when defining “healthy” (plus, it varies significantly per individual), which is why we need more information to be consistent. More on that in a bit…

First, a disclaimer: I’m the type of person who likes more information. Give me HUDs and readouts, maps, charts, and figures! I want as much information as possible, about everything around me, and then I’ll sort through and reprocess it. For instance, my parents’ car has a cool little display that provides all sorts of information about the car; which doors are open, if the tire pressure is low, the temperature outside, which direction you’re driving, etc. It also has a gauge to show you both your overall and real-time fuel efficiency:

The Dashboard Setup in a Honda C-RV

As we learn to drive, we each develop a working mental model of how we think a car operates. I suppose I believed mine was pretty good but in fact I never really thought much about it. Once I started driving a car with a meter that told me exactly how much gas I was using, I found myself making conscious adjustments: accelerating a little softer, or laying off the gas to coast to a stop instead of slamming the brakes. These behaviors weren’t completely new to me, but that little meter helped reinforce them and made me more consistent.

Now let’s take that concept and apply it to our own health:

• What if your Smartphone helped you track your blood sugar levels, so that when you had an enormous slice of cherry chocolate cake you could see quite clearly the effect it had on you? How long would it take before the food selections you made and portion sizes would start to change?
• What about applying that same principle to cholesterol levels?
• How could continuous blood pressure monitoring help you consciously make decisions to control your stress levels?
• If you had access to a sleep diary like the one Eric Topol discusses, and you found out that the nights you had a late dinner or fell asleep with the TV on resulted in an hour or two less REM sleep, would you act on that information to feel more rested and alert?

For years we’ve obeyed the gauges in our vehicles, but we didn’t have gauges on our bodies and so it was easier to make decisions that deep down, we knew probably weren’t the best for our health. It’s going to be a lot harder to turn a blind eye to destructive health decisions with this kind of technology becoming available to the masses – and if that’s what it takes to turn more people onto the benefits of preventative health behavior, then I say bring it on!

Do You Believe In “It”?

As you read this post you’ll likely be able to identify an early interaction that made you conscious of “it” on a grand scale – for me, one of those would be using an “Automated Teller Machine” for the first time. 24/7 access to cash and all I needed was a card and a PIN – it was truly magical. Still, some folks were apprehensive about those machines – some fearing that they wouldn’t receive the correct amount of money, and some simply not understanding exactly how the machines interfaced with their accounts. Fair enough, but many of those trust issues have been ironed out over the years and today only the most stubborn banker still avoids ATMs.

Moving on, as I started making more customer service calls of my own, I became aware of another instance of “it” – phone trees.  Calling the airline, the phone company, the electric company…being directed through endless sub-categories only to reach an “answering machine” or be disconnected…terrible, hair-pulling experiences that haven’t improved much in 20 years.

What Is “It”?

The “it” I’m referring to is the endless march toward self-service that began sometime in the late 70s and early 80s as a way for companies to cut costs and outsource client and professional services to the customers themselves.  What may have seemed like a radical concept at the time is now ubiquitous. In fact, we’re so used to it that it only becomes obvious to us when it doesn’t work, and we really NEED some insightful help that is nowhere to be found.

I thought the image below was extremely telling of our collective response to the concept of outsourcing services to end-consumers (click to see in its full glory):

Courtesy Of Mike Sacks At www.mikesacks.com

Of course, almost everyone knows who IKEA is, and for the most part they do an excellent job creating a customer self-service model that works. However, what the illustration cleverly points out is that there can be a heavy burden placed on the end-customer when previously in-sourced roles and services (in this case, furniture assembly) are placed in the hands of the uneducated consumer without a full set of tools (clear instructions) to bridge the gap.

What Does This Example Have To Do With Customer Experience? 

More than you might think. If we go back to ATMs and phone trees, and think about all of the additional things outsourced to customers (those who don’t wish to pay a premium to continue to “have it done for them”) since, the list is lengthy – here are just a few:

• Pumping Gas
• Purchasing Stock
• Assembling Furniture
• Doing Taxes
• Instigating Legal Procedures
• Banking
• Checking Out (Retail)
• Booking Travel
• Managing Investments

Of course, the list will continue to grow, and will someday encompass areas we would today never consider as a category for self service such as professional medical services, or university education (although those areas are already becoming encroached by semi-self service).

Why Should We Care?

Well, last week I was at the grocery store checking out with my milk and eggs preparing for the impending nor’easter, and this is what I encountered:

Niiiiiiice. For All The Sordid Detail, Click To Enlarge

The user experience is so bad, the staff at the local grocery store has resorted to 3 different post-its with varying messages in the hope that the customer will read them before and during their use of the machine.  Need I say more?

The direct correlation on the web is that more and more applications and services are being placed in the hands of end-customers, and I fear that companies of all types (SAAS or on applications on-demand anyone?) are largely unprepared to fully understand and translate the needs of those customers in applications that are easy to use, and fully functional.  I suspect the “virtual post-it notes” will continue to grow in size as firms struggle with the onslaught of customer frustration they will unwittingly generate all under the guise of “making it easier for consumers to help themselves”.

If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Right

Don’t get me wrong, customer self-service can be a GREAT thing – for companies and customers alike. Back to the ATM – do you remember how things used to be? Trying to get to the bank before it closed (or risk being without cash for the entire weekend)? Being forced to wait in line for a simple transaction, behind folks with all manner of requests (large and small) and all degrees of financial (and social) aptitude? Who would want to go back there? And why should banks pay tellers to preside over the kinds of basic, repetitive transactions that can be handled by ATMs? The efficiency gained and amount of money saved that goes directly to the bottom line can be astronomical.

Once again, it’s about allowing innovative ideas like customer self-service to truly flourish by applying design thinking to their deployment. It’s about reducing the cognitive burden on users, providing the full set of tools necessary for interacting via the selected channel, and being honest about where the line should be drawn: sometimes the best solution will still require human interaction at some point. This in no way constitutes failure – after all, the goal is not simply to put as much of the process on the customers as possible, it is to drive them to completed transactions (satisfaction) as intuitively and efficiently as possible!

Facebook’s ‘Evil Empire” One Year Later

It has been nearly a year since I penned my original rant about Doomsdayers and Nay-sayers terrified about Facebook wanting to own their content. As many predicted, FB changed their entire business model and made a fortune selling all of those riveting lunch updates and pictures of sleeping cats. My guess is they’ll probably pull all ads from their site soon because the revenue they’ll make on all of that inanity is worth much more than the targeted ad revenue they could make off of a community of 350Million+ users.

Seriously though, in the comment thread for that posting, KS posted an understandable comment that the issue is more about privacy than content ownership. KS must be some kind of fortune teller, because the latest doomsday meme concerns Facebook making all of your content accessible to public search engines.

I fittingly put my feelings about this issue in my FB status last month. It was so funny, four of my friends copied it to their status… I practically went viral, yo:

Attention People: time to panic. As of forever, things you put up on the internet may be available for people to see on the internet. This is a clear violation of your privacy on this completely voluntary system. To disable this, go to your start button and choose “Shut Down.”

This posting mostly annoyed Mac users who could not find the start button…

Most of the rumbling calmed down once FB instituted a series of messages and annoying dialogue boxes to warn you that this meme isn’t 100% true. Then Zuckerberg opened his yap again and some chicken littles kept venting about it. Essentially, FB is allowing Search Engines to crawl the profile information that YOU determine is part of your public profile.

Many aren’t taking issue with the fact that FB has done this, they just take issue with the fact that the default settings made more of your information public than the average user would like. Novice users are probably completely in the dark. These points make sense, and are much less alarmist than the folks who are using the social networking site they (theoretically) despise to terrify the masses.

My Public Facebook Profile: Most of these people don't even like me

For me, I stand by my original thoughts: FB is a business. FB is enjoying tremendous growth. The more users, the more money there is to make. The last thing FB wants to do is make decisions that will cause them to go the way of MySpace. FB even reacts appropriately when they make a decision and forgot to consider the viral reactions of some alarmists. However, when they made the decision in 2007 to create PUBLIC profiles and recently to open them to PUBLIC search engines, it wasn’t part of some Orwellian plan to make a few bucks or deceive their users. Their thought process probably went something like this:

FB1: You know what – if an old friend of yours isn’t on FB and they’re looking for you, they can’t find you.

FB2: Well, they can search for your public profile through FB…

FB1: But wouldn’t it be better if they Googled your name and found a link to your public profile in the results? I mean, it’s a public profile, and that way they may join FB to become your friend.

FB2: Hey, good idea… it would certainly increase our organic search placement. Let’s get on that!

So, what’s the lesson here? It’s not really the privacy issue as much as it is the way FB approached the change. Somehow they have to work into their updates a communication plan to explain exactly what changes they are implementing and why. They need to get into the heads of the alarmists and defuse the bomb before it goes off. They need to be proactive rather than reactive. That’s a tough order when they’re probably making hundreds of minor changes regularly…which ones are the alarmists going to pick?

Or they could follow the path they’ve been walking and lose the folks who are terrified of Big Brother lurking in the darkness. What does FB care, though? Those people only cause trouble and the noise doesn’t seem to be impacting their market share… yet.

Taking Social Media To Task (Part 2)

You’ve been waiting with baited breath for this, no? Well, I aim to please…and this one is unique in that after posting initially, Phil sent me a response with some further insght that I think is brilliant – so I’ve included it here for a nice little point/counterpoint. Chime in!

Don’t Call It Multi-Tasking – Jacks Of All Trades Are Masters Of None

This one is really more of an observation put out there for further thought – but it was also sparked by my attendance at epatcon. At one point during the conference it suddenly hit me that 60% or more of the audience had laptops open in front of them (not counting those who were on PDAs and Smart Phones). Sure, some people use them to take notes or to look up links being mentioned, or tweet key points – the kind of behaviors that were the clear majority at AEA. But what I saw at epatcon was clearly of a different ilk. I was baffled by a woman at the table next to me who, for the entire day, worked intently on what was clearly an unrelated work document.  I wondered “why would you pay good money to come to a conference like this, and then pay absolutely no attention to anything going on around you? Why not just stay in the office…or if you needed to get away, go to the local coffee shop?”

I’ve heard people defend this behavior before by saying that they are “just multi-tasking” – but if I had asked that woman for her opinion on what had just been said, at any point throughout the day, I’m quite certain it would have been like a teacher calling on a student who had been daydreaming. People are of course free to waste their conference fees if they want to, but not only is it distracting to other attendees, it is incredibly rude to the presenters. As a sometime presenter and adjunct faculty member in the digital design program at Philadelphia University, I felt bad for those up on the stage for having to wonder if the large amount of people staring into their screens were engaged in what they were saying or in something else entirely. The lack of feedback in the form of eye contact and body language can really leave one feeling a bit out to sea.

Guilty as charged! We all do it...but for the record, this was on a break!

The really amazing thing is that we don’t see this only at large conferences where we can remain largely anonymous – we even see it in small meetings with co-workers who we know well. I know I’m not saying anything we don’t all know there – but what is the cost of this behavior? Again, forget simple manners and mushy stuff like feelings…what is the monetary cost when I have to repeat everything I just said for the past five minutes because when I ask someone’s input they are jarred and say “what? Oh sorry, can you repeat that?” And how good will their answer be when they weren’t really present during the rich discussion that preceded my question? Multiply that by the hundreds of times per week that happens across your organization…makes you think, no? Loss of time, loss of money, and loss of quality – quality of interactions, team-building, and decisions/outcomes. Quality of experiences.

So I ask, what is this ubiquitous technology doing to our real-world interactions, communications, and experiences? As in the Twitter example, the etiquette will probably shake itself out in time…but it is fascinating that somehow over the past ten years or so what would have once been considered complete disrespect and poor interpersonal skill has become modus operandi. In the words of the inimitable Mr. Horse, “No sir, I don’t like it.” It’s not about shunning the technology or stunting its integration. It’s about maximizing effectiveness and efficiency – and on the whole, the very real disconnect I felt at epatcon makes me think we ain’t there yet, folks.

PHIL’S RESPONSE:

Hey, check out this link – it offers some additional insight and perspective on this and your last post – be sure to click through to the links (particularly the Danah Boyd – fascinating).

Additionally, some comments – much my personal opinion. First, there is support for your “multitasking is a myth” argument – some you’ll find in the link above.

I personally don’t think the “people on their laptops during conferences” argument holds water. You’re up on stage, the people who are engaged are the ones you should be talking to, you don’t know who is taking notes and who isn’t paying attention. It’s time to get used to the fact that people have laptops and at large venues, it’s just a part of life. The people in the room who are distracted by others on their computers need to get over it too. To me, if everyone is cruising the internet ignoring the speaker, it means the speaker is not engaging, and that’s a different issue.

In more intimate environments (classrooms, breakout sessions) I get it… it frustrates me too. It has been hard for me to get over my own students typing during class, but now I live with it. If I notice they’re browsing and not note taking, I ask them to stop… but I know this is the way people are.

I’m not trying to detract from your argument about meetings, though. I am guilty of violating that rule too. Your point is very valid and I think you should make it. Tons of time is wasted by people who think they’re “multitasking” when they’re actually ignoring what is going on in the room. To me, it’s the equivalent of talking on the phone while someone is trying to converse with you face to face.

There are times when this kind of behavior is appropriate, but it takes some situational analysis and some agreed-upon rules… for instance, if you walk into a regulatory meeting and are told to have a seat until they’re done with their conversation, you should open your laptop and be productive. They’ll tell you when they’re ready for you. But the rule of the room is known – not everyone is relevant to the conversation, but the people who are  should pay attention.

The other day I had a pizza delivered. The guy showed up and was speaking on his phone. I asked, “How much?” and he put up his index finger to say, “Hold on.” I couldn’t believe it, so I said, “No, tell me how much.” He told the person the phone, “Hold on a sec, I have a customer.” The only tip he got was the coinage.

In the end, society will work out some generally accepted etiquette about our ubiquitous technology, but there will always be detractors. It’s like driving, there are things you just don’t do even though there are no rules about it. If someone is daydreaming when there’s a red light, you give them some time before you tap the horn to wake them up. But there are always jerks – the ones who lean on the horn the second the light turns green. They may be racing to the hospital with a severed limb, or they may just be a jackass.

Taking Social Media To Task

I had every intention of doing a timely follow-up post to Phil’s quick thoughts from ePatient Connections (epatcon) – but well, you know the drill. Still, the time lapse was an asset in this case since I’ve been able to discuss the contents of this post (first inspired by attending epatcon) with a bunch of people in person and get their opinions, which has been enlightening and convinced me that the topic is worthwhile. What I have to say really boils down to two topics:

1.    Social Media Tools Won’t Get Better If We Aren’t Really Hard On Them (And How We Use Them)

2.    Don’t Call It Multi-Tasking – Jacks Of All Trades Are Masters Of None

This post will address #1, and I’ll post my follow-up ASAP.

Image c/o Twitter

Social Media Tools Won’t Get Better If We Aren’t Really Hard On Them (And How We Use Them)

Last week we watched the video stream from the FDA’s Social Media Hearing with a client, and after a while it became a running joke that most presentations either began or finished with the phrase “in short, social media is here to stay”. Thanks, Sherlock(s)!

I think most of us have come to that conclusion and understand that the way we communicate has already changed monumentally, and will continue to change as a result of innovations like Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Most of us don’t think it’s a simple fad (whether we understand it or not), and most of us aren’t trying to shut it down or tie ourselves to the tracks in a futile attempt to stop the oncoming train (like, say, suggesting to the FDA that Google’s SideWiki should be “torn down”).

But one thing that struck me at epatcon and got me thinking back to An Event Apart and earlier, is that people (particularly at professional events) often talk about social media like it’s a bucking bronco that we have no control over – and we’d better just jump on and see how we can try to make it, even if just fleetingly, bend to our will before we get tossed. I think that to some degree, that metaphor isn’t entirely unfounded (provided that you then dust yourself off and try again) – though I also think that applying good design thinking to using the various channels can provide much more than just minor influence.

Social Media? Image c/o Beau Daniels of beaudaniels-illustration.com

However, my bigger concern is that I hear people at professional gatherings talking about social media with reverence, fear, or with an air of the apologetic – and it must be OK for us to candidly talk about the design flaws in some of these tools as well as the flawed approaches some users take when employing them, or else they’re not going to improve. Yes, by doing so you may incite evangelistic technocrats and have to weather being called “out of touch” or some other variant – but those who say those kinds of things will be swept out to sea when the tide changes next (and it will). The fact of the matter is that social media is expanding beyond the left-brainers who created it and aren’t put off by its usability issues, the youth who embraced it and helped it explode, and the early adopters who just thought it was cool – and that’s when we have to take a more critical look at the user experience for the broader population.

1. Design

We’ve already seen evidence that social media tools aren’t really as “wild west” and anarchic as we might be led to believe – we’ve seen good design trump poor(er) design in what has happened with MySpace and Facebook. Take a look at this recent usage report:

c/o alexa.com

It was a grassroots effort, and the people have spoken. MySpace ruled the roost until something better came along – something with a better user interface, a better and more consistent aesthetic, and a more robust set of tools for interacting with others. There was a time when people were talking about MySpace with fear and reverence, wondering how to harness its power…and now it really doesn’t rank at all on the priority list for organizations wishing to create a holistic online presence (unless that organization is your little brother’s hardcore band). What’s more, it wasn’t just replaced – it was further adopted exponentially. The point is that these beasts can be tamed with thoughtful, design-oriented thinking – whether it means creating a new tool or just figuring out how to best utilize the ones that exist.

2. Etiquette

Back to epatcon. At the conference, there was a large flat-screen monitor present with a running Twitter stream (using the #epatcon hashtag) on it. Tweets were of three varieties:

1. Quick and insightful distillations of key points that could provide some insight to those not present
2. High level statements that without context of actually being in the room and hearing the rest of the presentation weren’t very useful – superfluous for those in the room, and too general for those elsewhere to do anything with
3. Quips about what food people were eating/craving, where they were sitting, and other general “hey, look at me!” type tweets – which are fine amongst friends, but not worthy of the conference hashtag

(I had intended on providing examples but Twitter has been telling me that “older tweets are temporarily unavailable” for several days now,, hence the “fail whale” image up top)

Add a flurry of re-tweet messages from all three categories to the mix, and the stream ended up consisting of very few meaningful/useful nuggets and a whole lot of noise. Someone off-site who is interested in the conference can pick up on the hashtag and follow it themselves (a simple tweet saying “interested in the conference I’m attending? follow #epatcon” will do, and eliminate the need for excessive re-tweeting), and someone who isn’t interested doesn’t want to see another re-tweet every 30 seconds. Concentrate on adding original, quality content to the stream – it’s not about repetition, chiming in, or rephrasing. No matter the channel, quality will always trump quantity.

Another reason why this was somewhat amusing to observe was because we were at a conference discussing how to use social media to communicate important medical information to patients – if we were doing that, wouldn’t we want to minimize noise as much as possible and not put the onus on patients to sift through all of the static to find the meaningful content?

In the end, one of the the beautiful things about social media is that while we don’t want the tools to impose etiquette on us (and indeed, they shouldn’t), as they mature and develop the etiquette becomes self-imposed by the community. This is because, simply put, those who create the best experiences for their customers, friends, and colleagues will earn their loyalty. Sounds like something worth being proactive about to me!