Fun @ SJO

 

Certain recurring themes arose during conversations this past weekend with everyone from rock star hackers and coders to nice product managers.

Toys, not tools
When folks talk interactive, it's often a reductionist discussion of tools. But beyond protocols, apps, social networking, RSS, XMPP federated networks, distributed experiences, data ownership, microformats, OAuth, multi-modal publishing, and the social graph, we have to remember our audience.  If part of our job is to bring newbies to the fold, you can't build a bridge with Leet-speak, no matter how well intentioned.  Our "tools" need to be "toys".  Because a toy is unrestricted.  It's hard to "fail" with a toy.  The beauty with a toy is that you can achieve "mastery", however defined - you can stack cards into a house, spin a basketball on your finger, and implement a new page background on MySpace.  Each of these is an AHA, a moment you achieved something.  Mastery of the unknown.  Tools suck.  you work with those.  Toys bring me joy.  Can we try to figure out how to bring a little more joy?

Players, not users/consumers/target audience
How we as designers, coders or marketers connect with the human beings we build for and sell to, when we de-humanize them into a stat or a use case scenario?  During SGFoo, the suggestion was made to call them "players" - treat your brand experience or product as a game.  I like it.  New questions: can the player win?  what would winning look like?  Would YOU want to play?  A player is a partner.  you create the rules system, they engage with the game and make it their own.  A user or consumer basically buys your product.  A player can achieve mastery.  A player engages.  A player can win.  Can fall in love with you.

Engagement Scenarios, not ads or use cases
[more on this to come.  I've even got a chart. w00t!)

Networks of social support replace "friends"
Recent research suggests that the average person has 2.1 people (down from 2.9 a ways back) with whom they feel they can share important discussions/get advice from.  And that includes a spouse or partner.  So are we lonelier?  Perhaps those social networks, sort of projected webs of "ambient intimacy" are an answer - we watch our tweets pile up, peruse our friend lists and the pics on their pages, we scan blogs and RSS feeds and comment on them occasionally.  We participate broadly, socially, virtually.  I updated my status on Facebook with a comment about a headache and received a boggling number of messages of support/commiseration in amazingly short order...is that good?  bad?  are we pouring our social/emotional meaning into a barren virtual lot, or is something bigger happening here?  Both.  A great question from Cameron Marlow was "With all this data and connection, are we happier?"  Not a great question for me while nursing a Heineken in SJO airport waiting for a late flight back to PDX.