I wrote about this about a year ago … honest, I did .. though probably not as clearly as has danah boyd, in a blog post titled “Life Is a Game” or something like that. I’ll have to see if I can find it and link to it.
From danah boyd’s blog on Corante:
In September, Joel on Software crafted a blog entry entitled It’s Not Just Usability that can be read both as a positivistic call to action and a scathing critique on the current methods used for understanding how design should connect with people. Personally, his words brought me great joy and should be deeply considered by designers, technologists and users of technology.
In design, there’s a desire to understand the relationship between the human and the computer. Interface designers are often trying to understand the psychology of the “user” so that they can offer an interface that will make the tasks at hand easy to do. This is the reason that cognitive and quantitative psychologists have been so involved in human-computer interaction.
Social tools don’t fit well into the HCI paradigm. While the interface is important, it is not as important as the way social relationships are negotiated. Napster was not a good interface, but the social desire to share overcame that. Many of the Articulated Social Networking tools are the same – a pain in the ass to use, but worth it because of the social component.
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