Defining Social Media Settings

What Users Should We Study?

Generally, unless a social setting exists for a specific class of users, you’re very likely to run into two sets of broadly defined profiles: the technically savvy and technically naive. Users belonging to each of these profiles perceive reality from two different perspectives: the world in which we actually live and the world of scientific discovery. So, what we have got here, really, are two different realities: the world as it immediately appears to all of us and its underlying scientific explanations. [3] An awareness of the second perspective forms the fundamental basis of a technologically advanced culture, setting it apart from those that are technologically unsophisticated. The needs of users who are technologically savvy and those who are technologically naive don’t really match. These two sets of users have little in common and don’t usually have much to do with one another.

No best practices, methods, or guidelines for UX professionals were available to guide us as we thoroughly investigated the problem, then, on the basis of our findings, proposed a coherent set of recommendations for HP’s social media setting—especially not for such a broad set of users. The viability of the recommendations we eventually made to HP after doing our research is now undergoing review. So, our recommendations are some time away from actually being implemented on their Customer Care portal.

Without a scientific methodology for social media research in place, we could not guarantee that our recommendations would work for HP exactly as we had intended. However, a follow-up usability study across several international locations did prove this point. Though that study yielded several valuable insights, some very interesting questions remained unanswered—in fact, these insights raised some new questions. For example, when reviewing a solution on the HP Customer Care portal, some cultures like China preferred to rate and comment on the solution only if they were unable to solve their problem using the solution, while cultures like Germany opted to rate and leave comments on the solution, regardless of whether the solution worked for them.

Applying a Scientific Methodology to Study Social Media

As in every field of research, we need to define a set of empirical methods that would let us dispassionately study and understand our area of focus. We must establish a scientific methodology for studying social media settings, then establish a set of best practices, processes, and methods to guide UX professionals designing social media.

Very often, researchers tend to forget the scientific underpinnings of our profession’s existing processes and methods. I see now as a good time and UXmatters as an appropriate forum for re-establishing the significance of scientific methods in what we do as UX professionals.

Pirsig, in his cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, explains, in layman’s terms, that the real purpose of scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled us into thinking we know something we don’t actually know. Pirsig observes that there’s not a mechanic or scientist or technician alive who hasn’t suffered from being misled by nature, prompting them to be always on guard. He warns that, if carelessness sets in or one romanticizes scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, nature will soon make a complete fool out of us. Pirsig cautions us that we must be extremely careful and rigidly logical when dealing with nature. One logical slip and an entire scientific edifice can come tumbling down. [2]

To establish best practices and a methodology for social media research, study the dynamics of groups—our unit of analysis—and come to some educated inferences about social media settings, we can draw inspiration from

• the traditional field of sociology—using systematic methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis
• social psychology—using methods of observation in controlled settings
• cultural and social anthropology—examining culture as a meaningful scientific concept
• even the growing field of experimental economics—understanding markets and social preferences

With the changing perspective of the Internet, it is the collective intellect of users—arising from the societies they represent—that now has the biggest say in what we could consider a design success—whether for a social media setting or otherwise. [1]

In Conclusion

Verne Ho is among those who have taken an early crack at solving the puzzle of defining social media settings. Because social media settings are very context dependent, he has deduced that we cannot dictate any rules that define rights or wrongs for designing them. [4] Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, with many unknowns. Therefore, for business organizations attempting to find ways to leverage social media, it would be worthwhile for us to lay some groundwork for a comprehensive scientific methodology that would let us research and help define best practices, processes, and methods for social media settings.

For a different project in which I am currently involved—IBM’s Smart Market—we now face a similar challenge. We must define a social media setting for a set of applications that would see use across several countries. With the experience I gained when working on HP’s social media initiative for their Customer Care division, I am now just a little wiser about how we should define social media settings. With social media continuously evolving and new applications and uses cropping up every day, UX professionals still have some way to go before we can authoritatively define social media settings, according to their context of use and intended audience. 

References

[1] Junaid, A. “The Social Buzz: Designing User Experiences for Social Media.” UXmatters, June 22, 2009. Retrieved September 3, 2009.

[2] Pirsig, M. R. Lila: An Enquiry into Morals. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

[3] Pirsig, M. R. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1974.

[4] Ho, Verne. “Applications of Usability Principles on a Social Network.” Creative Briefing, March 17, 2009. Retrieved April 30, 2009.