SharpStyle Labs

Good presentation covering all the common elements across Ajax/Web 2.0 social applications. Here are a few examples:

• Commenting
• Ranking
• Auto-suggest
• Edit-in-place
• hover menus
• a lot of well used white space that utilizes above mechanisms
• Hide main navigation for repeat visitors

An interesting concept came up during the discussion: Introduce new features, but don’t force them onto users as users get used to existing interface.

A few websites were mentioned:

• www.bokardo.com — “what is social design” by Joshua Porter

Social design is a subset of design that focuses on the social lives of users. It deals with the activities, behaviors, and motivations of people who work and play together through software interfaces. In the early days of the Web, most sites were read-only, focused on providing information to a single person at a time. Then the Web became read/write, allowing people to save information but still mostly for them acting alone. Now, we’re seeing a tremendous amount of social software that allows many people to collaborate and share what they’re doing with others. Designing for this social world is social design, and that’s what we’re talking about here at Bokardo.

• www.twitter.com

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!

Greg Narain works for www.bluewhalelabs.com (Strategic consulting, design & development for innovative social applications)

~Mike