Food for thought: Usability and design for the social web

I have been thinking about usability a lot lately, and Lindy pointed me to an awesome blogger/web designer who specifically talks about this stuff, and has written a book on the subject.

Joshua Porter writes about designing for the social web. I love his Five Principles to Design By:

Technology Serves Humans.

Design is not Art.

The Experience Belongs to the User.

Great Design is Invisible.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.

You'll need to read this to get the full scoop on those, obviously, but here's his definition of Social Design:

"Social design is 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. It is built on the observation that many of the decisions we make are greatly affected by those we surround ourselves with in our social lives: our family, friends, and colleagues."

Check out this post on "activity centered design". It's pretty technical at first, but in it Porter talks about designing for the primary activity a website wants its users to do. For example, he distills the following into their primary activity:

* Amazon: shopping
* Dogster: taking care of dogs
* Ravelry: knitting & crocheting
* PatientsLikeMe: treating disease
* Upcoming: managing events
* YouTube: sharing videos
* Remember The Milk: keeping to-do lists
* Del.icio.us: bookmarking
* eBay: auctioning
* Netflix: watching movies
* Last.fm: listening to music
* Burdastyle: sewing
* Bigtent: group management
* Flickr: sharing photos


Then, he talks about how every feature of these sites enables this primary activity.

It made me wonder how many of us have really thought about our organizations "primary activity" through this lens. Is your website designed so that every action can be mapped to the primary activity of the organization?

If your answer is "umm, I don't think so", then check out this post on the Beaconfire Wire about usability audits. This can help you figure out what you need to be thinking about.

I'll have a lot more on this as it percolates...