JCC's Report

“The Realm of Sociality: 

Notes on the Design of Social Software”

The main significance of this paper is that, there is a need of putting in use models and design frameworks to help the designers to create, in structured manner, social systems. It is important to mention that as Dr. Alex Ramírez said several times during the previous class and also it is written in this paper: “sociality cannot be designed; it can only be designed for”.

The most relevant part of the introduction for me is the precept that the authors hold that sociality, not functionality, Is the key concept in social software systems, because it’s most important to have a social knowledge of the social group or part of the society we are trying to affect or the sector that we want to create the system for, in order to determine the correct functionality of the application of system.

Other important part of the introduction is that the authors focus on social software systems as a means of pursuing sociality, and take advantage of the trigger mechanisms in people that make them engage in offline and online social services.

Then the authors take an approach focus on the soft systems methodology, investigating the sociality in order to have a qualitative methodology for complex situations as the social networks are. They show a figure where there is a line between the real world and the thinking systems in with there is interaction between the problem situation, that goes through root definitions of relevant systems and conceptual models that once that transit over the real world improve the problem situation.

The next part of the document explains the sociality that helps us to understand how creatures organize their relations. They mention a distinction of types of sociality based on the type subject related in the social group that can be either only people and groups or artifacts. Then they mention the level on interaction that results in the grade of complexity, resulting in one-dimensional or multi-dimensional. The authors present a table that encapsulates all this types of sociality for further identification, for example the multi-dimensional artifact-base represents social networks through hardware and/or software, and they named it “System-centered sociality”.

The following part is the conceptual model where the authors put the sociality right in the middle as a driving force for the design and development of social software.  Around the center (vertical) they put the theories of social structure to provide rules and norms and the theories of situated experience to emphasize actions and intentions. 

The other segment (horizontal) is about the social practice that consists on the mechanisms by which the groups interact and the ones related to the identity and its relation to the group. They include four realms based on the theories expressed before to represents design areas to be included.

Then they show the Last.fm case where through the classification of music, opinions and ratings the website receive information of the users and groups that results in personalized the right music to the right people. The authors then explain how each one of the defined realms applies to this case. For me the most relevant one in this example is the realm of actualizing self because through the characteristics of the individual, this site associates it with other people with the same preferences to provide more options that can be for the preference of the individual.

The following part of the paper is oriented to the triggers and mechanisms that help people to be part of a social group or even to be able to create their own group. That is the case of the great success of twitter.com, which reinforces the feeling of situated connectivity and enables group formation.  It’s a form sociality based of points of interest that create strong relations where the people express ideas or spontaneous thinking, that’s why there are a lot of new users every day, it’s easy to relate to small expressions, it’s also easy to follow several people or groups at the same time. Perhaps the most important mechanisms are the limit of size for the messages that help users to see a lot of messages in a small area, also the continuity of the activities that the users are going through in real time.

A design framework takes stage in the following part of the paper. This framework is designed as a guideline to the designers and developers of social software that invite people to join in social activities. The realms depicted above in this document take a structural part of this framework, and are correlated to some design patterns like: domains, criteria, principles, parameters and dilemmas to provide a certain directive for each case. 

From the design framework presented above the authors present the case of LinkedIn and Friendster, where those authors explain the distinctions of each other through the patters of design. For example in the design principles LinkedIn offers clear objectives while Friendster’s objectives are vague. However the most relevant part of this case is how the authors explain that even though both sites are labeled as social network ones with similar functionalities are differ dramatically on the way they stimulate users to engage in social activities.

At the end of this paper the authors express the importance of the concept of sociality towards the work of social software designers, and the possibility to consider and use the conceptual model and design framework presented is this paper.

Conclusion

It is critical for systems architects and developers to consider sociality as a corner stone of social software systems as part of their designs and creative processes to correctly cover a certain need. There is area of opportunity for new social websites that have the possibility to success, but it order to achieve that success the architects have to identify first the need and understand social wise the problem and provide the correct triggers and mechanisms for people to be able to be part of a social group, even with the possibility of creating their own sites. But this entire new overhaul has to be supported by models, frameworks and techniques, and follow guidelines because a bad designed social site with no social interest of the users is a failure on its own.