The gag: take the interaction that you have with friends via facebook, and transpose it into a real life conversation. It’s hilarious and cringe-provoking.
An old contact comes knocking on your door wanting to be your “friend” and brandishing compromising photos of you that he will share with everyone.
It highlights a couple of interesting points about designing online interactions.
When a new communications medium appears, it takes people a while to understand good etiquette. There are stories of people shouting at each other in the corridors when e-mail started to become widespread in companies in the early nineties. People said things to colleagues in emails and didn’t think of the real-world consequences. Similarly, I heard a recent tale of people being fired for posting defamatory comments on an internal corporate blog without thinking that everyone would actually read the comments.
Designing an interactive product like a website is designing communication. And understanding the rules of etiquette is important. A few years back, e-commerce websites had a tendency to engage you in dialogues like this…
Customer: I’d like to buy these shoes.
Salesman: Certainly. Where did you hear about this shop? And when is your birthday? And would you like me to send you some email every week?
Not appropriate in real life, and interestingly, not appropriate online either.
Site designers are becoming much better at understanding the rules. It’s now easy to unsubscribe from just about any email newsletter that’s plaguing you. Most marketers have realised that even though email is a huge driver of traffic (driving 48 dollars of business for every dollar spent), unwanted emails drive no traffic, waste marketing time and resources and have a negative impact on a customers perception of their brands. In the UK, it’s also illegal to send unsolicited email.
Gaining permission from your target customers is the trick. And that takes a long dialogue between customer and website, probably over several visits. Creating a dialogue that builds trust and engagement is one definition of good user experience design.
Thanks to Karl Sabino for the link.