Designing for the Social Web

Chapter 2. A Framework for Social Web Design: The AOF method for making early and crucial design decisions

	“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
	--RALPH WALDO EMERSON

If there is one disease that affects nearly all design projects, it’s feature creep. It is the deadly affliction in which design teams gradually add feature after feature, like straws on a camel’s back, until they ultimately overload their interface and make the software difficult to use.

Feature creep happens when there is a lack of sustained focus on what’s most important. Instead of deciding on a few ...