Designing Social Interfaces

Epilogue

Limitations encourage creativity.

Never rue the limitations of a design problem—a too small site, an inconvenient topography, an overlong space, an unfamiliar palate of materials, contradictory requests from the client...Within those limitations lies the solution to the problem.

—Matthew Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, #97

And in the End...

In the preceding pages, we have covered patterns about self (Identity, Presence, Engagement, and Reputation), patterns about social objects (Collecting, Sharing, Broadcasting and Publishing, Feedback, Communication, Collaboration, and Social Search), and patterns about the social graph and location (Personal Connections, Community Management and Place, Geography, Location). We have shared patterns about community management, licensing, and open standards. We have also given you some food for thought in a set of overarching principles: Talk Like A Person, Design for Everyone, Be Open, The Ethical Dimension, and others.

And finally, we acknowledge in this book’s last chapter that not everyone is designing social web interfaces for the average consumer in the United States. There are facets and contexts of delivery medium (web, mobile, device); business or consumer; age (youth, elderly, everyone in between); and other factors that will color how you approach your design and what patterns to pay attention to and which to leave in the toolbox.

The landscape of social interactions is as broad as it is deep, and—as we have ...