Media has always been social.
Since media was invented, it has been social. People spoke then passed stories down orally. Then people learned to read and write…both social excercises…including the sharing of news and other information. Then the gutenberg press, religious passages printed and shared, and war propaganda. Then we have the invention of radio, tv, the net. Each has a major component of sitting with others and talking about what is going on. Media has always been social…technology like the net just accelerates it.
Design applies to social.
Design comes in all forms. I’ve studied it for almost 20 years and have been fascinated with it. Design applies to products, but also processes, even business intelligence reports…it also applies to social experiences.
Ask a great sales person or bizdev-er, and they will tell you they design the sale cycle, each conversation, the partners involved…they actively think through all of this. Same with marketers, they design experiences…and call centers design great customer satisfaction into the way they do business.
Design also applies to social media. Any good sales and marketing person will design their information/media, people, process, and technology to get a great result…to make their customers happy. This has happened to all media particularly modern media. Certainly, with movies, music, art, and architecture are all design to please their customers…it’s no different than web design…or social media design.
You can design a social media experience…it’s probably most like designing a movie or probably more like the design of a retail experience…at least in my opinion.
The #1 design principle.
So, this sounds simple…but the #1 design principle for a product or service is to just figure out what design makes customers happy and want to talk about you…and then build to that spec. If you have an argument with this quote, I’d love to hear it: “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” - Gandhi
