I usually appreciate Joel Spolsky’s web articles, not because I always agree with everything he says (I only agree with most of what he says), but because he seems to offer up a well-formulated opinion-argument that should quell the rising tide of any slashdot-like geek fascism. I’m talking about the kind of fascism that would insist php is the best thing since sliced bread. (It’s more like the best thing since rollerblades - somewhere in the middle.) All in all, he breathes reason into the online world of software development. And not just in short, manic doses, but in medium, well-reasoned doses. And in the fast-paced world of poorly written blogs, his writing is always welcomed. He recently wrote an article that peaked my interest because it bridges the worlds of my two academic interests: Computer Science and Anthropology.
In it he stresses the importance of focusing on the usability of the social interface, since many programs now aren’t just about HCI but about HHI (human to human interaction) as well. I’m paraphrasing his thesis when I write, if you don’t get the social interface right, your user interface is a moot point. And in conclusion he writes:
Over the next decade, I expect that software companies will hire people trained as anthropologists and ethnographers to work on social interface design. Instead of building usability labs, they’ll go out into the field and write ethnographies.
I’m sure there will be anthropologists out there doing fieldwork for software companies, using participant observation at every chance, making Bonislaw Malinowski turn over in his grave. Well, actually, there are already anthropologists out there doing just that. The hard(er) science of CS needs more than the flowery dissertations of anthropologists before it accepts anthropology’s methodologies for its own devices, though. The work to create a field of social studies for software has already begun in usability.
A couple years ago, I attended a presentation by Stephanie Rosenbaum entitled “Stalking The User: How Anthropology Helps Design Successful Products” on the very subject of using Anthropology to make better software. She talked about case studies and methods used by major companies like HP and microsoft. The methods included interviews, contextual inquiries and actual participant observation. She also gave a brief history of field studies and computer products, and so on.
Her talk never mentioned the term “social interface,” it concentrated on using social anthro techniques for all kinds of software, even those programs that involved no HHI. So when Spolsky says:
Social interface design is still a field in its infancy. I’m not aware of any books on the subject; there are only a few people working in the research side of the field, and there’s no organized science of social interface design.
I’d have to agree with him from my limited viewpoint. Looking at the field of using anthro in software though, it seems to have a larger and richer background than expected. One where much of the knowledge is still “locked” away in companies, usability groups and research papers. I’d expect social interface design to be a part of what social scientists, computer scientists and others contribute collaboratively to the field of computer software.