What's persuasive in design terms differs from what's persuasive in
terms of interaction. When the interaction is communication, it
consists of an open-ended series of transactions. That's persuasive
enough for most to make themselves available to communication, if not
interested and actively attentive to it. In short, yes, communication
is itself a "persuasive" mode of interaction, but at the risk of
changing what we mean by persuasive.
If persuasive is applied more strictly to design and architectural
choices, then persuasiveness in user experience would comprise of
elements in the designers original control: things part of the design
process. Communication wouldn't fit here: we don't control
communication itself, only its medium.
There are aspects of twitter's design that exhibit what we mean by
persuasive design: number of followers, which ties to social rank,
personal status, individual social competence and relevance,
influence, and other things signified by the number. The number is not
just a number, but is a sign: it is a number in absolute terms but
also a sign of social status in relative terms.
Also notable in twitter's design is that twitter places your message
in line with those of people you follow. An accurate design would
place your post in line with people who follow you. Those are the
people who will see you and your post. People following you are in
fact the people who would read and respond to your tweet. Design wise,
twitter and apps like seesmic and tweetdeck are an example of
persuasive design in how they achieve this sleight of hand: you tweet
and see the people "in front of you" (who you follow), not the
audience "behind you" which in fact sees your tweets (who follow you)...
In general persuasion seems to me a good shift of emphasis for some
product designs to affect, emotion, and nuanced connections a consumer
may establish with a product based on projection, internalization,
identification and other ways in which we externalize feelings and
mediate them and their expression through objects.
Strictly speaking i don't think persuasion should be applied to
communication and social interaction environments, lest we confuse
design elements with actual interpersonal exchanges.
adrian
415 516 4442 Twitter: /gravity7
Social Interaction Design, Expertise, Consulting (gravity7) (gravity7
blog) (slideshare)
Sr Fellow, Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)
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On Jul 14, 2009, at 12:18 AM, Daniel Szuc wrote:
For example, is there anything persuasive about the Twitter UI? Or is
it that the conversation itself in Twitter persuades me to continue to
use it?
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