I met Adrian Chan first through email then at SNCR's recent NewComm Forum 08. He wrote Social Analytics and Understanding the User (it also appears here) and Mining social media.
I responded to his Mining social media post on his blog. Basically it's a follow up to the conversation Adrian and I were having at the NewComm Forum 08. The rest of this post is a response to Adrian's Social Analytics and Understanding the User post.
Adrian's thoughts are in regular text, my responses are in italics.
Enjoy!
...user's don't declare their motives or intentions, and so it is up to analysis to model user interests from user behavior.Well...I agree with the second part and not the first part. Users definitely declare their motives and intentions, it's the ability to understand their declarations that is lacking. Your second phrase is what people do all the time, most simply don't recognize it as such.
Agency is a sociological concept, and it underlies user actions and activities. Agency, to me, involves intentionality and motive, as well as content (information), and is interested (identifies or attaches to an object or subject). User experience is about agency. Interaction design is about agency. And inaction can be about agency, too. Fundamental to the concept of agency is that of self-reflexivity -- that we know what we are doing.
I'll need some time to digest that completely. Definitely need more explanation of "...that we know what we are doing."
In social situations, activity and interaction are framed. That is, they unfold within a frame, which is to say that they make sense within context, and over a stretch of time. And in social interaction, the frame is often mutually constructed -- two or more people know what they are doing and if asked, would describe the situation they are in with a high level of agreement. Their recognition of the frame would agree even if they are in disagreement with one another.
Yes, agree completely.
...frames can be layered and embedded within one another, and we come out the other end for the most part still making sense.
I agree that frames can be embedded and I'm not sure people always come out the other end of such encounters well. My experience has been that one of the frames involved in such things is that person A and person B have already agreed to embed frames. Not doing so usually ends in confusion.
I bring all of this up because it informs how we read and interpret, and thus also design, anticipate, and model, social media user experiences and social practices. Users provide more than just information and at the same time are less than informing. Our models need to interpret, for example, whether a user has recommended a movie to somebody, in front of a community, to be shared among friends, because she enjoys writing reviews, has a reputable movie blog, is considered (or believes herself to be considered) a movie expert, or believes in the principle of contributing reviews to the common good.
Just so I've stated it, NextStage's tools do much of this analysis.
Would we get this from the review itself? Not likely.
Well, umm...NextStage's tools do that. At least they do what I think you're describing.
...analytical software, as a non-participant, is confronted with a more profound challenge: reverse engineering the artifacts, button presses, posts, comments, ratings, bookmarks and so on left behind by users whose mindfulness or mindlessness would be impossible to measure, and at times difficult to distinguish.
Umm...I would disagree. Have you read our patent? Or the more easily readable explanations (NextStage Receives First Patent or "...programmable device..." and "...how a person is thinking.")?
Information about what users do is not available in the information about what users have done.
Not that I think current web analytics is what it should be, and do you realize you've claimed their whole system of interpretation is invalid?
Communicable engagement seeks not the acceptance of the user but his or her participation -- it anticipates the significance of agency.
I'm not going down the rathole of "engagement". I swear I'm not. I just got back from eMetrics SF 08 and heard more people talking up, talking down, taking ownership of and declaring their particular concepts of engagement to ever want to go down there again. At least I won't go down that hole again after I finish helping Eric Peterson with his whitepaper on the subject.
To put this simply, if it were Prime Suspect (or my favorite, Cracker), vs CSI -- I'd pick Prime Suspect.
Yes, although the classic BBC Cracker with Robbie Coltrane was incredible. Almost made me want to take up drinking, smoking and gambling.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Trainings:
- Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08
- International Communication Association's Communicating for Social Impact, the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association at Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 22-26, 2008
- SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08
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