A Design+Startup talk on Social Design from Eric Fisher

When I look at my calendar and see a meeting with someone who has crafted products for Apple and Facebook, I know I will have a good day. I have had a bunch of good days over the past few months as I have gotten to know Eric Fisher and spend hours exploring his thinking on designing products with a social focus — social as in human to human interaction, not save the world.

If you are building a product or service today that touches the consumer directly, you need to think about social as a primary value driver and Eric’s insight will be incredibly valuable.

We have the full summary in the First Round Library along with the video. For me the key points were:

1. On the web (as in real life) we require community to survive/to do our best — the products and services that we use each day to navigate this environment should be optimized to support community

2. Social products and services should facilitate conversation — they should prod you to share your experience

3. The best social products are extremely good at drawing connections between the nodes in the network — the people, the things they share etc.

4. Successful social products are fundamentally rooted in trust