About a week ago I finished the book Designing Social Interfaces and posted the review. The reason for reading that book was of course my very own social web project, JungleDragon. Today I will show you just a few little examples of how I applied that new knowledge to JungleDragon.

Sign in using an email address, not a username

Before, JungleDragon asked you for a unique username as part of the signup process, as well as an email address for activation purposes. Next, when signing in it requests your username and password combination. Standard practice, right? 

Maybe, but there's two problems with that approach:

• Namespace conflicts when you have a large userbase, since the username has to be unique. This will lead to usernames that are not desired, harder to remember and a decreased usability in general
• When you use a username for authentication, you are basically giving away half your security. Now all that is left is the password. The recommendation is to let users authenticate using their email address as an identifier. Email addresses are of course never public.

Hence, the new login form, which lets users log in with their email address:

Another learning implemented here is that the "remember me" option really should be disabled as a default, otherwise users may forget to disable it on a public computer.

Friends are not friends, they are followers:

JungleDragon has a simple friend system. From any user's profile, you can friend them. Basically that is like bookmarking a user you like. The "friended" user will not even know it. From there on, you can follow their activity.

Based on the insights delivered by the book, I had to conclude that I was wrong in this approach. What I implemented was not friending, it is following. Friending is what happens at social networking sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn. It concerns an actual person to person relationship, be it in real life or online. 

JungleDragon isn't a social networking tool though. It is a social media tool. People will not manage their contacts in JungleDragon, they will come there for content. In that context, when they "friend" someone, they are following content, not an actual friend.

Therefore, as suggested by the book, I switched to the concept of following and followers. Not to mimic Twitter, no, simply because it makes more sense within the scope of what JungleDragon really is.

And there is much more to say about how to implement friending and following. One example is unfollowing. In a social context I may be considered rude to unfollow someone, just like when it can be rude to decline an invitation. Therefore, I'm making it very clear beforehand what the consequence is, for example "No email will be sent when you unfollow someone".

Warn users beforehand, not afterwards

Speaking of beforehand notices. I think by now most developers and designers are aware of the importance of feedback to a user. A system should tell the user what it is doing and what the outcome is at all times. Fine. However, often the feedback before a transaction takes place is forgotten. For example, the JungleDragon registration form has a password field. When users submit the form and it is not at least 6 characters, they will get an error saying so. 

A much better way of course is to not confront the user with such a dissapointing message and to tell him beforehand:

Trivial to implement, but much better for usability.

Conclusion

I could go on and on about little fixes like this. I implemented about 40 small changes like this based on the book alone. This proves to me two things:

• Despite being heavily invested in social media and usability engineering, I am wrong quite often. There are things that I overlooked, did not think through enough, or were based on false assumptions.
• No matter how convinced I am about my design decisions, there is always room for a different perspective, someone who knows better, and I should actively pursue that.

And last but not least...it feels good to be wrong. By actively seeking other perspectives and admitting errors I am now a slightly better developer/designer and JungleDragon will be a slightly better platform. That's all that matters really. I cannot wait to unleash a JungleDragon private beta to you later this year...

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