service design notes: increase serendipity · 2007-03-28 21:15
Two counterpointing thoughts about service design, the first about the practical magic of serendipity.
Of all the services that are emerging at the moment, those I’m drawn to fulfill a simple goal: to increase serendipity. There’s a big difference between this and actually completing a task, or doing something specific. The serendipitous service of the moment is Twitter – to the point where it’s mentioned by the weblog of the Economist. It’s hard to understand until you use it, and it does you some good. The key is to get a good body of friends signed up; once there is a quorum, things start getting interesting. You become both more intimately connected (increased smalltalk), plus you’re more likely to meet up in real life. Or do something for a friend.
What’s clever, over the more formal kinds of presence that have never quite taken off, is that there’s privacy through ambiguity. You don’t declare yourself free, busy, available. If you’re in the mood to meet people, and going somewhere or doing something, you twitter it. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything will necessarily happen, but you’ve created a possibility space for things to happen in.
As an example – I mentioned I was doing something in London in preparation for a trip to Helsinki. Now, nothing happened in London, but a friend in Helsinki asked me to bring over a copy of a magazine (the new luxury trainspotter magazine, Monocle). Not an expected result, but a happy and fortuitous one. So, it just makes life a bit happier, as things seem to conspire to make things happen. It’s slightly magic.
It’s also one of the few services where being truthful about who your friends are makes a difference – a lot of criticism of Twitter has been that it’s full of inanity. Well, yes, if there isn’t the context of knowing the other person. Twitter is a tool, and can be used in lots of different ways, but I don’t understand the thought that it’s a tumblelog or weblog, and I certainly don’t understand those with 200 or 2000 friends or followers. I’m at about 80, and that’s the rough limit for me, I guess. Some friends have been removed for being too verbose, but that’s nature of a new construct where the social norms are being established. I’m being stricter about where people are, as well, so whilst I’m interested in the scattered individuals around the globe, it’s most useful to myself (and to them) if we’re in the same geographic area.
Twitter isn’t the only service with similar serendipitous properties. I’ve started using Upcoming a lot more, now I’m back in a city where there’s too many things happening to keep track of. Any event I’m going to, or (cleverly) I’m thinking of going to, is recorded and published. I can see who else is going to an event, too. So again, slight magic happens. Friends turn up unexpectedly at gigs. You hear about events going on with enough warning to buy tickets and organise going out.
my possibility space for April, drawn from upcoming and google calendar
The newest service on the block is Dopplr, emerging from stealth startup to private beta. It’s a simple service, designed for people that travel a lot – say over 5 times a year. It lets you say where you’re going to be, and when, and then tells you if any friends are there too. I can see at the moment, for example, that there’s 11 friends going to be in Paris for Xtech in May (I’m attending purely for the patisserie and confit track).
It’s exciting that there’s services looking at the future – much effort has gone into recording, collecting and remembering. What’s also good is that I haven’t had to publish my calendar, with all the privacy overhead (and it isn’t about the jeweller’s precision of a calendar event either).
Whilst Upcoming could resemble a calendar, and certainly can be used this way, in reality it’s a serendipitous service hanging off the tightly place- and time-defined pegs of events. Events are formal; they don’t just emerge at the last minute, unlike, say going to the cinema or pub with some friends – things which don’t work with Upcoming, but do work with twitter. So, this is one way of categorising services like these: formality, from casual to defined.
The other interesting property is that of time. Flickr, if photos are uploaded in real time, can be serendipitous, and works in the very-recent-history. Twitter works best in the here and now, probably an hour or day or two, Upcoming in the near-future, weeks to months, and Dopplr more in the near-to-far-future (with, of course, implications in some future here and now). Radars and early warning systems. Time is also influenced by where you live – organising formal events in London often needs months of lead time to get tickets.
There are certainly gaps still to fill. Can’t wait to see what else emerges in this space.
The interconnecting part 2 will emerge soon…