The base requirement for any of the product we use is that it should meet the all the functional needs. Progressively one would also need it to reliable and usable in the same order of importance.  A product being usable is analogous to food being edible, so would you rather serve edible food or delicious food? Delicious food is what makes it enjoyable and pleasurable. So if one really wants to delight the user the products we build should be to pleasurable to use. This is where designing for emotion comes into play. Emotion is the like the ultimate holy grail for product success.

Why is Emotional Design Important?

• People will forgive shortcomings, follow your lead, and sing your praises if you reward them with positive emotion.
• Great content delivered in an emotionally engaging manner is like kryptonite for user apathy.
• Emotional design is your insurance to maintain audience trust when things aren’t going your way.

The author definitely made a compelling case about the need for an emotional design with all the examples. For anyone who is remotely interested in learning a thing or two about design should start with this book.

But the worry some trend is not Google getting into social, but its the idea of web. If each of these web companies from Facebook, Twitter, Google start building their own walled gardens All the information and wealth of knowledge the millions of us create, stays with in the closed ecosystem. Each of the these networks might turn out to be huge intranets or sorts within the internet, thus controlling the access to this information. My fear is that the idea of open web is slowly, but certainly being challenged.

One might argue that the market place and competition will decide the fate of these companies in cases of abuse of their power. I would say that this is a ingenious way of looking at the issue, if each of these companies have greater incentive to keep the system closed than to keep open. How would competition address this issue? Because the whole market sees more money in closed web.

I understand this article doesn’t make as much sense with out trying to understand what a closed web will mean for all of us. I will try and write my thoughts on Open Web in my next blog.

The Envy Effect: How Friendly Competition Spurs Innovation
Social Media’s Envy Effect

The writer’s theory is that Social Media channels like Twitter, Facebook etc. enable a new level of transparency which allow users to constantly compare and evaluate oneself against another while Human nature’s competitiveness will eventually spur innovation, because each one of us will try to out do each other by bettering oneself. Though this seems an interesting theory, I have quite a few disagreements. The competitive nature could at best spur a debate or challenge of ideas, according to me social media envy leading to innovation is a too much of an ask.

It would be helpful to understand the nature of content on Social Media-

1. Most of the interactions that happen through social media channels are just tidbits or news, viral content or content that has engagement, amusement value etc.

2.  Most of the content shared by users on these networks is not their own content, the users merely  share and consume content which is created by someone else.

3. Social Media is no measure of either Performance or Quality. All the likes, comments, followers, re-tweets are more similar to TRP ratings than any measure of genuinity.

4. Social media shouts at best can at best be about attention and eye balls, so it cannot really be a scale of sophistication of a person.

My theory is that since most users are content consumers, the envy effect if it exists, drives competitive consumption rather than innovation. When I say competitive consumption, I mean users tendency to out do each in spending other say Check-in’g to expensive places, look rich etc. I believe the envy effect leads to unhealthy competitive consumption rather than friendly competition.

Any healthy competition  between two people might at best lead to marginal improvement in creative user engagement and marketing tactics than innovation.

P.S: You might want to read my previous blog on Is Facebook driving Celebritization of our lives?

My theory is that this innate humans behavior is what is majorly driving Facebook usage.  I would like to focus here on the association aspect of it.

The cleverness of Facebook’s design is that Facebook becomes a story telling exercise that glorifies consumption. Think of Facebook profile as a glossy celebrity lifestyle magazine, the only difference here is that that you create, filter, promote and sell your story/life in exchange for comments and likes.

A celebrity just broke up, this story finds it way into the gossip magazine. You get a new boyfriend, this goes on your Time line. You are found pubbing in some bar, the pictures will find its way through Facebook time line including when, who all and where. The relationship between you and your Facebook profile is similar to that of a celebrity and a Tabloid magazine.

The essential components of any celebrity lifestyle culture is

a. Celebrities
b. Brands

And Facebook is no alien to Brands, while it already has celebrities which are its users. Facebook’s UI display and content creation features make is possible to associate oneself with powerful brands like Going to ‘Starbucks’, attending ‘Coldplay’ concert, buying an expensive ‘MacBook’, Updating FB status with an ‘Android’ device etc.

Normally one wouldn’t care what phone is being used to Facebook. But this constant bombardment of details as to weather someone is using and iPhone or Windows Phone is subconsciously embedding the idea of brands and brand consciousness to users psyche. Similar to what celebrity endorsements do.

How else could one explain why people ‘check-in to places’ or ‘share what they bought’.  For instance, the fact “You met your friends at Starbucks” takes precedence to “You met your friends for Coffee” is a testament to how brilliantly Facebook was designed. Facebook exploits the “Power of Brand” which I believe is what will drive their business model.

Though at its heart Facebook is deigned to network with the people you know. It is a Trojan horse, which gives an illusion of promoting your self, while in reality you are promoting the brands you are associated with.  Humans constantly evaluate  ”What do the things I do/own/use tell about me?” which is quite natural even in real life. Here you can easily replace things with brands, that is what Facebook is all about.

From how I see it, Facebook is a very competitive domain which thrives on promoting consumption of experiences and consumerism. On Facebook it just gets more more competitive than in real life because-

1. Scale of Social Graph
2. Nature of Facebook’s UI design
3. Human Nature

I believe extended Facebook usage will, eventually turn each one of us into a Brand Ambassadors, much like the celebrities. The only difference here none of us would be paid, while Facebook and Brands will continue to thrive at the expense of competitive consumerism aggrandized by Facebook culture.

P.S: I haven’t had time to explore and polish the whole idea much more deeply, but I will try evolve  and develop this as I get to think about it more.

When Zune launched, people were quite excited about the whole prospect of music being social. Other than Zune, I haven’t heard any product/service talk of taking music to social experience. They came up with the whole idea of sharing 3 tracks per day from Zune to a Zune device, a social graph for music etc. The focus was too much on hardware sales and promotion than execution on social front. They tried to differentiate from Apple iTunes/iPod but didn’t work enough on execution of that differentiation. Having said that Zune as a software experience is solid.

When I look at Spotify now, it just blows my mind off, as to how well it is executed. They have the social graph of Facebook, solid web to client experience. Their ability to extend it to a Platform. On an other note isn’t it very interesting, an application that heavily relies Facebook’s platform itself is positioning itself to become a platform.

In fact there was nothing that stopped Zune from becoming another Spotify, other than Microsoft. Microsoft should have done well considering how well connected they were to Facebook.

Microsoft is weak on the web, weak when it comes to networks (of course XBox Live is an exception). When you try to build a product which was meant to be social on a weak online identity system like Live ID, it is but for obvious that the product will never gather steam. A machine with rusted part can never achieve its full potential.

In fact they have made a royal mess out of Zune now. So what exactly is Zune now?

1. Zune is a device: Not any more, they have stopped making these devices.
2. Zune is an app: It really is an app, its free on Windows Phone 7 and Windows but needs a XBox Live Gold (paid subscription) just to access the app.
3. Zune is a streaming service: This is a subscription based service. But if one wants this experience on XBox 360, you need to pay double subscription, one for Xbox Live Gold and the other for Zune pass.

MS should not have have used Zune software for Windows Phone 7 at first place. Just because Apple used iTunes for Phones, doesn’t mean that MS should also use Zune for Windows Phone 7. Apple has a successful product in iTunes and it makes sense for them to build on that. But in comparison Zune is no match for iTunes in any way to leverage it for another platform like Windows Phone 7.

We have Zune, but we also have Windows Media Player for Windows but is unavailable in Windows Phone or Xbox. And not to forget we also have Windows Media Centre which over laps with some of the functions of Zune and Media Player, WMC is available on PC and XBox, but not on Windows Phone.

Microsoft needs keep 3 things in mind while designing and building future products

1. Stop building products on systems which are weak
2. Avoid duplication of products which have similar function
3. When in need, start from scratch while scrapping or streamlining old products.

To start with, Google has introduced quite a few buzz words-

1. Circles
2. HangOuts
3. Sparks
4. Streams

1. Circles

The most central and defining (also differentiating aspect) of Google+ is Circles. On surface Circles give an impression that they are similar to Facebook groups, but they are not. They are just like Facebook lists, the difference is they are uni-directional, here circles superseed individual relationships.

In Google+ you add someone directly into a circle (this relationship is exclusive, uni-directional & not mutual). Here groups of people are lumped together to form a circle. Adding someone to your circle is similar to ‘Following’ concept in twitter, the only difference is communication/sharing to that person has to happen through circle but not individually to the person.

In Facebook, you add someone as a friend (this relationship is mutual) and then categorize them into lists (exclusive to you only). While you also have groups, where everyone knows everyone and the context is defined pretty clearly.

Circles work in a very weird way  Say I have a circle of 10 people, every thing I share in that circle will come up in Stream(feed) of all the 10 people. The strange thing is the circle is unique to me, which means none of the 10 people will know the existence of it. Which is kinda strange implementation, say you want to comment on my post. There is no way for you to know the context, cause you are not sure which other people can read your comments on the post. (though you can see all the list of people whom the post was shared with, it can be pretty overwhelming to track other users)

When I am commenting on your post in Facebook, my assumption is that almost every one of your friends can see it. But with Google+, I need to keep guessing about the context of the post. Unless I know which of his circles can see a particular post, there is no way I can make a comment in the right context.

Facebook too has this context problem, but Google+ claims to solve it with circles. But instead it made sharing & exchanging a more work like. Relationships in Google+ can be tricky and too saavy for simple minded end users

Google+ at the outset seems like a lot of work, by forcing users to create circles it is kinda sucking away the fun. End users usually don’t know their sharing patterns, how can you predict what circles to make keeping sharing in mind. (I just ended up categorizing my friends in circles, but didn’t keep sharing in mind, it was done like School, Tuition, CBIT, Mechies etc ). My circles are so thinly spread apart, that I will end up under sharing

2. HangOuts-

This is like Chatroulette for friends. Which I think this is by far the best feature of Google+, its fun to use as well. This feature lets you do groups video chat, watch Youtube videos. This definitely has potential to change the way we interact with friends on social networks.

3. Sparks- I have no idea what this is all about (I bet even Google doesn’t know). Sparks is supposed to be some sort of replacement for Facebook Pages, but a very strange implementation. Sparks is like the alternative word for Interests. You need to add your interests to follow what happening around them.

But when you click on a spark or interest, all you get is a series of blue links with some text preview. It is more like a Google News/Blog search for that interest/spark. I am not even sure why this has to be a feature in a social networking site.

4. Streams- This is pretty straight forward, similar to News Feed in Facebook.

5. Photos- Photos in Google+ were integrated with PicasaWeb albums. I have heard mixed reaction on the integration. I was initially skeptical over the decision, but few whom I spoke to were positive about the change.

Coming to Photo viewing considerable thought has gone into designing it. All the comments come up on the extreme right of the page, this design is saving you the trouble of scrolling through vertically for the series of comments(unlike Facebook Photos).

This integration might change the way PicasaWeb Albums is used, those who use it as an archiving medium might have a lot to complain cause Google+ add another layer to the existing one. But the good news could be Google removing data limits on size of Picasa WebAlbums (Since Facebook no limit of the number of photos uploaded)

6. Google Buzz- The grand failure product some how made its way through Google+. Why is there a Google Buzz tab? Now we kinda have 2 feeds to follow, one is the Google Buzz feed and the other is Google+ feed. As if the confusion is not enough, when I add someone to into my circles, I don’t automatically follow their Buzz feed. I need to follow them on Buzz as well. Why do I have to follow a circled guy separately on Buzz again?

I am still wondering the rationale behind this one.

Few other obvious things which I couldn’t figure out if they existed or not.

- How do I post on your profile? Guess what, there is no way to do that, cause there is nothing similar to a Wall.
- How can I send someone a private message?

Final Thoughts-
I think Google+ is good for a small group of users, but not for a large networks. But again if you have small groups of users whom you want to share something with, we have Facebook groups for that. Google+ definitely is an interesting social networking attempt, thought at places it is a straight rip-off of Facebook’s features, at other places considerable amount of thought has gone into designing it.

But does it have the chops to take on Facebook? Yes it does. But all depends on how Google convinces users to switch and build an alternative network to Facebook, which I think will be the determining factor for its success.

+1 takes its inspiration from Facebook “Like”, but unlike “Like”, +1ing something doesn’t really add up to anything for the user. People ‘like’ something to validate, agree, sign, share the specific content with their social graph. But with +1 the consumer doesn’t really have any immediate tangible benefit, which is Google’s biggest failure here. It is likely to be another failed attempt by Google while trying to gain some social cred unless they scale the product differently.

While coming to actual question, will it be a bigger failure than Buzz? Google Buzz was more hybrid sort of response to Twitter-Facebook challenge. But +1 is a response to Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature around which Microsoft is building social search.

Ideal comparison would be +1 vs Like. And we all know who the winner is!

Is +1 going to be more or less successful than Google Buzz? 

P.S: The above is my answer to a question in Quora

UPDATE- This was written much before Google+ was launched. It makes less sense now, I will soon write an article keeping Google+ & +1 in mind.

If we look at our lives, we are being more digitally entrenched with every passing day. We communicate & connect to people digitally more often than in the past. As important as an ‘Identity’ is to a person in real world, it is equally central to a person’s digital life. Sharing of experiences, thoughts and ideas is central to humans social living. When I look at Facebook, it amazes as to what this thing is really cpable of. Facebook should try be the portal or gateway for all digital activities and interaction involving groups.

From emailing to messaging, chatting to video conferencing, sharing files to organizing your daily life (calender), online shopping to online research. Facebook has potential to solve/enhance all inter-personal or groups related activities online. Facebook with its social graph is best positioned to master the art of connecting digitally. 

Here are few of the things which I think Facebook should do:

Video Conferencing: This is sort of most obvious thing for facebook to do. Video chat is a more intimate way to connect with your friends. Just think of it Facebook page covers almost everybody, you can ever think of chatting with. Next time when you want video chat with your friend, you don’t have to ask them sign up or ask your friend’s Skype Login.

File Sharing: Sharing files is one heck of a social thing. It puzzles me that, we haven’t seen a single file sharing standard emerge to become a defacto standard in the internet age. People use all sorts of tools from email to messenger, file sharing sites to torrents etc. Facebook should try to get something similar to Dropbox to make it easier for users to share files with their friends.

Messenger Client: This too like video chat is quite an obvious thing to do.

Social Music\Movie Experience:  Make music & movie experiences to become more social. Like collectively watching movies and listening similar play lists. Ability to broadcast music, enable podcasting as well.

Hub for Knowledge Exchange: Facebook should top itself to be this. I would be disappointed if Facebook doesn’t go on be something more than a mere fun site to while away time. They should try to push the barrier higher, they should make it easier for people to do things like knowledge sharing, collaboration, archiving, research etc. What good is a social graph if we cant harness its power to make value creation a possibility. Few of these can actually be developed on Facebook Platform as opposed to being delivered directly by Facebook.

History tell us that online properties rise and fall more quickly than traditional software companies. The likes of AOL, Yahoo!, Orkut, MySpace are no where near their past greatness. Facebook might end up just being a fad which might just fade off. To avoid being another MySpace, Facebook continuously should add these newer experiences onto its platform to keep their audience hooked. A word of caution, Facebook should not try to be every thing for everybody, cause they run risk of users forgetting what Facebook is all about.

Also Read
Facebook- What it Can be! (Part 1)

• Its not the Operating System but its what one does with it and how elegantly one can get things done.
• Windows Phone 7 is less about the OS and more about how you tie all the experiences/services into a unique flow events to achieve a task.
• App Connect, The People Hub, The Live tiles, Threads, Groups, Local Scouts, Games Hub, Music+Video Hub are unique to WP7.

The uniqueness of the above features is that all of them are focused on a task at hand. If we look closely, its interesting to see that WP7 has partnered tightly with services like Facebook, Twitter to bring those experiences to the core of Operating System experience. I don’t want to get into the details of how each of these features work, but just think of it as a bringing down the richness available in each of these services to the heart of Operating System. (unlike throwing in 10 different apps/services with out any logical connection between them)

The more closely I look at Windows Phone 7 and the design philosophy behind it, the more similarities I see between WP7 and Bing! Yes that right Bing search engine. So lets try to understand Bing Search, what exactly is Bing’s approach to search?

• Its not about which search engine one uses, Its not  about the 10 blue links returned by the search engine to a query. Its about what you do with those results to get things done.
• Bing search engine is less about site results and more about how the search engine ties in unique services/web experiences into a quick summary or collective intelligence of aggregated data, to achieve a purpose.
• Bing’s Flight Price Predictor, Visual Search, Bing Places, Bing Social Search (Facebook Integration), Bing’s Live Tiles (in association with web partners)

If we take a holistic view of  Bing search engine, it has been about Search Experience and partnerships. Just like Windows Phone 7, Bing search has been about services and collective intelligence of richness over the web baked into core search experience (unlike the 10 blue links on screen approach) . In way Bing & Windows Phone 7 are quite similar, both of them are task focused. On the phone it was a melange of applications/services tied together, on the search engine it was services/partner data fused closely. Considering how both similar both the design philosophies are, its only natural to see them being fused to give a unique central smart phone experience .

We have not seen such an approach towards Web Search or Phone Operating system (like Bing or WP7) often in the past. I think this is one such example of bold experimentation, if  proven successful could force us to rethink the design principles & philosophies of other products like operating systems etc.

So did the Age of Integrated Experience of Services/Applications Arrive?  

Currently Apple and Google are crushing competition, even heavy weights like Nokia are being over run. The natural question is ‘Does Windows Phone 7 still have a chance?’ The answer depends on what expectations Microsoft has for its phone OS. If they want WP7 to be a default like Windows OS, I would say its unrealistic. Currently the Smart Phone market is still taking off, the market is still in its infancy so technically MS still has a very good chance of capturing good share of the market.

Creating Niche:

iPhone & Android are main stream now. In a feature to feature comparison Windows Phone 7 stands no where close to them. Be it the maturity of the platform or the number of application available for the platform. There is no way you can fight a 800 pound gorilla in its own game, Microsoft should play differently. The best route for Microsoft to take is attack the Niche markets. Just like RIM is synonymous with enterprise messaging & corporate mobile email, Windows Phone 7 should be synonymous to at least to a couple of segments.

Microsoft needs to pick 2 areas-

1. Enterprise
2. Gaming

1. Enterprise
Enterprises are just getting started to developing applications for mobile devices. Work with enterprise heavy weights like Oracle, SAP to port their applications to WP7.

MS should play to their strengths, which has always been the enterprise. Attack weaker players like RIM instead of going head on with Apple. To start with, by using WP7 Enterprises can cut costs on Blackberry Enterprise Licencing since Windows Phones has direct exchange server integration as opposed to Blackberry.

Microsoft with its extensive partner and industry relations should convince that they are going offer deepest integration of its enterprise products for its mobile devices. Make Windows Phone 7 sing sweet music with Microsoft’s enterprise offerings

a. Microsoft Dynamics
b. Microsoft Office
c. Micorsoft System Center
d. Microsoft Lync Server
c. Micrsoft Sharepoint

Explore the possibility of offering remote administration, tighter encryption, active directory support etc. for Windows Phone 7. This would ensure faster enterprise adoption, since none of the competitors are technically no way near to offering this.

2. Gaming
Target the gaming market. Microsoft’s phone 7 should be the kind of device which every gamer should be looking for. Make Windows Phone 7, the ultimate gaming device for both casual and serious gamers.

Microsoft’s ace of cards is XBox ecosystem, which none of the competetors enjoy nor can they replicate easily. Remember XboX community is a string 40 million, with Kinect this number is bound to increase greatly. Even if MS succeeds in getting half of them on board in next 12 months they can stay in peace.

• Co-promote WP7 with Xbox+Kinect bundle.
• Offer free Xbox Live Gold for 6 months for those who buy Windows Phone 7
• Generate fan boy envy amongst PS3 folks by porting XboX 360 exclusives like Halo to WP7. Fanboy flames sometimes help drive sales.
• Device a strategy to lure developers to get their games ported from iOS & Android to WP7.

Back in August Microsoft spoke of how WP7 and Xbox 360 will integrate , which is a great thing. But MS is doing so little about advertizing the same.

Other Areas of Focus-

1. Incentivise developers by offering 90% of application revenue for the first 20,000 applications for the next 12 months year.This would ensure a good number of developers to quickly start bulding apps for WP7.
2. Do whatever it takes get the developer community get excited about the platform.
3. Invest & Operate heavily in neacent smart phone markets like Asia & South America to improve adoption. This is very essential as it will allow MS to easily grow with the market (where as every where else they have a tought task of getting loyal users of iOS and Android to switch.)
4. MS should also get their Live ID integration right, i.e Consumer Cloud (SkyDrive). Get some sort of Kin Studio to work on WP7.
5. MS should do its best to partner with Nokia, this would ensure cross-patent licencing between the giants. Will ensure WP7 get a lust-worthy hardware.

MS should Market WP7 capabilties with great detail. In one line MS focus should be of delivering and driving the message that ‘WP7 does the best integration in the market’

What does Microsoft need to do to fix Windows Phone 7?

P.S: The above is my answer to a question in Quora