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Hacking Socialization: Designing Technology for Real Social Environments

Event Interactive 2011
Format Dual
Organizer Ellen Dudley CrowdScanner
Description We think that the way people socialise is broken; that it hasn’t evolved in pace with the rapid transition from living in small tribes to big cities. Our social behaviour is strongly influenced by our surroundings, and we feel that there has not been enough focus on upgrading our social etiquette and skills to the environments that we find ourselves living in, so we are developing technology that influences the way we socialise in positive ways, focusing on developing serendipitous conversations with “strangers”. It is a type of social re-engineering: Hacking the way people socialise. We would love to tell the story of the historical influence of products and technology on the way we interact today and what psychology and anthropology can teach us about how our brains work in our modern environments. We would like to demonstrate the technology that we have built as a step towards fixing socialisation, and to show what we have learned from developing social technology, so we can discuss how product developers and designers can make better decisions in the design process to make technology that has a positive influence in the world for the future.
Questions
Answered
  1. How have products and technology influenced how we interact over time?
  2. Why are our brains not designed for modern social environments?
  3. Why is conversation with strangers, face to face, fundamental?
  4. How can technology improve the way people socialise & what are some examples?
  5. What can we do to design technology that promotes better socialisation patterns in the future?
Level Intermediate
Category Out There
Tags community, Games for Good, social re-engineering