JBatistaa

third places

I’ve always been an advocate of a Third Place, without ever realizing I was referring to a real and studied concept within sociology. Fast Company recently published a great post about the importance of and value in carving out social moments that enrich us. I believe all creative thinkers (or all people for that matter) should genuinely invest their time and energy into creating these moments. 

In the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to do so and share ideas with lots smart people. These people include Michael Surtees & his #walkingtowork project, teaching me to dedicate yourself to a project. The always smarty pants of Three Kings Co. who prove that innovative and awesome things can be done with your best friends. And of course, Steph Vorhees who every day teaches me there are no rules in life and to Crush New York.

I’m looking forward to a 2012 dedicated to meeting new people in new Third Places with loads of new adventures. (Also amped to have a new book to dig my teeth into over the holiday break.) 

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The Third Place is a concept of Ray Oldenburg, urban sociologist and author of The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. The First Place is your home, and the Second Place is your office. You have assigned roles and tasks at each place, and you know nearly all the people in each. The Third Place is where you meet with people you don’t know that well, or maybe at all, and you exchange ideas, learn about other people, and, as Oldenburg sees it, enrich society and yourself.

Google+ Google Social Is Upon Us

And it’s begun… Google has tip toed its way into social again. But this time in a much different – and better – way.

I appreciate the stand out features that become obvious at first play:

-creation of segmented circles, not one large network of friends

-ability to video chat or ‘hang out’

-seamless integration with Google account, including GMail, GChat, and search

It’s the first feature that I find most interesting—the notion of social networks now becoming customized, niche, or segmented ‘circles’ to interact with in different ways. It’s a philosophical departure from previous notions of social and digital networks. It harnesses the insight that Path was created on, yet Path didn’t have the growth or scale to be successful.

In our offline lives, this segmentation of friends— friends from home, old work colleagues, best friends, music friends, marathon runner friends—exist with clear distinction and influence our interactions based on our those points of interest or relevance. So creating a social space for our digital networks to be segmented in such a way makes complete sense. I will now be able to more easily and accessibly share and interact with a specified group of friends about whatever content makes sense for them and them only. That level of intimacy and privacy will empower people to divulge details that otherwise don’t live within public social networks, similarly to how we do in email.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Google junkie or maybe its because their strategy is spot on, but either way I believe this approach to social will powerfully impact our notions of social and the creation of networks & platforms. 

To read more about, check out Google’s in-depth details and TechCrunch’s review.

Thank you to +Anthony Cafaro at Google Creative Labs.

Research Driven Design

     All too often when we’re designing an experience—whether it be social, digital or real life—we get carried away with developing the execution and we tend not to dedicate enough time to research.  In a recent article Jon Freach, of frog design, defends research and discusses the necessity for it within the design process.

Freach points out that research within design should not be the cold, hard, process-driven science it is within other disciplines. Research in design, rather, should embody and sustain the user-centric approach design takes. Research should enable us to learn something about the behaviors, culture, or context of our audience we didn’t already know. Research should provide a “much more nuanced understanding of the people for whom [we] design”, as Freach states.

But we all know that there isn’t always time to perform primary research and proper studies that are often time consuming and expensive. So Freach’s article inspired me to think about my own research and the resources I leverage when tackling a problem. Detailed here are some sources made available via the social web that I’ve utilized in recent months.

-Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is almost always my first go-to when initiating research. Not because it’s the heralded source of information, but simply because understanding how we, as a collective digital whole, construct and architect knowledge. It can also be tremendously inspiring and lead to a road of otherwise untapped sources and thinking.

-Delicious.com. How better to understand what people connect with than an Internet directory of associations through and web links?

-Shareslide.net. Slideshare offers an abundance of smart thinking. One may have to spend some time sifting for relevant presentations, but it’s a great means to understand how others have approached your problem and leverage their data & sources.

-Observation. Simple anthropological (slightly voyeuristic) observation of people conversing and interacting with products and platforms can be deeply insightful. It lends to understanding what people are communicating about within the public social space and how they’re leveraging those platforms. It can also lend to larger cultural implications of how we’re adapting our communication style to meet the opportunities and limitations of social technology.

No matter your source, research should lead to insights that fuel creative thinking and, ultimately, create experiences that augment our audience’s behavior. And that’s my sweet spot as a Strategist.

Today is one of those really inspiring days.