Social UX – The UX3.0 design system for Web3 software.

Social UX combines research, strategy and production into one design system for groups and teams, making it a learning experience for all, and a common design language to coordinate and progress effectively in the web3 space.

We are building the wrong things in the digital space. There must be more than we can build than one giant (virtual) super-market. I also noticed that a lot of businesses hire based on competencies and that the questions these businesses ask are pretty much the same. How can we make more profit with digital design.

I remember Rene Lansink, my digital design teacher on the Art Academy, who said in 1998 that design ethics will be vital if we want to safeguard our digital future.

Well I guess, we all F%-up. And our colonial design thinking and ethical degradation in the digital space are the problem. If you distance yourself from the impact on peoples lives by hiding behind a screen, doing all kinds of wrong become far too easy. Humans are not resources, humans are assets, and assisting humans in creating positive impact on society and our environment, is what Social UX is all about.

His remark on ethics is now almost 25 years ago, and he was right. I started Social UX just before the pandemic hit, in February 2020. Today, May 2022, we can program money, and we seriously need to rethink how and especially what we are going to build in our digital space. Other parties have vision, as the WEF want to “recalibrate our human rights”, and transhumanize our existence. I believe we can do better by intrinsic motivation, self-connection and create technology that assists us in what makes us human, being kind to each other, and helping each other.

Or as Alfred North put it focus on Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Art & Peace.

My experience and gut told me that I needed to develop something radical new if I wanted to stay satisfied with my digital design work for the next 22 years.

https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1529202859362992129

Money is being redefined. Central bank’s digital currencies (CBDC’s) can become evil quickly, social credit score pilots are being run. The Internet is broken and toxic as is, but the future with recalibrating human rights through digital identity is even scarier. As long as digital governance infrastructure policy is controlled by the few, we might end up in a Surveillance Capitalism system in which our decisions are shaped by a centralised government.

Our current software design is getting old, and we need to re-imagine how and where we store data, how this data ca be used, and most importantly who owns the data. It took me over 2 years to rethink how our brands, software, and work methods are intertwined, and designing a new design system is a process of falling and getting up, as the pieces must fit together like a puzzle.

I have first iterations of the Methods, Workshops, Social Design Exercises, Models and Principles. Is is done? No but I sure gave my best, and it gives a great foundation to working towards a professional grade educational program that results in empowering software, instead of distracting/controlling software.

SOCIAL UX

Three Social Design Toolkits, and dozens of design exercises later, and I am re-charged to start a new digital product design adventure in designing Humanware. The change?

Co-design Future Realities Today by combining Hospitality, Governance and Privacy focused Assistants in Humanware. We use moral imagination to build new creative economies to connect the real and virtual world in meaningful ways. Combining personal growth with shared purpose, results in collective meaning.

We are going to design Assistants instead of Applications, Conversations instead of Pages, and define our Mission with principles in a Character Canvas before we set sail. Real-time video presentations, voice over and screen recording are new tools to make our software more natural and auditable.

Social UX; Rebuild your application and an Assistant with a positive attitude, and fuse your brand and your interactions into interactive content, called Social Apps. Designing for the wellbeing of the individual, the group and the network is our new mindset.

NK

Expose the (micro)frustrations in your apps—the #1 traction killer.

I dubbed the design system Social UX and the new front-end interaction design method Conversational Interaction Design. Two new approaches one for UX 3.0 and UI 3.0.

I wanted to build a new social design system to turn software designers into change makers, and replace colonial design thinking with Civilian Design Thinking. Let us bring hospitality to the digital space and solve real-world problems using radical new social technology. Social UX makes it possible for developers, designers and non-designers to finally work together.

Social UX is combined digital design research and digital design strategy that combined gives us a turn-based interaction system based on mindful natural language, chat-logic, asking questions, ethical design, hospitality, principles, permissioned data, and interactive visual content. 

A mouth full. But you can also call it: Humanware.

Humanware

We are not the robots, so why do we treat our customers so harshly? The attitude in your software will be the distinctive factor for your future! Slowly our companies will move into the network, so we better work on our attitude in this network.

Research shows:

This new design system results in Humanware. Real social software, positioned between chatbots and voice-interfaces, and is a manual design process at first.

It uses clicks or taps gracefully while removing frustration, well known in our chatbots today. It brings authenticity, branding, and fun to interactive design. Money is becoming more fluid and our linear digital design approaches need a serious overhaul. Not only from an ethics standpoint but also from a social and wellbeing perspective, we can use our digital space for more than just selling.

What are we going to build with technology? Is sales the only thing we focus on? Or can we use technology to truly innovate our society? Can we bring meaning into our digital space, and connect with each other for good?

Social UX brings conscious and mindful digital design to web3 by aligning intent, purpose, and meaning in your social brand definition. Define your character in the digital space, and create design principles on how your Assistant will guide your customers and partners to their goals.

“Social UX or UX 3.0 is just what the doctor ordered against all the toxicity we endure online every day! I can’t wait to start teaching and designing again with Social UX!” — NK

WHAT HAS CHANGED?

  1. We seriously need to learn to design meaningful software by aligning our intent, purpose and meaning.
  2. We need to learn to design with principles, before law becomes embedded on chain.
  3. Design for needs instead of screens.
  4. Software automates things, Humanware assists us in unleashing our creative potential.
  5. Humanware is designed with Public Principles, so you are accountable and responsible for what you build (Uphold your promises)
  6. Building Humanware results declutters and empowers us in our daily lives, as individual but also as group, team, community or organisation.
  7. A mindset shift from silo-ed applications with censorable technology stacks, into serverless distributed network software that runs your domain assistant.
  8. Move beyond convenience, and start designing for wellbeing.

I love to call it Humanware. It is precisely that; let us build software with humane principles and human rights build in. Humanware comes to life through your social brand and conversational interaction design. Resulting in a Virtual Assistant with a positive attitude is the key to inventing software for social and environmental good.

Computers are good at math; Humans are good at new thinking for new possibilities. Let computers gain processing speed; we need to slow down and build meaningful interactive content and Social Apps to unleash our greatest human potential.

Happy to bring a new design system to the world, hope we can shape it together.

Social UX in one holistic question:
What is the result of your offering in our daily lives?
Will it still be around in 1, 10, or 30 years?

Become a Social Experience Designer and start building Humanware.
Join our discord

Social UX models:

  1. Define your Mission and design principles first.
  2. Assistant Centered Design
  3. Before, During, After
  4. Focus on Human activities
  5. Thoughts > Emotions > Actions
  6. Design digital conversations
  7. Populate your Social Appstore

A better digital future by designing for paradigm shifts.

“We seriously need to speed up our problem-solving capacity/innovation speed using collective genius using distributed decision making software.”

“The way we silo our digital product design competencies in daily lives stifles our potential to innovate our digital products.”

“Don’t design for your customers, design with your customers.”

“Why do applications don’t shape around me? Why don’t they respond to time, location or context? Is this the 21st century?”

“Build Conversational Assistants instead of Applications if you want to build relationships between your employees, partners, and costumers.”

“We need to innovate our Brands, Software, and The Way We Work if we want to create a better and fairer world!”

“Scale your team’s problem-solving potential, and co-design experience maps with your lead designers and lead-consumers.”

“Mindful use of language will disrupt our old economies and paradigms.”

“Every Brand a just cause, your mission driven design gives our business purpose!”

Do you genuinely want to innovate society with real social software?

If that is the case, show genuine interest by asking questions instead of telling people what to do. Design conversations and hope narratives and become hospitable in the digital space!

“Humanware is real social software in which we combine hospitality, governance and privacy focused assistants to assist us in our mission.” — NK

Niels Kijf is Initiator Social UX & Conversational Interaction Design.

Social UX is for designers and for non-designers, which makes it the co-design proof!

Contact me if you want to do a UX Review live-class with your team it will be fun, educational and meaningful.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskijf