You’re absolutely right that we can’t design the interactions between people — that kind of engineering would be against any decent person’s principles! But a design methodology can still be developed for a better understanding of the intersection of user psychology, user experience, and application design. And insofar as we ought to anticipate as much of individual user experience *and* emergent social practices, I think a social interaction design framework would serve us well. After all, methodologies are as much a means of structuring our own work and approach, as they are of explaining the user experience (which is something that escapes every product design, ultimately).

To wit, and I have several papers and slideshows on my site plus the blog, I think there’s a way to map conversations, user to user interaction, user to audience interaction, and social activities (games, etc). And I think we can break down content/information based vs messaging based applications, as well as learn a lot more about the temporality of flow social apps (and others that exchange conventional navigation for a constant stream of activity).

To the extent that third parties want to use these apps for marketing, pr, or advertising purposes, we have again an interesting opportunity to define terms of engagement. What’s in the future of feed-based marketing? Of product placement in social apps? Of buzz marketing via conversational tools?

The challenge, to me, is a bit like considering what TV can do, circa mid 1940s. Could they have imagined reality TV, 24 hour news, or fantasy football back then?

Knowing what the medium does, and how it can move individual users, and audiences, is what makes social media so fascinating.

Thanks for the post!
Adrian