Boosting Social Interaction with AI: Five Tactics for Product and Technology Innovators

Social interactions are the bread and butter of our daily lives, whether it's a quick chat with a colleague or a deep conversation with a friend. How we communicate, interpret, and react to each other shapes these interactions, which can be accidental, repeated, regular, or regulated by laws and norms. Here are five tactics for using AI to facilitate social interaction effectively.

Drive Social Interaction is the eighteenth Design Strategy in a series where I share essential tips for creating tech products people love, based on the book Design Things That Make Sense (with a free downloadable toolkit).

Read all articles about Design Strategies here.

Steer Accommodation

Communication accommodation theory explains why and how we adjust our verbal and nonverbal communication based on our conversation partner. When we adapt our style to match someone else's, we gain approval and improve communication efficiency. This is especially relevant in our digital age, where emojis have become the stand-ins for nonverbal cues, for example. We learn quickly which emojis to use and when to use them based on our interactions.

Consider the AI-based writing tool, Grammarly . This system not only corrects your grammar but also provides real-time analysis of the tone and style of your writing, offering advice to ensure they match the recipient's style. While more and more people use ChatGPT to infuse the right tone into their texts, Grammarly and ChatGPT serve different purposes. Grammarly provides instant, tailored feedback on tone of voice, integrated directly into your writing process. ChatGPT, on the other hand, offers a more flexible, conversational approach to discussing and demonstrating tone, making it more suitable for in-depth discussions about tone and versatile demonstrations of different tones.

Facilitate Exchange

Social exchange theory proposes that our interactions are like transactions, where we try to maximize benefits and minimize costs. The concept of reciprocity underpins this theory: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

Social networks have transformed social dynamics by introducing indirect reciprocity, where likes and comments build a sense of community without expecting direct returns. Kudos brings this concept to the workplace through its employee recognition, feedback, and communication platform. The AI-powered Recognition Assistant simplifies the process of crafting personalized and meaningful messages for recognizing team efforts. It provides tailored suggestions, ensuring that acknowledgments are sincere and impactful. This AI tool helps overcome challenges like time constraints and language barriers, ensuring all contributions are promptly recognized. Kudos also enables team leaders and employees to recognize and appreciate each other effectively.

Stimulate Competition

Friendly competition can be a powerful motivator for individuals while also building communities as users communicate with each other while competing. Various AI-powered products tap into this competitive spirit to engage users.

Competition is a key element in Strava 's social fitness platform. Users can join or create clubs based on their interests and activities, from casual groups to competitive racing teams. Within these clubs, members share activities, participate in discussions, and organize events, fostering community and engagement. Each club features a leaderboard that ranks members based on their activities, creating friendly competition and motivating members to stay active. Club Feeds facilitate real-time interaction, building relationships while supporting competition and keeping members connected and motivated.

Strava uses machine learning to detect and flag "irregular, improbable, or impossible activities" through a feature known as Leaderboard Integrity. This helps maintain fair competition by identifying and addressing potential cheating on segment leaderboards.

Mediate Conflict

Conflict is inevitable, and managing it effectively is crucial. With the advent of AI, conflict mediation has entered a new era. AI can now detect conflicts even before they escalate. For example, AI algorithms can analyze physiological, linguistic, and acoustic data from wearables and smartphones to predict a brewing argument between partners and suggest taking a walk or other calming actions. If a conflict does occur, TheMediator.AI provides an affordable alternative to traditional mediation services through its AI-powered platform.?

Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) systems are also increasingly using AI to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers. Systems like eBay's Resolution Center and Alibaba ’s Complaint Center employ algorithms in its ODR systems to automate the resolution process, leveraging AI to analyze disputes and propose fair solutions.

Encourage Cooperation

Cooperation is the glue that holds teams and societies together. It thrives when there is an overlap of goals, interests, and desires. Digital tools have become essential in facilitating cooperation, especially among remote teams.

For example, Replit offers an AI-powered software development and deployment platform for building, sharing, and shipping code quickly. Examples of collaborative product features are real-time collaboration with live cursors, multiplayer feature for simultaneous coding and chat functionality for team communication. Not only does Replit offer the ability to software development teams to collaborate on their code offline and online, but it also offers AI as a partner in actually creating or improving the code. Tools like these ensure that teams work together smoothly and efficiently.

Dos and Don’ts for Drive Social Interaction

?? Be aware of the importance of reciprocity in social exchanges. Recognize and reward contributions to maintain balance.

?? Tap into the competitive spirit to drive engagement and motivation among users.

?? Leverage AI tools to facilitate cooperation among team members, ensuring smooth and efficient collaboration.

By integrating these tactics into your product design, you can enhance social interactions, making them more meaningful and effective. Remember, a touch of competition, balanced exchanges, conflict mediation, and cooperation can go a long way in driving positive social interactions.

—

This article is the eighteenth publication in a series of articles sharing practical, actionable tips on how to design tech products that people don't just use, but love. We'll dive into applying AI in ways that truly matter by making technology work for people, not the other way around.

You can find all publications here.

The articles build on the world’s leading design methods for designing successful tech products, as described in the book “Design Things that Make Sense”. Visit www.designthingsthatmakesense.com to learn more or download the free toolkit.

?? Stay ahead of the curve in tech innovation. Follow me for this insightful series.