Mirror, surface, window?—?three modes of the social screen
I wrote this four years ago when I was actively working on concepts for a theory of social interaction design (SxD), or UX for social tools and experiences. The metaphor still works, but needs an update.
Screens have long played a role in culture (as mediums and media) and society (as mediators of activity, communication, work, etc).
And while a cinema screen is not the same as a television, nor an iPhone the same as a laptop, these screens share properties. They share ways of presenting content; if they are phones, computers, tablets etc they share interface designs and rely on our familiarity with how to interact with them. If they present written information they share in a common history — publishing and publications (which provides patterns and genres for visual layouts, content organization, navigation, typography, use of images, etc).
The design techniques applied to making images, still and motion; to presenting time-based stories (e.g. storyboards, comics); to displaying a cover (magazine); to framing a live chat; and so much more… These techniques are shared by designers and users alike insofar as we evolve and develop our approach to creating, distributing, and facilitating the experiences we have on screens.
I called these modes “window” (for when the screen chrome disappears, and we’re looking through the screen at a person we’re talking to), and surface (for when the screen presents information, organized visually by conventions of publishing, software UI, or whatever).
But the one mode that stood out as the defining mode of social media was the mode of the mirror. I think it’s even played a role in our political process. For the mirroring mode of the screen reflects us back to ourselves, not however in an immediate and present fashion. But in a mediated and absent fashion. Thus necessitating us to have the ability to project and introject, to externalize and internalize social perceptions and their associated valence. Social media can extend narcissism. Twitter is perfect for the narcissist in fact, as it is a self-oriented type of social tool (not a chat tool; not a group interaction tool). The social confirmation and affirmation of a narcissistic user’s activity on twitter is perfectly captured in the quantified audience activity (follows, retweets, likes) which emphasizes the affirmative quality over any kind of substantive and communicated content.
Furthermore, the social screen inherits its interpretive schema from mass media. We saw this happening in the early days of twitter, but in the past few years this has really picked up. And the tweeting president is just emblematic of the medium’s own logical realization. Twitter is a perfect platform for the style of discourse and expression, for the preference for addressing audiences, for the emotional need to seek and obtain affirmation, for the ease of provocation, the immunity from real face to face confrontation, protection from genuine discursive argumentation, and unilateral control and administration of the communicative space and its acts.
A perfect “extension of man,” as Marshall McLuhan would put it, for its ability to work the mirroring mode of the screen to extend the self image of its user, and extending his or her social profile, social network and reach, and perceived social presence. A perfect tool for those who communicate for the purpose of hearing an echo.
It’s unfortunate that this mode has played into the narcissism inherent in political selection processes, media coverage and the biographical narratives with which they frame the distinctions among our political figures, and shadow vanity to which “followers” and “fans” of celebrity figures succumb.
The consequences of design choices and platform functionalities are real. Social architecture and social interaction design matter: outcomes complicate and amplify themselves because they scale in ways that can be orthogonal to the design intents of their builders. When a tool extends its functionality in psychological ways, and when it’s coupled with mechanisms that present to its collective users their own collective behaviors, those users internalize these mechanisms as social. And their behaviors and uses of the tool take these social factors into account and inform their activities. Social action (and interaction) is always fundamentally reflected and self-reflexive. Dynamics are unavoidable.
There is a new mode to add to my triad of window, surface, mirror. I think it’s world, for VR. Maybe it’s environment. Not yet sure and haven’t experienced enough to think it through clearly. But the mode would cover the immersive, kinesthetic, haptic etc dimensions of the VR screen and its functionalities. Will have to think on this further.
Rather than rewrite the original piece, then, I’m re-posting it here from its original location on my site gravity7.
User experience designers like their conceptual models. We are professionally prone to build and rely on models and abstractions — mental constructs known not for their accuracy but perhaps for their utility.
In the world of social tools, and of using social for commercial (client) purposes, our models are still well under construction. But due to the greater complexity of understanding the “function” of technologies implicated in social activities and behaviors, concepts are important.
Models are less a description of empirical reality and always more a framework or framing. They allow us to see more than is immediately visible; and to assume more than we may know in fact. In designing for social interaction, I like to frame the user experience around the three modes of social surfaces. Yes, those shiny and reflective screens through which so many of our interactions are mediated.
Screens are surfaces. Drawing on a long history of image making and communication, these surfaces are variously used to render, present, and display all kinds of content. We read this content, interact with it, watch it, and create with it. Computing screens are digital paper, but also application interfaces, and televisual screens — surfaces on which content is designed for interaction. This mode, in which the screen is a surface, is its primary mode.
But in social, screens reflect. Shiny surfaces catch our attention, present us to others, and serve as digital mirrors. This is the social function, if you will, of the networked screen. It’s a phenomenon unique to the medium, indeed it’s very power, and is the reason social interaction design must combine conventional design with user motives and social behaviors. This mode, the mirror mode, is the mode by which certain activities amplify, reflect, feed back on themselves, and capture attention.
The third mode is that of the window or lens. Here, the content of the screen is another person or persons. And this does not need to be visually presented. A chat “window” delivers communication, regardless of whether the other user is on camera. In this mode the screen is transparent. Cognitively, the user is engaged in communication and the screen’s function is to mediate this interaction.
Three modes — surface, mirror, and window — comprise the screens of social media and frame the designer’s approach to everything from UI details to big picture social functionality. Why might this conceptual model be helpful?
The user-centric approach to design and functionality starts and ends with the user. But much of the time it is in the service of a brand, an application, media — something else. UX tells us to think from the user’s perspective. But this is hard to do. Brands tend to see themselves in what they make; media tend to track and measure their own success; applications count use. Everyone counts audiences.
In thinking from the user’s perspective, and recognizing the screen’s three modes, you can more easily relate to the user’s investment in online experiences. Not “are they customers of our brand identity,” but instead “do they see themselves reflected in our brand?” Not “do they like our thing” but “is our thing an extension of their activities?”
The three modes of the screen help us to get past thinking in terms of objects, and to instead think in terms of experiences. In short, not objects but subjects (people). And in doing so, with this framing technique, we align to the facets of experience that are so unique to social media. That is, the projection, reflection, and reaching through the wire that explain how this medium works.