Elanso

There are very few books out there that address “Web 2.0″ issues from the perspective of coming up with sites that work well. Oh, sure, there are plenty that teach you the mechanics of building an application with HTML and Javascript and CSS. But getting a higher-level view of the process has mainly been something that you learn by doing. Joshua Porter’s new book, DESIGNING FOR THE SOCIAL WEB, fills this gap and is a welcome addition to my bookshelf.

You won’t find any coding tips in this 188-page volume, just released by New Riders. What you will find is a framework for thinking about the social part of the social web, coupled with lots of examples and bringing to bear insights from marketing and psychology as well as web design. New Riders was thoughtful enough to spring for color printing, which makes the screenshots from actual sites much more informative and useful.Porter, who runs the useful Bokardo site on social web design, starts off with a simple five-step model of the usage lifecycle for social web sites: Unaware, Interested, First-time Use, Regular Use, Passionate Use. By organizing the book around these stages and the hurdles between them, he’s able to provide guidance to web site owners and designers who are looking at all facets of building a successful social site.

The book overall is a good mix of theory and practical advice. The author doesn’t hesitate to bring in things like Milgram’s experiments on authority or Axelrod’s work on cooperation when they inform his subject - but he’s not mired in theory. You’ll find plenty of concrete tips (many of which may be obvious after you’ve seen them) on subjects as diverse as removing friction from your sign-up process to where to place the most important content on your site.

If you’re serious about building interactive sites, this book should definitely go on your shelf. I wish the designers of some of the sites that I struggle with had read it.

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