We were challenged to really look at what people would want to do with their social streams once they tired of the novelty of them. We had to look forward to how business people could harness the social streams and consider how to use them for useful purposes other than broadcast. With the understanding that brands were already scouring social streams to find information about how consumers were considering their brands – i.e. commenting, tweeting, sharing, etc. – we recognized that there would be great usefulness for a product that could provide powerful tools for looking at the content of those streams and helping people find specific information and even cull through the vast amounts to narrow down results to a manageable amount.
We worked with the talented team at X1 to define the necessary features for the product, and then proceeded to build models for interaction that we felt were appropriate to consider.
The model we arrived at harnesses some of the most familiar aspects of Twitter and other social media tools. We wanted something that was both extensible and familiar.
The overall interface evolved through a process of diagramming features and then finding ways to link them together – then reduce down – almost like cooking – to a point whereby only the necessary items were present – and much is revealed by interacting with the interface…rather than everything being “in your face” from the start.