When the World Wide Web first hit popular consciousness, the major challenge for designers was to understand that the web wasn’t print. The conventions, patterns, and approaches that traditional design had prepared them to rely on were no longer valid, and they needed to develop new conventions for the new medium.

Similar challenges emerged as the web shifted in the direction of applications, and “design” for the web took on much more of the character of traditional software design, opening up the legacy and lessons of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) research to the burgeoning field of user experience design for the web. (Though, of course, web applications are different than traditional software applications, so the lessons had to be adapted and new patterns created).

I’d argue we’re at yet another inflection of what it means to design web applications (by which I mean to include all aspects of design: visual design, information architecture, technical design, strategic design, etc.). As the web has become social, the significant aspect of applications is often how those applications facilitate user to user interaction. It’s no longer enough for the design to focus just on the hypothetical individual user, sitting at his/her computer and interacting with a single application; we must now also consider a series of users (and different categories / types of users) interacting with each other in the context of the application, as well as the interaction between the application being designed and the web as a whole.

Joshua Porter, better known to many as the author of the blog Bokardo, has published an excellent book on just this challenge: Designing for the Social Web. He defines the book as being about social design:

Social design was the term I used when thinking about and designing for the social interactions between people using software. It was clear to me that web sites and applications were “going social”, meaning that they were realizing that improving the interactions between their audience was key to their ongoing success, not just having conversations with the audience themselves. I decided to write a book about this area, with a focus on tying social psychology research with actual design practice.

The book itself is full of very useful, pragmatic design advice based on core principles drawn from social psychology but adapted to fit the challenges of web applications. The first two chapters lay out a basic history of the social web and a framework for understanding design, abased on Activities, Objects, and Features. The rest of the chapters tackle key aspects of the user experience of social web applications:

• Authentic Conversations: Why having authentic conversations is the most important thing you can do for your social web site
• Design for Sign-up: How to motivate people to sign up for your web app
• Design for Ongoing Participation: How to keep people happy and participating over the long term
• Design for Collective Intelligence: The wonderful world of complex, adaptive systems
• Design for Sharing: How to build features that enable word of mouth
• The Funnel Analysis: A simple analysis tool to assess the health of your web site

Each chapter is full of examples drawn from popular web applications which illustrate the general principles being discussed. While the book is an easy and quick read – the tone and layout of the book feel very aimed at a “novice” audience – truly reflecting on and understanding the impact of the approach on how you design and develop web applications will be more difficult. In short, if the book has any shortcoming, its that it makes designing successful web applications seem too easy.

That said, it’s a book anyone working on the social web should read. Whether you think of yourself as a designer, a usability professional, a business strategist, or an application developer, the book should be on your must read list for 2008.

[Disclaimer: Josh also happens to be a friend - but that just made liking this book easier.]