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If technology is a medium for changing behaviour, perhaps we should be looking for behavioural expertise, not technical expertise?

Posted 02.11.10 by Adrian Ho

One of the other brilliant quotes from my current favourite book – You are not a gadget – is this one in reference to a forum that Lanier likes to frequent:

“The engineer in me occasionally ponders the rather crude software the forum runs on. The deep design mystery of how to organize and present multiple threads of conversation on a screen remains as unsolved as ever. But just when I am about to dive into a design project to improve forum software, I stop and wonder if there is really much room for improvement.

“It’s the people who make the forum, not the software. Without the software, the experience would not exist at all, so I celebrate that software, flawed as it is.  But it’s not as if the forum would really get much better if the software improved. Focusing too much on the software might even make things worse by shifting focus from the people.”

I was reminded of this today by a conversation I was having about the effort required to get a community project off the ground. The truth of the matter is that the technical effort pales in comparison to the human effort. It is far easier to build an interface around which a community can develop, than it is to develop the ideas which will inspire and motivate a community’s members. It is easier to navigate the information architecture than to navigate the relationships and hierarchies required for a proper community to form.

As Ana pointed out so well yesterday, more and more of what we do in (both digital and traditional) marketing will revolve around the creation of platforms or the building of communities, but we are approaching these projects from a technical/engineering standpoint. We are assigning responsibility for building them to digital agencies staffed with digital experts who are recruited specifically for their technical expertise. Perhaps we ought to be leaning more heavily upon behavioural experts?

What do you think?

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    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by adrianho: Marketing needs more behavioural expertise, not more technical expertise http://bit.ly/ceh1JZ...

  • http://mdaniels.com Matt Daniels

    amazing points. definitely need to check out that book–how did you find out about it?

    i used to live on the client side, and we were tasked with creating a community. my boss didn’t ask how the progress was on the human effort, only how the tech development was coming along. i suppose it’s a lot easier to set milestones against something tangible, like software. plus it’s difficult to do really anything except hypothesize on the human effort until you get something physically built.

  • http://mdaniels.com Matt Daniels

    amazing points. definitely need to check out that book–how did you find out about it?

    i used to live on the client side, and we were tasked with creating a community. my boss didn't ask how the progress was on the human effort, only how the tech development was coming along. i suppose it's a lot easier to set milestones against something tangible, like software. plus it's difficult to do really anything except hypothesize on the human effort until you get something physically built.

  • uli kurtenbach

    Completely agree. Similar point made by Warren Berger on FearlessQA: we need to move beyond the early stages of pure technical utility to user experiences and aesthetics (e.g. Apple products and services)

    http://www.justin.tv/fearlessqa#r=SrrHzZw

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Hi Matt, the book was a long time in coming. Lanier had talked about it for years and I was surprised when it finally showed up. Picked it up at an airport.

    Agree on the difficulty of thinking about the human effort without the software. Some of these things need to be worked through rather than thought through. Makes it hard to know how much work is in front of you before you do it.

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Yeah, I was going to post on that separately as I think it’s almost another (related) issue. Technology is a commodity, many people can do it well, so how do we do it differently?

  • uli kurtenbach

    Completely agree. Similar point made by Warren Berger on FearlessQA: we need to move beyond the early stages of pure technical utility to user experiences and aesthetics (e.g. Apple products and services)

    http://www.justin.tv/fearlessqa#r=SrrHzZw

  • http://mdaniels.com Matt Daniels

    by the way: it occurred to me that this technology vs. human effort echoes the ideology of Steve blank in the context of startups. That is, start ups fail not because of the product or technology, but because of the customers. Entrepreneurs get so focused on building something that they forget what the customer really cares about. It’s worth checking out:

    http://steveblank.com/2009/08/31/the-customer-development-manifesto-reasons-for-the-revolution-part-1/

    He’s got a book too:

    http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Hi Matt, the book was a long time in coming. Lanier had talked about it for years and I was surprised when it finally showed up. Picked it up at an airport.

    Agree on the difficulty of thinking about the human effort without the software. Some of these things need to be worked through rather than thought through. Makes it hard to know how much work is in front of you before you do it.

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Yeah, I was going to post on that separately as I think it's almost another (related) issue. Technology is a commodity, many people can do it well, so how do we do it differently?

  • http://twitter.com/spoppe steve poppe

    It’s always been about the ideas, not the paper. Confusius said.

    You couldn’t be more correct.

  • http://leighhimel.blogspot.com leigh

    Not only do i agree that technical expertise are not particularly required, I also think that a lot of digital agencies tend to hire MBAs thinking ‘business’ acumen will help them have conversations with the “C” suite.

    Truth is our clients will ALWAYS understand their business better than us. Not matter how many business buzzwords we can stuff into a couple powerpoint slides.

    The one place we can differentiate ourselves and become integral is in our understanding of people. What motivates them. What engages them. What drives them. What are the cultural seismic shifts that are underlying the surface that we need to tap into from an insights perspective. yada yada. Psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, social planning etc.are all about understanding community, society, people and ecosystem dynamics all tap into this.

  • http://mdaniels.com Matt Daniels

    by the way: it occurred to me that this technology vs. human effort echoes the ideology of Steve blank in the context of startups. That is, start ups fail not because of the product or technology, but because of the customers. Entrepreneurs get so focused on building something that they forget what the customer really cares about. It's worth checking out:

    http://steveblank.com/2009/08/31/the-customer-d…

    He's got a book too:

    http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve…

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Thanks for the link, that’s a really good read

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Good point, the answer isn’t to revert to business knowledge either. I do think, though, that we need to move beyond even our traditional area of expertise which is around understanding people in order to communicate to them. We need to develop a deeper understanding of how and why people behave which is foreign to the skill set of most agencies.

  • http://twitter.com/spoppe steve poppe

    It's always been about the ideas, not the paper. Confusius said.

    You couldn't be more correct.

  • http://leighhimel.blogspot.com leigh

    Not only do i agree that technical expertise are not particularly required, I also think that a lot of digital agencies tend to hire MBAs thinking 'business' acumen will help them have conversations with the “C” suite.

    Truth is our clients will ALWAYS understand their business better than us. Not matter how many business buzzwords we can stuff into a couple powerpoint slides.

    The one place we can differentiate ourselves and become integral is in our understanding of people. What motivates them. What engages them. What drives them. What are the cultural seismic shifts that are underlying the surface that we need to tap into from an insights perspective. yada yada. Psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, social planning etc.are all about understanding community, society, people and ecosystem dynamics all tap into this.

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Thanks for the link, that's a really good read

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Good point, the answer isn't to revert to business knowledge either. I do think, though, that we need to move beyond even our traditional area of expertise which is around understanding people in order to communicate to them. We need to develop a deeper understanding of how and why people behave which is foreign to the skill set of most agencies.

  • Anonymous

    Hey Adrian, I think that Interaction Design (Experience Design) does exactly what you are talking about. Interaction designers combine insights about people’s behavior with technological decisions … Adaptive Path has a ton of resources on that, and also I think you may like Dan Saffer’s book, “Designing for Interaction.” Also, Russel Davies and Adam Greenfield talk about this question too. (And this topic is intro chapter of my dissertation as well :)

  • anaandjelic

    Hey Adrian, I think that Interaction Design (Experience Design) does exactly what you are talking about. Interaction designers combine insights about people's behavior with technological decisions … Adaptive Path has a ton of resources on that, and also I think you may like Dan Saffer's book, “Designing for Interaction.” Also, Russel Davies and Adam Greenfield talk about this question too. (And this topic is intro chapter of my dissertation as well :)

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Hi Ana,

    The difference between what I’m trying to say and experience/interaction design is that those fields are primarily focused on how people interact with technology. I think the real issue in creating “social experiences” like forums, communities, etc is understanding how people interact with each other.

  • Anonymous

    I understand what you mean now. I guess I just think about “social” experience is differently. The problem with focusing just on interaction that people have with each other only is that there’s always some for of technology included (at least, it seems to me). For example, even what you see just as a pure, unmediated forum or community is always shaped by the space it occupies and modes of communication they use. I think that there is no social experience that is not, partly, also a technical experience. But yeah, I think you are right – there should be more knowledge about dynamics of groups, interpersonal and group interactions, and rituals and plays in building technological systems.

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    Hi Ana,

    The difference between what I'm trying to say and experience/interaction design is that those fields are primarily focused on how people interact with technology. I think the real issue in creating “social experiences” like forums, communities, etc is understanding how people interact with each other.

  • anaandjelic

    I understand what you mean now. I guess I just think about “social” experience is differently. The problem with focusing just on interaction that people have with each other only is that there's always some for of technology included (at least, it seems to me). For example, even what you see just as a pure, unmediated forum or community is always shaped by the space it occupies and modes of communication they use. I think that there is no social experience that is not, partly, also a technical experience. But yeah, I think you are right – there should be more knowledge about dynamics of groups, interpersonal and group interactions, and rituals and plays in building technological systems.

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    I love the insight that we aren’t creating pure, unmediated communications and that conversations are shaped by the space they occupy. It’s a wonderful thought and I will be using that often. Thanks!

  • http://zeusjones.com/blog adrianho

    I love the insight that we aren't creating pure, unmediated communications and that conversations are shaped by the space they occupy. It's a wonderful thought and I will be using that often. Thanks!

  • http://www.facebook.com/adam.ronich Adam Ronich

    Adrian,

    Solid points and good discussion. Technologists succeed well at getting platforms to work, but I feel they are unequipped to get communities to work. This had lead me on an exploration of Urban Planning as an analogous practice to Brand Planning. It gets interesting when you start using technology to monitor and encourage the group behavior, instead of just having a space for discussion. Haven’t dove into it completely, but MIT’s SENSEable City Lab looks interesting.

  • http://www.facebook.com/adam.ronich Adam Ronich

    Adrian,

    Solid points and good discussion. Technologists succeed well at getting platforms to work, but I feel they are unequipped to get communities to work. This had lead me on an exploration of Urban Planning as an analogous practice to Brand Planning. It gets interesting when you start using technology to monitor and encourage the group behavior, instead of just having a space for discussion. Haven't dove into it completely, but MIT's SENSEable City Lab looks interesting.

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