“Unit 7: People Are Social Animals”

People are Social Animals

Social interactions are important, people will find ways to use the environment around them to communicate that. We do most of our communications through technology, we make connection every where we go; and now with all the social media like Linkdin, Facebook, and  Twitter it is easier than ever. But how big is our actually network? On social media we follow people and they follow us, but then we have the people we are more in contact with on a daily basis like our classmates, colleagues, personal friends, and family members. Of all these people only 150 will be considered in your social group according to Robin Dunbar  an anthropologist that studied the evolution of study groups, this does not mean you can't know more people than the 150 number, it just refers to the amount of people you can maintain a stable relationship.

People are hardwired for imitation and empathy,  this goes back to the day you were born someone would make a face at you, and you would make one back, it's also more likely that if someone smiles at you, you smile back, or the biggest one for me is when I see someone yawn I will start to yawn. This is all directly related to the front area of our brains called the premotor cortex this is the action part of the brain that allows what you think to actually happen. The example they use in the book is when you see your ice cream melting you see it melting and think maybe you should wipe it off, but the action of you actually doing that is through the premotor cortex. The weird part about the premotor cortex is that it also works for if you see your friends ice cream dripping and you watch them catch it the same neurons are reacted in the same way they would have been if you had done it yourself. The lesson from this is never underestimate the power of watching someone else do something, if you want someone to know what to do or influence their behavior show someone else doing the same task. you can also get people to take action by telling them stories, or by showing pictures.  This is why youtube is so good, they show videos on their website, and people react to them.

Doing things together bonds people, if you play a game with someone and win its an accomplishment that you can both talk about. The book gives the example of a marching band, cheering fans, and a football game all of which have one thing in common, they are all  synchronized activities. Synchronized activities full fills our desires and pleasures. Activities such as Facebook are asynchronous which full fills other type of needs but nothing that you can actually physically experience. Designing for Synchronous activity is hard, a way you can incorporate it into your product however would be to use things like live video streaming, or live video or audio connection. Another thing that bonds us together is laughter. This is because laughter is something that everyone in every culture shares, it is unconscious, it is a social communication, and it's contagious.

People expect online interactions to follow social rules,  however every way we interact with a product  it becomes a social interaction. Taking this into account we need to designing a product by thinking about the interactions that the person may have with  the product/ design. This is why things like usability testing is so helpful in deciding how a person might interact with a product.

Another powerful form of interaction is through voice, speakers brains and listeners brains sync up during communication, listening to someone speak creates a way for the brain to help understand what is being said, so if you can hear it over a video or tape recorder it will be better than if someone was reading it. The reader might not fully understand the concept, or might miss a message that was shown/ heard on a video or tape recorder.