Ways of Doing
Designing new social objects (preventative healthcare as an example)
The idea of social objects in the design of digital services was proposed in 2005 by Jyri Engeström the co-founder of the microblogging platform Jaiku. In a blog post titled ‘Why some social network services work and others don’t’, he rejected the idea that successful digital social networks are formed between people, instead arguing that they are based on ‘object-centred sociality’.
Examples of social objects include photos on Facebook or a document in Google Docs. They represent shared points of reference in social context - a placeholder for activity and enable a conversation or interaction.
Social objects exist in real-world services to. A letter sent by a hospital specialist to a patient and their GP after a scan is not just conveying information, it forms a mini social network where each can understand their next steps and raise any issues. A prescription facilitates an interaction between a patient a pharmacist and the prescribing clinician. A passport at an airport enables an interaction between a traveler and a border official or an automated gate.
When we are thinking about the design of new services, we are in part thinking about what new social objects might exist in the future. Take preventative healthcare for example. The UK government currently has a bold mission for the National Health Service in England that aims to shift from:
- hospital to community
- analogue to digital
- sickness to prevention
The prevention one is interesting from a design point of view because most of the social objects that exist in healthcare today are the response to events that have just happened. Test results, medical records, clinic letters, prescriptions - they are a response to sickness in the moment. Where as to design for prevention is to help users to understand the future, and to reflect on the longer-term past. And it is to design for the proactive rather than the reactive. As such we should ask: what might the new social objects in preventative healthcare be?
The following are just guesses, but social objects might include: ‘a preventative care record’, a trend’, ‘a prediction’, ‘a challenge’, ‘a invitation’, or ‘a year in review’. By prototyping new social objects like these, we can start to understand new types of interaction, while also clearly delineating the design of a new services from that which exists today.