Have you had an experience with a social network that left you confused or frustrated? If so, you've experienced what Erin Malone describes as continuity failure. Instead of gracefully moving from one stage of interaction to the next, your progressive experience was interrupted.

Erin Malone draws on her research in support of her book, Designing Social Interfaces, with Christian Crumlish, to identify numerous patterns that help understand critical user interactions, including user registrations, sending invitations, using gaming features, and sharing content.

Erin uses a common design feature from nature to introduce a new way to think about user interaction. By modeling how users interact with a system, Erin emphasizes that designers think about the progressive experience of users. She gives real-lilfe examples that embody her design patterns.

(We regret that the audio quality of this program is not up to our usual standards, due to a technical problem with the live recording.)