Comments on: Mitigating abuse of the products you design http://www.pushbuttonfor.org/mitigating-abuse-of-the-products-you-design/ Gino Zahnd's weblog about design, culture, and Whatever™. Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:38:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.7 by: Damien Newman http://www.pushbuttonfor.org/mitigating-abuse-of-the-products-you-design/#comment-65 Fri, 12 May 2006 17:01:34 +0000 http://www.pushbuttonfor.org/mitigating-abuse-of-the-products-you-design/#comment-65 So I was, for no apparent reason, reading up on eBay and it the question arose (in my mind) of how much abuse is conducted through adapting the technology, and prevented using technology. In the case of eBay, it seems a lot of misuse and fraudulent behaviour comes from physical actions - like not shipping merchandise or selling broken stuff. So technology isn't able to capture and prevent that easily. In the case you describe, someone actually creates an app to game the system. Can stuff like this be caught and managed through technology and designing the product? Perhaps that's the question you're asking. So I was, for no apparent reason, reading up on eBay and it the question arose (in my mind) of how much abuse is conducted through adapting the technology, and prevented using technology. In the case of eBay, it seems a lot of misuse and fraudulent behaviour comes from physical actions - like not shipping merchandise or selling broken stuff. So technology isn’t able to capture and prevent that easily.

In the case you describe, someone actually creates an app to game the system. Can stuff like this be caught and managed through technology and designing the product?

Perhaps that’s the question you’re asking.

]]> by: Damien Newman http://www.pushbuttonfor.org/mitigating-abuse-of-the-products-you-design/#comment-64 Thu, 11 May 2006 23:38:16 +0000 http://www.pushbuttonfor.org/mitigating-abuse-of-the-products-you-design/#comment-64 There's that line where you want people who are extreme and loyal users of the system to be able to become experts, and if possible provide their workarounds for it, for others to use. Then on the other side of the line, there are the abusers. I find it funny that there is a smutty underbelly to Flickr for all its fuzzy, friendly and family positioning. Many communities couldn't be built so quickly without the early adopters being able to quickly tailor or establish themselves, without too much regulation. So I would pitch that in some cases adaptable uses is tolerable if not encouraged to build loyalty and commitment from community members. Which can be minimized if it is user-generated content I suppose. Two essays that I'm sure were inspirational to me back when I read them (though I no longer recall much of them now) are: Shirky's: <a href="http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html" rel="nofollow">A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy</a> & <a href="http://shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html" rel="nofollow">Social Software and the Politics of Groups.</a> There’s that line where you want people who are extreme and loyal users of the system to be able to become experts, and if possible provide their workarounds for it, for others to use. Then on the other side of the line, there are the abusers.

I find it funny that there is a smutty underbelly to Flickr for all its fuzzy, friendly and family positioning.

Many communities couldn’t be built so quickly without the early adopters being able to quickly tailor or establish themselves, without too much regulation.

So I would pitch that in some cases adaptable uses is tolerable if not encouraged to build loyalty and commitment from community members. Which can be minimized if it is user-generated content I suppose.

Two essays that I’m sure were inspirational to me back when I read them (though I no longer recall much of them now) are:

Shirky’s: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy &
Social Software and the Politics of Groups.

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