There are so many aspects to designing for the web, and few of them have to do with pretty colors or flashy graphics. Even though I’m not a designer, even code-pushers have to consider the many areas of design these days.
In addition to graphic design (look and feel) and interaction design (interface and usability), there’s often social design. This summer at Webvisions, Rashmi Sinha said to let people feel the presence of others.
Luke Wroblewski has some notes from a talk at Web App Summit about Learning from social Web Applications. Something that really jumped out at me:
Sites with good social design model the social lives, goals, and interactions of their users.
In other words, you have to emulate real life. There’s a breakdown of the many elements of social design:
motivation, identity, control, independence, privacy, authority, gaming, community, and emergence.
Read the whole thing to find out the details of each element.