Designing For The Human Experience

This year hasn’t been one of my favorites. It’s been “The Year of Pondering My Navel”. Or, perhaps, the “Year of Unraveling”. If you earn your living connected to the Internet, this year went by in 1.3 minutes flat.

I’m finding that what worked before may be losing out to the current fad. One area of constant change is how we interact with the Internet and each other. A few months back I had asked if traditional online forums were going to fade away due to the popularity of social network sites and nearly everyone felt forums would remain.

I don’t think this is true. I think it’s wishful thinking. I can say this because I own a forum and have been watching things. People want to vote on other people. This is how they communicate their opinion without actually stating it with words. Chances are good you have several homes on the Internet that permit you to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” thread comments. Whether or not you do, the option is there because this is a known favored user interaction device.

Since a forum such as