When I joined Facebook*, somewhere in 2009 it was with a lot of good intentions in mind: Keeping in touch with my friends while enjoying a feature rich environment we didn’t have back in the day. It was an age where we pretty much jumped on any social media platform that would come up, grab our vanity username and enjoy the novelty.
Slowly but surely, I drifted away from that original purpose to a point where if I opened my Facebook feed right now, I’ll probably see a bunch of posts and pictures from people I hardly even want to be in touch with, no to mention the little value I’ll get from said ‘feature rich environment’ that’s mostly designed to keep me engaged with the service.
I’m starting to think about how am I going to design and manage my products towards meaningful use: this term floats around in meetings and in essence it’s about using a product in a way that provides actual value. My take on it is: Design a product in a way that keeps the user in the scope of his original intent, or support it as it evolve.
* Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, you name it.