General · 2008-06-27

Relationships are complicated

In my talk at the Burton Catalyst conference earlier this week on The Care and Feeding of Online Relationships, I presented a brief argument for specific requirements on relationship management solutions.

My appreciation of these requirements has deepened through conversations with Bob Blakley (who kindly invited me to speak in his track — Bob, you should blog more!), people involved in Project VRM and Internet2, customers, Sun colleagues, and others.

I’ve noticed that when I present on “everyday identity”, usability folk come out of the woodwork, excited that someone is talking about Don Norman’s work, human-centered design, HCI, and the like. Luckily I have a real expert like Jen McGinn to keep me honest… I think we’d all benefit from listening to usability experts more closely.

(The title of this post is taken from the lovely Flickr photo that I borrowed for the first slide. Thanks, hojusaram!)