Epeus' epigone

Edifying exquisite equine entrapments

Sunday, 31 May 2009

Faces call the trust code in our brains

Brad and Dave have been writing about the power of faces in user experience, but are missing the reason they are so powerful. As I said in The Social Cloud, and stressed again last week at Ignite I/O, Douglas Adams got this right 10 years ago:
Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

Trying to model these trust relationships in the computer is fraught with hubris and failure, but what we can do is associate information with people, and display the information from people we know, with their pictures (and names) next to it. Then, our brains can apply the subtle modelling of trust relationships that they have evolved to do so well.
Making faces bigger onscreen lets us blend the two modes of computation smoothly, and filter and understand the world better through our nuanced understanding of trust.
Posted by Kevin Marks at 08:32

8 comments:

Dave said...

um... so at what point in my 4-page diatribe about how Faces Are Important am i "missing the reason they are so powerful"?!?

sorry, i think we're in violent agreement here. my post was entirely about that exact point, from the headline to the end conclusion

May 31, 2009 1:51 pm
Dave said...

(if your point is the context of the social graph relationship behind the faces = necessary trust, then i somewhat agree... altho our engagement with faces is not only based on our trust- & reputation experiences with the people behind them)

May 31, 2009 1:53 pm
Anonymous said...

I don't suppose I articulated the reason or value in faces on the web, but I did call for bigger profile photos quite some time ago. FriendFeed is really the only service that, on the whole, seems to be using larger avatars these days.

May 31, 2009 4:44 pm
Pamela Fox said...

Potential issue:
My social net is mostly composed of developers, and thus most faces look like (old) white guys. It's getting hard to distinguish between all of them. It'd be easier if the field had a bit more a diverse face spectrum. :)

May 31, 2009 10:13 pm
Unknown said...

@FactoryJoe -interesting you mention FriendFeed b/c they were quite late in adopting avatars...only the recent redesign pushed them to the fore.

June 01, 2009 7:55 am
Unknown said...

Faces are important because they remind us of our humanity [yes, I just typed that]

It is too easy to think of the social web as social data only without recalling the people part - trust and the human element is the secret sauce that glues these connections together.

OK - this comment is turning into a post..off to write it.

June 10, 2009 11:49 am
Anonymous said...

I love your website, seriously. I read it daily via my Greader
pearls

June 19, 2009 6:02 am
Unknown said...

Yes you are absolutely right. People true those who is known to him. The parameter is face, does he knows by face. Many people we meet regularly, but don’t even know his/her name. but compared to a people how talk to you over phone. You trust the unmanned person so to speak. As there are call center services agents, do we trust them? How much we care their calls ? Answer yourself you will get the result.

Robert Kaiser

April 08, 2012 7:13 am

Post a Comment

Newer Post Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

This is my personal blog. Any views you read here are mine, and not my employers'.

Atom Feed

Support the Open Rights Group
My photoKevin Marks Me on Twitter
Me on G+

People's thoughts I read:

Daily

Rosie
San Jose Young People's Theatre
Dave Weinberger
Doc Searls
Gonzo Engaged
AKMA
Cory & friends
Denise Howell
Charles Wiltgen
Shelley Powers
James Lileks
Suw Charman
Halley Suitt

Weekly

Andrew Marks
Blogsisters
Arts & Letters Daily
Bricklin, Frankston & Reed
Steve Yost
Jeneane Sessum
Brian Micklethwait et al
Tom Matrullo
Gary Turner

Sporadically

Small Pieces
Stuart Cheshire
RageBoy
Nonzero
Neil Gaiman
Thomas Vincent
Brad deLong
Andrew Odlyzko
ProSUA

No to Mickey Mouse Computers

powered by blogger

Blog Archive

  • ►  2017 (2)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (1)
  • ►  2015 (7)
    • ►  November (2)
    • ►  May (3)
    • ►  April (1)
    • ►  January (1)
  • ►  2014 (3)
    • ►  October (1)
    • ►  April (2)
  • ►  2013 (5)
    • ►  June (1)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  March (1)
  • ►  2012 (8)
    • ►  December (1)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (1)
    • ►  March (1)
    • ►  January (4)
  • ►  2011 (11)
    • ►  December (1)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  September (2)
    • ►  August (2)
    • ►  July (1)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  January (2)
  • ►  2010 (16)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  October (1)
    • ►  September (3)
    • ►  June (1)
    • ►  May (2)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  March (2)
    • ►  February (2)
    • ►  January (2)
  • ▼  2009 (22)
    • ►  November (2)
    • ►  October (2)
    • ►  September (2)
    • ►  August (3)
    • ►  July (2)
    • ►  June (2)
    • ▼  May (2)
      • Faces call the trust code in our brains
      • Press Release Use Causes "Serious" Brain Damage, M...
    • ►  April (1)
    • ►  February (2)
    • ►  January (4)
  • ►  2008 (28)
    • ►  December (2)
    • ►  November (3)
    • ►  August (1)
    • ►  July (2)
    • ►  June (3)
    • ►  May (5)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (7)
  • ►  2007 (45)
    • ►  November (3)
    • ►  October (4)
    • ►  September (4)
    • ►  August (10)
    • ►  July (3)
    • ►  June (8)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  March (6)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (2)
  • ►  2006 (119)
    • ►  December (13)
    • ►  November (8)
    • ►  October (16)
    • ►  September (10)
    • ►  August (3)
    • ►  July (6)
    • ►  June (24)
    • ►  May (3)
    • ►  April (10)
    • ►  March (7)
    • ►  February (8)
    • ►  January (11)
  • ►  2005 (101)
    • ►  December (10)
    • ►  November (13)
    • ►  October (9)
    • ►  September (8)
    • ►  August (7)
    • ►  July (7)
    • ►  June (8)
    • ►  May (12)
    • ►  April (7)
    • ►  March (6)
    • ►  February (1)
    • ►  January (13)
  • ►  2004 (53)
    • ►  December (8)
    • ►  November (5)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (7)
    • ►  July (5)
    • ►  June (3)
    • ►  May (2)
    • ►  March (3)
    • ►  February (7)
    • ►  January (7)
  • ►  2003 (196)
    • ►  December (12)
    • ►  November (14)
    • ►  October (21)
    • ►  September (23)
    • ►  August (19)
    • ►  July (11)
    • ►  June (14)
    • ►  May (9)
    • ►  April (22)
    • ►  March (20)
    • ►  February (16)
    • ►  January (15)
  • ►  2002 (224)
    • ►  December (15)
    • ►  November (21)
    • ►  October (22)
    • ►  September (12)
    • ►  August (11)
    • ►  July (28)
    • ►  June (19)
    • ►  May (29)
    • ►  April (18)
    • ►  March (19)
    • ►  February (16)
    • ►  January (14)
  • ►  2001 (13)
    • ►  December (2)
    • ►  November (11)

About Me

My photo
Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks works on IndieWeb and open web tech. From 2011 to 2013 he was VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce. From 2009 to 2010 he was VP of Web Services at BT. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 25 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the QuickTime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer. One of the driving forces behind microformats.org, he regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.
View my complete profile