Designing for Social? Remember Zynga’s Recipe

Now months removed from the presentation that Brian Reynolds (Zynga’s senior strategist) delivered at sxsw, his main points are still resonant and useful.

Here’s what I’ve boiled down, which I hope helps you think differently, critically about what and how you approach your next social effort:

Make everything possible sharable, and use double entendre / ambiguity in the status updates

Asynchronous group play: help people achieve a goal without being in the same place at the same time. 

Make the player the hero of the story

Create hidden patterns that players can discover

Make it fun by creating choices that lead to surprises

Design for five minutes of gameplay

The funny thing is that this list really makes sense when you start looking at companies like groupon, google, apple, popular brand pages and apps.

For now, let’s leave it there, and ask you: have you been using similar principals? Are you seeing them be used well? Drop me a line here in the comments or continue the conversation on twitter @mleis….

Related posts:

1. Are We Designing for Community Completely Wrong?
2. Boosting Loyalty By Integrating Social and CRM
3. What if Social Media Isn’t?
4. 3 Ways the Ground is Shifting in Social Networks