Hacking Shyness – Designing Social Interaction

Sebastian Deterding, a researcher and designer working on persuasive, playful and gameful design, gave this talk in 2015. His argument is that shyness and embarrassment are not individual emotions: they are produced by a social dynamic, and that dynamic can be fixed through better design.

As children we are fearless. Self-conscious emotions like shame and embarrassment are learned. Socialisation into a culture matters, but we tend to overdo it: as we learn how to behave, we internalise critical voices and external judgement so strongly that they stop us from doing things we would like to do.

Deterding walks through how these mechanisms work and how to counter them, and presents a set of design patterns for creating social dynamics that allow play, participation and experimentation without fear. The talk is useful if you are shy yourself, and essential if you organise any event where people are expected to participate, interact or explore something new to them.