About Adrian Chan

Adrian started work as a content producer for educational and entertainment CDRom projects in 1993, writing and designing for companies such as Scholastic, PBS, and Sony. Like many others in the multimedia industry at the time, he migrated to web development around 1995. In the past couple years, Adrian has combined his two interests — communication and technology — by focusing on social media and web 2.0. Social Interaction Design (SxD) is a term he has coined to suit the particular design needs and interests of technologies of communication, especially social media.

In contrast to more user-centric software and web design approaches, social interaction design sets its sights on the emergent social practices when communities of users collectively interact and participate with social media. He views these media as fitting in with a class of social objects and technologies that are becoming a means of production, much like industrial technologies, but in domains of human communication, interaction, and relationships. These social media draw upon mass media for inspiration and frequently reference common narratives and cultural themes. But by relying on users for their content and reproduction, they can be thought of as participatory.

Social interaction design looks at these kinds of social media on the basis of their use and engagement, their importance for new markets, new modes of consumption, new ways of finding and qualifying information, and so on. Adrian's expertise applies to the strategic, design, architecture as well as user experience issues related to web 2.0.

Adrian was a co-owner of the San Francisco Bay Matchmaker dating site in 1998, and has since been an active user of many social media sites. He blogs on social media, film, and occasionally posts cultural commentaries on current events. He is deeply interested in global issues, was a blogger for the P2P Foundation, and participates often in Bay Area social media events. Over the years he has participated in a number of start-ups, and makes his living consulting to social media companies large and small. Most of his clients come to him seeking design and content improvements for better adoption and community participation.

Adrian has a personal interest in the application of theoretical fields to socio-technical products and services, and continues to read and study in a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, communication theory, media theory, and contemporary philosophy. Adrian is a regular participant in the Philosophical Reading Group at Stanford (hosted by Sepp Gumbrecht and Robert Harrison). He lives in San Francisco.

View Adrian Chan's current resume (pdf)

Adrian Chan graduated from Stanford University with honors in 1988. His interests include film, music, post-structuralism, linguistics, semiotics, communication theory, continental sociology, but also snowboarding, backpacking, rock-climbing, and scuba-diving. He behaves himself in confined places and in spite of a lifetime living digitally, prefers face-to-face interactions. He has lived and travelled overseas (on land) extensively, and is fluent in German.