Social media experience and interaction specialist, analyst, and consultant. San Francisco, California

Introduction

I am Adrian Chan, a San Francisco-based consultant in user experience design broadly-speaking, currently focused on digital transformation and generative AI. My experience began with content development and interactive design in multi-media, then as a web developer and designer. With the arrival of social media and social tools I established myself as a thought leader in social interaction design, or SxD. SxD is the application of insights from psychology, sociology, and linguistics to the user experience design of social tools. It views social platforms as a kind of online architecture, in which design features, elements, and algorithms propagate user behaviors shaped by the particular kind of social presence people experience online.

The arrival of generative AI, and large language models in particular, creates new opportunities for the user experience design of AI applications. The interaction design of AI leverages user competencies with language. That is, interactions with AI are built around natural language use. This impacts not only the successful interaction with AI but shapes the use of other tools, software, and digital experiences also. I see this as a profound change for designers willing to invest time in the workings of generative AI.

I have spent 2023 and 2024 reading whitepapers on AI with a focus on conversational AI, recommender systems, question-answer systems, reasoning, personas and AI personalities, agent design and architectures, and more. I find that much of the sociology and psychology of social interaction design applies to interactions with language models, though modified by the fact that LLMs are not subjects (people).

In 2012 I joined Deloitte Digital and spent five and a half years helping to recruit and build a customer experience team of UX and design-minded consultants to bridge our studio design and onsite consulting teams. Through this I had a hand in crafting internal and client-facing documentation, deliverables, process and methodology, and more. I returned to independent consulting in 2017.

In my 20 years of consulting experience, I have run an online dating service, built websites great and small, designed content management systems, and branded companies. I have written countless requirements specs and set user flow and site architecture for over 40 web sites. My writings on social interaction design have been referenced by numerous designers and developers interested in frameworks for online social interaction. I was a long-time member of SNCR.

View Adrian Chan's current resume (pdf)

Adrian Chan graduated from Stanford University with honors in International Relations in 1988. My interests include film, music, philosoohy, linguistics, psychology, continental sociology, guitar, cycling, and photography.

Awards & notables

Workshop: What is Social Interaction Design? CHI 2007.What is Social Interaction Design?
Panelist at the Milken Institute Global Conference, April 2006.: Blogs, Wikis, MMORPGs, and YASNS: Shaking Up Traditional Education
2003 Maggie Finalist Best Online Publication Home Page Design, Best Overall Online Design, Best Online Publication for Yoga Journal.
2002 Maggie Winner Best Online Publication for Yoga Journal
Best Educational Technology Product The Civil War, by Ken Burns. Interactive Laser Disc.
Oracle Challenge Grant $100,000 winner for a cartoon-making toolkit.