Web 2.0 was a radical shift for how people interacted with each other via their personal computers. This was a time when online communities had started to form, and it entailed a need for features that accommodated social interactions in real or asynchronous time.
These social features were made up by user-to-user interaction and user-generated content. A mix of these two created experiences that went beyond the control of whatever business was hosting them. So, instead of consumption, users participated through the following: commenting, messaging, sharing, and adding people as “friends” to their networks.
Richer interface behaviors were enabled by technologies like Flash. The sites then felt more immersive and emotionally textured rather than purely task-oriented. This was a pivotal moment in interaction design because it explored the experiential dimension of using the web, not just its purely functional one.
Interactions today are arguably more dynamic— even then, the term is more nuanced than we give it credit. Today’s idea of “dynamic” lies in a mobility context. We bring our laptops, phones, and/or tablets everywhere, vulnerable to the velocity of information that comes through the screens in an algorithmic fashion. We have built an ecosystem where social features are necessary (or mandatory) to our daily operation. And because of this proliferation of convenience, we as a species have come to a common and tense philosophical inquiry:
“How do we even keep up?”
Designs today must navigate concerns about AI ethics, echo chambers, privacy, data permanence, and surveillance. These weren’t a central issue during the rise of Web 2.0.
An example I could give is from a Creative Entrepreneur project my team and I am working on: an anti-financial fraud service. From concept testing, I came across multiple participants who needed a Terms of Service immediately accessible from our product’s dashboard. Some have also mentioned their distrust of AI.
In Web 2.0, interactions were primarily about social participation. Today, however, interactions touch on what ethical and temporal implications social participation has.