Designing for the
Community Experience
Nick Bouton
Habañero Consulting Group + Taunt Media
#VanUE - May 26, 2009

Who is this guy?
• User Experience Developer,
Habañero Consulting Group
• Social Software Developer & Community
Architect, Taunt Media
• Owner & developer of Protagonize, a
collaborative creative writing community
• Formerly at ThoughtFarmer / OpenRoad,
Tribal DDB & Versatile Mobile Systems

No, really, who are you?
Not a social media evangelist,
but perhaps an advocate

Why do you <3
community?
Because I love design + build tools to allow people to
connect and interact with each other

via kcreamer on Flickr

Community 101
via kcreamer on Flickr

Community 101
Because it’s mandatory
via kcreamer on Flickr

“It began, as many good
things do, with some
heartfelt conversation.”

“It began, as many good
things do, with some
heartfelt conversation.”
Thanks, Starbucks.
Starbucks 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Annual
Report

What is community?
• Community <> Social Networking
• Community is a discussion, a conversation,
a connection between disparate users
• Building community is the art of making
people feel at home and comfortable in
your environment

Why develop a
community?
• Closer interaction with your users will
always bring you invaluable feedback about
your product or organization
• Many companies are finding value in having
in-house community management
• It can’t be bought or instantly created
• I’m trying to re-create that coffee-shop
vibe on a larger scale

Online community
• Traditional communities fall into 3
categories: geographic, cultural, or by
organization
• Social networks (Facebook, MySpace, hi5,
Bebo, Orkut, etc.) revolve around the user
• Niche/focused communities are centered
on a primary social object
• Social object can be user-generated or a
shared passion

Elements of a community
• Members typically value being part of a
group with a shared common interest
• They gain a sense of efficacy from being
part of the community
• Online communities require a means of
interaction between participants

So what do I need to do?
Build vs. buy scenarios

Custom development
• Pros: more control, flexibility, quicker
iteration, infinitely customizable - you run
the show
• Cons: more time to get up-and-running,
can cost more to develop & operate,
requires specialized staff to build, training
to maintain

Off-the-shelf
• Various boxed or free options like
Microsoft / Telligent Community Server,
Drupal, Jive; or host online with Ning
• Pros: easy to setup (generally...), often
cheaper, built-in moderation tools
• Cons: less control, dependence on
software vendor for changes, upgrade
costs, can hack/build extensions but must
keep in line with core product if updated

“The power of niche social
sites isn’t just in connecting
people, it’s in providing tools
that allow people to do
something better than they
could before.”
Joshua Porter, Bokardo.com

via manyhighways on Flickr
If you build it,
they will come
... yeah, it doesn’t always work like that.

Running a community
generally just requires
applying common sense

Create a barrier to entry
• Barriers are a great way to keep the riff-raff
and spammers out; make them work for it!
• Barriers come in 3 flavours: informal
(interests), formal (registration,
passwords), and extreme (paid accounts,
crazy requirements; see: ASmallWorld)
• Anonymity is fine, in specific cases.
See: Slashdot, 4chan

Identity
• Provide users with a sense of identity via
personalization and customization options
• Confer a sense of ownership, be it of
their profile or of the content they
produce for your site
• Enabling users to put a face to a name will
always encourage community growth
• Make the site feel like a home

Control
• Give users direct and complete control
over their content
• Don’t lock them out; allow them to edit,
delete, extract, and remix content they’ve
produced via tools, platforms and APIs
• Creative Commons licensing goes a
long way to making users feel comfortable
contributing to your site

Social tools
• Provide your users with social tools for
discussion and collaboration
• Ratings, links, favorites, comments, friends,
recommendations, compliments (etc.) all
fall into this category
• Don’t confuse users with too many
options; make sure every social tool has a
clear use and value to your members

Applying proxemics
• Proxemics (thanks Gord!) can be applied
through content notifications or activity
feeds based on user relationships
• All user interactions can be broken down
into one of intimate, personal, social, or public
• User-created groups can also provide a
way for users to convert noise to signal and
develop niches in larger communities

“Let them eat cake!”
• Don’t restrict your users unnecessarily
• Don’t assume that they’ll figure out your
design and navigation, even if you can
• Offer multiple pathways to discover and
tools to track interesting content
• Can be either dynamic (recommendations,
collaborative filtering) or static (featured
items, editorial choices)

Reciprocity
• That’s a big word, isn’t it?
• Encourage reciprocity and cross-
pollination
• If your users gain value from interaction,
they will be more likely to do so
• Especially of interest in sites where users
generate your content
• See: Yelp, Threadless, gamerDNA

Don’t be a faceless entity
• Get involved in your community; allow
users to communicate with you directly
• If you’re not interested enough to
participate, chances are your users won’t
be either :(
• If you can’t do it yourself, hire someone
who can: a dedicated community manager
• Don’t shelter your staff too much; allow
users to connect, even with large dev teams

Super-fans!
• Super-fans are your power users: they
keep your community alive and kicking
• They’re your leaders; strong voices that are
heard over the noise
• If you’re lucky enough to get them to stick
around, do what you can to keep them
• Super-fans often turn into community
ambassadors, moderators, and eventually
even staff (see: Jessamyn West of Metafilter)

Share & share alike
• Allow your community to share content
and promote itself; encourage growth
• Create viral tools that aren’t obviously viral
• Link badges, personalized easy-to-
remember URLs, widgets all work well
• Have both internal- and external-facing
tools for sharing content; allowing users to
broadcast between each other is just as
important to promote activity and growth

Listen to your users
• Triage: use tools like GetSatisfaction or
UserVoice to collect feedback, suggestions,
bug reports, etc.
• Iterate quickly: fast updates and quick
response from the devs = happy users
• Grow organically: even if you have a
set-in-stone product roadmap,
accommodate user requests & allow for
new feature insertions

Shit happens.
But it doesn’t always mean you’re S.O.L.

Adapt or die
• More often than not, you’ll need to make a
drastic change at some point in your
site’s lifecycle
• Don’t be afraid; even the users that moan
the loudest prior to the change will often
appreciate the benefits afterwards
• Digg is a great example of adapting and
changing as needed (comment overhauls,
Top Diggers List & Shouts removals)

The joys of moderation
• In any community, bad seeds are inevitable
• Plan for trolls, hackers, gaming the system,
or even simple user error causing you grief
• Moderation tools will be required
• Provide ways for your community to self-
moderate: user reporting, rating / voting
systems, filtering tools

If you screw the pooch
• Take responsibility: if you muck
something up badly, fess up and take one
for the team
• Recent examples: Twitter replies kerfuffle,
GetSatisfaction / 37signals debacle,
Facebook redesign
• The classics: Dell Hell, Dreamhost’s $7.5m
overbilling fiasco, Facebook Beacon

A word of caution...
• Be prepared to spend every waking moment
working on your community
• Be patient! It won’t happen overnight
• Focus on user experience and overall
usability and you can’t go wrong
• Starting local can often kickstart your site
• Don’t launch without any content, even if
you’re counting on users to provide it!

Recommended reading
• Designing for the Social Web, Joshua Porter
• Design for Community, Derek M. Powazek
• The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
• Tribes, Seth Godin
• Building an Online Community: Just Add Water
Matt Haughey
• Ten Ways Flickr Builds Communities,
Heather Champ

Thanks!
• Find me online:
• nick@tauntmedia.com
• @nickb on Twitter
• http://protagonize.com/author/nickb

Oh, and one more thing...

Please vote for Protagonize at LPV7!
http://lpv7.launchpartyhq.com/entries/