10/29 Reading

Chapter 7 of Howard’s Design to Thrive entitled “Significance” focuses on building gravitas, brand, and recognition. This chapter will focus on what to look for in terms of providing members of a social community with a sense of significance and would make them want to continue with the site and use it long-term.

In order to make your community be viewed as significant, it needs to be: “well recognized, established as the “go-to-place for accomplishing your users’ goals, valued by people your users respect, population by people who are serious and passionate in their field and distinguished as a reputable brand to your users” (168). Creators of communities must keep in mind that outside factors are as much of an importance to success to the community as inside ones.

The idea of exclusivity is attractive for potential members. Howard makes a key point when it points this concept out on page 168: “People are perverse; they want to be a part of a group, but they don’t want to be another face in the crowd.” The challenge for designers comes into play because of this thought process by users. An example of this type of exclusivity can be seen through the start of Facebook. First designed as an extremely exclusive site, the site then became more open to the public by very slowly, and through several steps. When Facebook went completely public, some members cried out but the popularity of the site is still established due to the overwhelming amount of people that populate it.

Some techniques Howard uses: Identify key “influentials,” Regional Service Directors, National Training Staff, Executive Directors among others, because they are guaranteed to have their own extensive networks. By using this information, you can offer premium access for influentials to bring them (and hopefully some of their networks) to use the site. You can also use poster child testimonials, presentations art regional conferences, documentary dvds, magazine stories, and others (184-185).

The following section is titled “Techniques” which includes an in-depth look at these (8) listed:
1) Provide a story that shares a vision
2) List members’ accomplishments
3) Participate in influential communities to create trails back to yours

4) Build your social network or community in a custom space
5) Make connections with other leaders in social
6) Celebrate celebrities
7) Create a contest, game, or video
8) Mobilize your existing members

10/8 Reading

Chapters “Simple” an “Unexpected” from Heath & Heath’s Made to Stick provide useful insight to what makes stories “stick.” I have picked out what I took to be key points from the reading.

First, we must have an understanding of what “simple” truly means. Simple, in terms of Heath & Heath, is finding the core of the idea: “finding the core means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements (28).” The process might seem like an easy thing to do, but the authors point out that sometimes tough decisions have to be made in terms of scratching ideas that are important to the core but are not the most important to the core.

After finding the core, we can see how it fits in with Heath & Heath’s equation on page 45: “Simple = Core + Compact.” “The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be” (47). It seems like this is commonsense. I felt like the quote on 48 summed up this part of the chapter nicely when it alters the Golden Rule to fit this topic specifically, “ideas that are compact enough to be sticky and meaningful enough to make a difference” (48). Nobody wants to be bogged down with an idea that contains too much mess surrounding it making it unclear as to where the appeal is so I felt like this section was really important to the overall goal of what we were supposed to be getting out of this. Side note, just because ideas are simple, doesn’t mean they cannot create complex messages (55).

The chapter “Unexpected” was common sense but very much needed in to be taken into consideration when considering ideas and people. The chapter starts with the age old flight attendant’s message that 99% of the time falls on deaf ears because of the fact that no one’s interested and everyone’s heard it a million times before. The authors mention a flight attendant in particular that handled the situation by improvising a unique script instead of the standard run through. This change made all the difference.

The key aspects of this chapter “focuses on two essential questions: How do I get people’s attention? And, just as crucially, How do I keep it?” (65) These essential questions stem from understanding essential emotions: surprise and interest. Heath & Heath specifically choose these two emotions because “surprise gets our attention” and “interest keeps our attention” (65).

An interesting look at was for the television commercial for the new “Enclave minivan.” The authors use this example to show how something unexpected is a great attention grabber. We are all accustom to car commercials and this commercial starts no differently as it boats specs and perks of this “new” car. When approaching an intersection, however, the van is slammed by a speeding car and we view a horrifying wreck only to have the screen go black and a message that says “Didn’t see that coming” followed by “No one ever does, following finally by “Buckle up.. Always.”

We all have expectations built by our individual schemas. The car commercial turned informative message violated our schema (67). This is so important to keep in mind because advertisers and others play on our schemas constantly as we construct our world by what we see and experience around us.

10/1 Reading

Belonging, one of the criteria of Howard’s RIBS in Design to Thrive, focuses on explaining what it means to belong to a community and what developers can do to foster the feeling of belonging: “This chapter explains that belonging is a sense of one’s “social presence” in a community; it’s a feeling or awareness of the shared bonds a member has with others in the group.” That being said, belonging isn't just about you knowing you’re a part of something, but that it also includes the feeling and others in the community are affected by your presence and acknowledge it whether openly or not.

The ways that Howard outlines that provide the necessary belonging criteria are as follows: shared mythologies, shared stories of origin, shared symbols, and the cultural codes embedded in those symbols.

Ceremonial speeches of belonging include initiation rituals or, the ritual needed in order to gain acceptance into a particular community. Howard demonstrates using Navy Seals and their bonding experience through the challenges of “Hell Week” and way before that, the initiation rituals performed by the boys of Sparta, the fierce section of Ancient Greece. In order to transition from boys to men in the community, they were starved and forced to obtain food by their own accord mostly through theft from those of lower status.

When members become members after any sort of initiation rituals, sometimes communities will have in place rituals dealing with leveling up within ranks. There exist upsides and downsides to the leveling up concept. For example, the Boy Scouts and their levels consisting of Scout, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life and finally, Eagle. These levels encourage and motivate boys to reach higher and obtain the ranks of those before them. Downsides to this method include the creation of jealousy among the boys and that they will feel “disenfranchised and leave the community.”

This chapter reminded me of my days as a part of an online private forum in high school as I mentioned in last week's post. A group of my friends created a private forum where we were given a chance to personalize tag lines, pictures, etc with whatever we wanted. The forum would track our total post count and we would receive blocks that were displayed by our tag name on posts. I was determined to gain the little red blocks because to me, that meant I was an important person on this forum. A top contributor and a valuable member of (our little) society. Looking back, it’s hard to realize I spent so much time on that forum, but it fostered a sense of belonging I am reading about today in this class. We knew the rules and how we were supposed to act. The set up was familiar and enjoyable. Maybe it’s not so hard to realize why my time went there afterall.