Timothy,
Have you read Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody"? He has loads of
both theoretically interesting and practically useful insights about
social tools, but the last chapter in particular talks about the
success of social tools as a function of three criteria: the Promise,
the Tool and the Bargain. The Promise is "the why", it creates the
basic desire to participate. Sometimes the implicit promise (the
pleasure of like-minded peoples' company) actually matters more than
any explicit one (discussing interaction design) in motivating people
to participate.
The Tool is "the how", it defines the types of interactions that the
group will rely on. To this extent, a good social tool is like a good
woodworking tool, in that it "must be designed to fit the job being
done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do."
That latter part is critical - the ranks of ditch diggers won't swell
overnight simply by designing a better shovel. Also, tools vary in
the types of groups they are expected to support. Small groups are
effective at creating and sustaining agreement and shared awareness,
whereas larger, distributed groups can often generate better answers
by pooling their knowledge or intuition without having to come to
agreement (wisdom of crowds). By understanding the two basic
constraints of group action – number of people and duration of
interaction – any given tool can be analyzed for goodness of fit.
Finally, the Bargain defines the "rules of the road" and sets
participants' expectations about what is expected of them and what
they can expect from others. The Bargain is the most complex aspect
of a functioning group, in part because it is the least explicit
aspect and in part because it is the one that the users have the
biggest hand in creating, which means it can’t be completely
determined in advance.
So, the answers to your questions are in large part dependent upon
these criteria. Is it a small, densely linked group or a larger,
distributed community? How strong will the social bonds be among
participants and will they persist over time, or will people come
together intermittently for brief periods? Are you trying to
facilitate sharing (imposes lowest cost to participate),
collaboration (harder because it involves participants changing
behavior to synchronize with one another) or collective action
(requires a group of people to commit themselves to undertaking a
particular effort together, and to do so in a way that makes the
decision of the group binding on the individual members)?
If you have time, I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of
"Here Comes Everybody" - the last chapter focusses on these ideas and
also talks about tactical approaches to designing successful social
tools (Make joining easy, create personal value for individual users
- a la del.icio.us, etc.), some of which would seem to be no-
brainers, but then you look at a lot of what's out there and...
Anyway, good luck, keep us appraised of your progress.
Patrick
On May 9, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Timothy Makoid wrote:
"Hey everyone,
I am a student majoring in Information Systems with a
concentration in HCI/ID/UX/HF. I'm working on my final project and
we are designing a small scale social networking site. Were trying
to come up with a sort of gaming system that encourages the users
to interact with each other and the site. There are a couple ways
to earn points: by taking quizzes based on stories, by sending
different forms of greetings to each other, and by setting up goals
for each other and achieving them.(Thats what we have currently).
Were having a couple issues though. First of all, we are trying to
figure out what the logic should be for distributing the points. It
is my thought that since quizzes have the benefit of being a fun
task that engages the user, they should be worth the least amount
of points. (Maybe each correct answer is worth 1) While sending
messages, and making dedications to other users should be worth more.
The second issue is what the points should be worth. We can not
make them worth anything of physical value, as the site is supposed
to be realistic and we could not feasibly afford sending out
rewards. My thought is that points could be redeemable for site
customization. Ex:
a. New background images to choose from.
b. New css color schemes.
c. New videos or stories could be given.
We have also toyed with the idea of making the points worth virtual
stuff for some sort of virtual world. (Perhaps a virtual garden and
with the points you can buy virtual seeds and watch flowers and
plants grow over an alloted amount of time, or a virtual house and
with the points you can buy virtual furniture to populate it).
Finally Im thinking about allowing users to give away a certain
amount of points at the end of each month (each user gets an
allotted amount of “sharing points” that can be given to someone
who really helped them out in some way).
Any and all advice would be extremely helpful.
Thanks,
Tim"
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