Rich Millington of FeverBee (an online community management consultancy) recently wrote a great post titled Gathering Great UX Feedback. I found it great not because of the UX piece but because he listed a few relatable observations made when users engage with community platforms. He noted:
We usually discover:
- Members don’t navigate through the site as planned.
- Most navigation options can be removed.
- The language and terminology used is often confusing (i.e. discussions vs. groups).
- The majority of features/content is ignored.
- During registration, members don’t read 90% of the information.
- We assume members have much more knowledge about the company (and communities) than we think.
- Most gamification features are irrelevant.
My observation is that our internal social platforms often suffer the same fate. Admins and leaders drool over the various features which, let’s be honest here, are less about bringing value to users and more about tracking use to justify the purchase and the vendor way to keep people on the platform as long and often as possible!
Just looking at this list you can see similarities to internal social tech platforms and users. Yes, good Community Management and of course Governance can pay dividends but even then most employees using a platform just want to share, collaborate and build community. The greatest service we can give them is to make it easy. Stripping away the nonsense that creates platform bloat (see gamification, multiple “locations”, and jargon) is the start but the biggest ease is psychological – give them a reason!
- Help them see the value like finding information and the right people faster,
- make it safe to ask questions, and
- recognize those that share knowledge.
Doing these 3 things can make a simple white text box and a publish button all you really need.
