Six steps to growing your OOC
Inspired by Kimsia’s post about progress paths, I decided to have a go at following the aspirational baby steps structure for this group.
Here’s where it led me:
What do you think? What would this look like for your members?
Behind the scenes, I originally wrote this out as a list of 8-9 tasks (i.e., actions rather than aspirations). That was helpful for me as a intermediate thinking step. But then I tried to collect and condense them into exciting moments/milestones, which led to the above.
Does that resonate? Did I miss something in either tone or content? If it’s close to the mark, I can easily imagine this becoming a big part of the onboarding content, and it’s a very repeatable structure that we could all follow. (Can’t wait to do something similar for the authors’ community!)
Comments (4)
I really love ❤️ your design
You drew the icons yourself?
Thanks! And no, I didn't make them, they're free (or at a low subscription for full access) from https://app.streamlinehq.com/icons (I'm using the 'Streamline Colors' set, but there are plenty of other aesthetics there)
Sorry for multiple comments cause on mobile (arghhh buggy circle) cannot edit comment
I too found that the natural thing to do is craft a path in prescriptive imperative way (these things you need to learn and do) _and then_ try to evolve them into aspirational steps.
I’m beginning to think that’s the more robust way using Sierra terminology
Now that I've started my own summary of Sierra's take on Progress Path so I have to re-read and reflect on her stuff.
I'm now thinking (maybe) there needs to be a multi level approach to Progress Path on top of making the aspirational outcome-steps even more simple and motivating.
2 reasons:
1. Sierra talks about how benefits need to come as early as possible in the context of a product. She sets the limit at 30 mins (see pp 200 of her Badass MAU) whereupon the user needs to feel "I rule!" as opposed to "this app rules!"
2. Such a short time frame is in direct contrast to the aspirational outcomes which typically cannot be achieved in 30 mins.
Hence I'm thinking of nested progress paths.
Or nested within each major aspirational outcome-step is a motivating pay off loop (see pp 206 in Badass MAU)
I'm leaning towards the loop.
Why?
Because the aspirational outcome-step takes time so every day not reaching that goal feels like failure. This is covered in so many online systems vs goals articles I'm not gonna repeat.
At the same time, in the same systems-vs-goals articles they emphasize how systems (or habits) tend to be reinforcing with positive feelings whenever they get done which reinforce the habit and seen as progress. I know this feeling well. This also ties with Sierra's observation about payoff loops and 30 min to get to payoff.
At least within each iteration of the inner loop in each aspirational outcome-step, there's a way for user to get some payoff in 30 mins ✅, see progress (because they can see how many iterations they have done so far) ✅ and hopefully those iterations compound to get them closer to the actual aspirational outcome.
Your steps with the MRR, they have a good quantitative measure to see progress with. Those without have less obvious quantitative measures so i am more concerned how to make users feel that they have actually reached the aspirational outcome when done.
Nice job using gerund words in the step titles. I was studying DigitalOcean guidelines today and they adopted the same convention.
The first step Discovering resonates with me the most because i am at this stage... and one lesson i feel from my own experience is I should have asked myself the following questions:
1. Who am i already helping? Who already finds what i do amazing? Who is already rewarding me?
2. What problem am i already non-stop thinking abt? Who are the people plagued by this/these problems I'm non-stop thinking about?
3. What of the 3 motivations or "optimizing for" in your piece here am I already leaning towards? In terms of past actions? In terms of persistent thoughts? In terms of strengths of feelings of excitement when I make progress?
All 3 may not triangulate to point to a SINGLE OBVIOUS RIGHT answer. but they do triangulate enough towards NOT wasting time on the obviously wrong ones.
of course this is on hindsight