Debugging an existing community by scanning for higher-than-necessary time costs // OOCs

November 3, 2022 · writing

While communities can offer a whole range of different benefits, their main drawback, from a member’s perspective, is the inherently high time cost. 

Most community owners haven’t put enough design toward this issue, allowing the time-costs to balloon even further than is necessary. 

If I had five minutes to health-check an existing community, this is where I’d start, by identifying every single action that members are being asked to do and:

1. [Onboarding actions] make the list of all requested actions during onboarding: fill out a profile, read the rules & regulations, post an introduction, watch an explainer video, and so on. 
2. [Heartbeat actions] list out all requested actions on a weekly tempo: read a newsletter, attend an event, watch a video, make an accountability post, respond to new messages, etc. 

Then, I’d look soberly at that (probably lengthy) list of actions:

1.  Alongside each action, write the time cost for a member to complete it. Summed up, this will give you the time cost of onboarding, as well as the weekly time cost for full participation. 
2. Then, go through the list and add a star next to ONLY the actions that are, from your member’s perspective, INHERENTLY REWARDING. Not bitter medicine actions, like “it’ll be good for you in the long run.” But inherently rewarding right in that moment, or immediately aftewards

Don’t allow yourself elaborate justifications, like “this onboarding survey isn’t exactly fun to fill out, but it will allow us to figure out how to them better, so that gets a star.” Nope, that doesn’t get a star, because from your member’s perspective, in that moment, it’s a speedbump, not a reward.

(Note: “Rewardingness vs. speedbumps” is the second OOC design principle. The first was reframing moderation as signal vs. noise🔒. Three more to come.)

Just as nonfiction should be ruthlessly edited to reduce word count (i.e., lower reading time, higher value-per-page), community should be ruthlessly honed to reduce speedbumps (i.e., lower time costs, higher value-per-engagement).

And this goes double during the critical early touchpoints of onboarding. That extra 500 words of “new members readme” is acting as more than just a preemptive safety net for just-in-case confusion. It’s also a two-minute speedbump for every single new member. (Average reading speed is 250 words per minute.) One or two speedbumps won’t break the system. But if you examine many communities, you’ll start to notice that the whole darn road has paved with them.

If a requested action is more for your benefit than your members’🔒, consider removing it altogether. If it absolutely has to stay, find a way to make it faster. Or alternatively, to make it more inherently rewarding. 

Every action has a time cost. Focus on the few that are worth it.

← all writing