Community Design is User Experience Design
Online communities create a unique experience for community members. They break down barriers to participation, allow people to get connected to one another regardless of geography, and give community members an opportunity to share knowledge in unique ways. Often times, associations get candid product feedback or event session ideas based off of the conversations that happen in these spaces.Sometimes, however, even though communities are meant to break down silos we end up creating and designing the experience in a way that disconnects community members from the rest of the user journey. This leaves community managers having to think later about how to best engage product or IT or marketing in order to help community members connect the dots.
I think the blind spot we may have as community professionals is focusing solely on the community experience and not looking at the total user experience. Unless your goals is for people to come to the community and stop there, we should be thinking more holistically about what happens after people land in your community long before we need to. That means long before marketing has an ask. Long before product is looking for information. While community is a destination, it’s not the last stop for your community members. Designing the community experience as if it were the last stop provides little value to your members and causes you to be a hoarder of the online community space versus someone who facilitate connections.
If you’ve developed personas for your community members either as part of your community discovery phase or as you think about breathing new life into your community, part of that work should also have been to understand the community member journey. What are they coming into your community for? What do they expect to do? How do they expect to interact with content and each other? The answers to those questions also uncover ways for you to connect them to information, resource, and people that may not currently live in your community. And if you don’t have the answers to those questions, start having conversations (not sending surveys) with your community members. Remember, community stickiness is not just a result of the things community members find in your community – it is a result of the information community members find because of your community.
In this sense, when you are designing an experience that not only attracts the people your community is meant for but easily connects them to your organization, you are architecting a holistic experience that creates value almost effortlessly because you were intentional about how to support the community member at all points of interaction, not just once they land in your community.
Community design will always be about more than where to find discussion forums, how to connect with others, or ranking and recognition. It’s about all the ways in which people find your community and navigate their way to the things that are important to their journey. Designing for the complete user experience is a smart strategic move and should always be top of mind as you are figuring out community strategy and how to demonstrate value in the long-term.