Now, however, let’s assume that you have your personas in hand.  What do you do with them? There are actually two somewhat different scenarios you could find yourself in. If you already have a community site in place, then usability testing is a means to determine what usability issues exist with the site, and how seriously they impair peoples’ participation in the community. If you don’t have a community site already, then you can carry out usability tests against prototypes or existing platforms as a means to help determine what your site should be like.

I’m going to deal primarily with the first type and leave it as an exercise for the reader to sort out any of the salient differences for the second.

Usability testing all about having real users interact with your site in realistic ways, and then observing how they go about doing that. If at all possible, you want to create a video recording of these sessions because it will be incredibly useful to come back and review the sessions later on.

For each person you bring in, you want to give them a set of tasks to accomplish based on the persona that they most closely match. You need to make sure that these tasks are something that the user would try to do in real life, otherwise their tactics in carrying out these tasks may not be reflective of what will happen outside of the testing environment. Typically, you do not want to assist/interfere with the user while they are carrying out the tasks — in real life, your users won’t have someone sitting beside to lend a hand when they get stuck. Finally, you want to encourage your testers to talk about what they are doing. This is a little unnatural for most people — after all most of us have learned to keep our interior monologues actually interior. Nonetheless, this is a situation in which you really want to know why people are interacting with the system in the particular ways that they have chosen, and having them describe that process is probably the most straightforward way to get this information.

This sounds like a pretty intensive process, so a perfectly reasonable question is: “How many people do I need to use in order to get meaningful results?” Again, you’ll find a lot of consideration given to this in the literature. My own experience is that you can start to see issues after watching 3 or 4 people. By the time you get up to 7 or more, some issues seem blindingly obvious. That is, once you’ve seen everyone stumble while carrying out some particular task or get stuck on some particular screen, you know you’ve got problems. If those tasks are part of the primary mission for your site, then you know you’ve got to fix those things or risk having the site fail.

Other issues will be more subtle. They may only affect certain people, or they may be functionality that you don’t consider critical. As with almost anything of this nature, the reasonable response is to record it all, prioritize it, and figure out what you have the resources to deal with.

Of course, I’ve just scratched the surface of usability testing. There are a huge number of books on the topic, and I would definitely recommend picking one or two up and giving them a read. One of my favourites is Rocket Surgery Made Easy, but your mileage may vary.

So, for your community, there are two things to consider: (1) What benefit does the user feel they are getting from participating? (2) How difficult is it for them to participate?

If you are lucky, the benefit that people feel they are getting is really high. And please take note of the phrase “feel they are getting” because it’s not about what benefit *you* think the community provides, its about what your members perceive. Nonetheless, if you fall into this camp, you have a lot less to worry about because people will tolerate poor usability. They won’t like it, and you shouldn’t feel good about it, but at least it doesn’t threaten the existence of your community.

Unfortunately, particularly in the association space, my experience is that members don’t immediately see the value of an online community. It’s also my experience that a thriving community becomes a significant member value, but the Catch 22 is that you don’t get a thriving community without getting a bunch of people involved which is challenging when the initial perception of value is low.

The upshot of all this is that I think that usability really does matter for most association online communities. Now the interesting thing about usability is that its not just a matter of asking “Is this site easy to use?” Real analysis of usability is always framed in terms of the tasks that a user wants to carry out. You can’t even begin to think about usability until you have a reasonably good grasp on the tasks your members want to accomplish via the online community.

Thus, the first step in creating an excellent user experience is understanding your members. Based on my experience in the software industry, I find that the best way to develop this understanding is to actually talk with people. Find some of your members who are already using Facebook or LinkedIn, or find members who indicate that they are interested in participating in an online community. Ask them what they would hope to be able to get from an online community specifically for the association. Are they interested in an online book club? Would they help to build out a virtual library of reference materials that all members should be aware of? Would they be willing to participate in a virtual Q&A session on their professional experiences?

From this you can start to build up a set of personas. Each persona is associated with certain characteristics, goals they want to accomplish, level of experience, etc. For each persona, there will be a set of primary tasks or activities that they want to accomplish via the community. It is very important to keep this focused on the point of view of the user. Again, it’s not what goals *you* want to achieve, it’s what *they* want to achieve. There are different ways of capturing this information. For example, some people like to represent personas as actual individuals, so they will give them names, and supply back-story such as where they work and what their position is. I’m not religious about this — do what works for you. What is important is a ruthless focus on the user.

So, the first step in looking at usability is documenting these personas. In my next post, I’ll look at what you actually do with them.

Meet

A History of Associations identifies the earliest formal associations as medieval craft guilds and merchant trading groups. They communicated face to face because there were few other options.. The first scientific society the Academia Secretorum of Naples, was established in 1560 and the members met at Giambattista della Porta’s home. The Academy of the Mysteries of Nature was required by the Pope to close eighteen years later under suspicion of sorcery but the Royal Society of London which first met in 1660 has lasted a little longer. In 1662 it was first permitted to publish and it is still doing so.

Mail

Publishing technology allowed mass printing of documents. The availability of mail service enabled distribution. Members of associations no longer had to meet face to face to communicate. They could stay informed of association news and be part of the association without the need for travel. That in turn allowed associations to expand in size and geographical scope. Charles I of Great Britain established The Royal Mail in 1635 but it took a while to catch on. For the first two hundred years until 1840 it was considered expensive, confusing and corrupt. However, once established, it did allow most associations the capability of mass communication.  Many associations still use mass mail for raising funds and attracting members.

Magazine

The next step in association communication evolution was the magazine. Magazines were really a further development of printing technology but the reason I am calling it a milestone in the evolution of communications was the ability to advertize. Glossy, with pictures; magazines were a revenue producing mass media for larger associations. You did need a sufficiently large association and/or enough advertisers to be able to justify the editorial staff, pay writers and put out a magazine, but now there was a way to communicate that members considered a benefit of membership and magazines generated revenue.

Moderation

My fondness for alliteration leads me to name the new era of association communication “Moderation”. By moderation I mean moderation of online conversations. The term does capture the essence of the switch from top-down, one to many mass communication technologies such as publishing a magazine or newsletter, to the anyone can communicate, many to many communication possible with forums, wikis, blogs and online communities.

This is a fundamental switch but it is not an immediate switch. Just as mail and other communication technologies took time to be adopted so to it has taken time for people to have and use online access.

It is also not a complete switch. People will still meet face to face and some will meet virtually. People will still read their monthly newsletter or magazine and some will do so online. It is an additional channel of communication.

The bigger switch is in the culture of participation. We, of a certain age such as me, are used to being informed, not informing. That is why there is initially some reluctance to putting oneself out there by posting a comment or asking a question online. Many were initially a little reticent with Facebook, even when simply sharing vacation pictures or making some social comment on a favourite team or news item.

Making a comment about something important may take a little more courage. Private association communities where the comments are to colleagues feel a little safer but that will be the topic for another posting. Most important is that associations now have the tools to harness the power of the association’s biggest asset, its members and their knowledge. The new association communication credo may be “We know more than any of us.”

What is Next?

Associations are adopting the new communication technologies. For example, the Royal Society has adapted to the times. The 44 fellows (members) that are elected per year can be proposed for fellowship online via e-Lect.  Fellows no longer have to meet face to face; they can meet in the eFellow’s room. The Royal Society has also embraced other social media; anyone can respond to a Royal Society blog after logging in with Facebook or Google.

The challenge is to figure out what software tools to use to communicate and how to use them. Should you use public communities such as Facebook or have your own private community or both? That too will be the topic of a future blog.

This blog is available as a .pdf for download here.

Here are some metrics that we use to assess the health of communities that are not particularly active and the tactics that we use if these vital signs move into the warning zone.

Proportion of  active users – This is the fraction of your site’s membership that has visited the site over the past seven days. You could use a longer or shorter time frame, but we find that a week works well. We like to see this value above 50%.

When this value drops below 50%, there are two things we typically do: (1) Make sure that there is sufficient new content being added to the community. This requires authoring new content, finding new content from elsewhere, or working with members to generate new content. (2) Make sure that notifications are enabled so that all community members are aware of the new content that is available.

A lot of people are lurkers, and you may find that your community does not look particularly active, but has a relatively high fraction of active users. In this case, we would start to engage with individuals within the community to encourage more active participation.

Average user page views – The average unique page views per user over the last seven days provides a measure of how much content/interaction on your site is of interest to your members. You want to measure this over a time period like a week rather than per session because a user may visit your site several times, looking at different information each time. The higher this number the better, but we start to get worried if its less than 2 because it means that users are hitting your site, but not finding enough of interest to keep them there. When this happens there is a good chance that they will drop out of the community.

When this is the case, there are a couple of potential problems. First, you may not have enough new content, so that users are checking in but not seeing anything new. Second, it may indicate that there are usability issues with your site that are acting as barriers to the user. For example, if the discussion area on your site is reasonably active, but the home page does not provide any obvious way to easily go to new discussion threads or replies, you may have the right content, but not be making it easy enough for your members to find.

Net community growth – This is the number of new users over the past seven days minus the number of users who have left the community. If you do not require explicit registration for your community, then you will need to use some sort of heuristic to both identify users and also to effectively remove them from the community if they have been inactive for a sufficient period of time.

Community growth is usually a function of community size; bigger communities grow more quickly. Of course, there is an upper limit in the total addressable audience for any community, and should you be lucky enough to approach it, growth will obviously slow. Initially, however, most communities are small and grow by word of mouth. We like to see communities growing at the rate of at least 1 new member for every 20 or so existing members. If you aren’t achieving this, then you can explicitly enlist the help of your members. Get them to invite the friends or colleagues into the community. As the community grows larger, you may find traditional SEO techniques will help draw new users in. You can also look into other social media platforms such as Twitter.

An organization is not open to change — people are. To have change occur, I have to be looking for opportunities to do things differently. My boss has to be open to change, and his boss has to be open to change. Rules and processes can’t make this happen. They can hinder it, or they can support it, but fundamentally it arises from the personalities of the people I work with.

And while we it is possible for people to change, it’s not an easy undertaking. So the most effective strategy for change in an organization is to hire people who have the personalities you are looking for, and promote the people who reflect those values. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, this isn’t a science.

For example, I’ve come to realize that cultural fit is a make or break issue with new hires. I’ve seen numerous situations in which people had all the technical skills required for a job, but in which cultural issues made it impossible for them to contribute effectively. I think that I have gotten better at navigating these waters, but I can’t put that knowledge in a box and pass it on to others. Maybe that’s just a limitation that I have, but I don’t think so.

So what do we do? The most important take-away for me is to keep the focus on people. Organizational structures and processes can’t make this happen. In hiring, don’t just focus on technical skills — use your intuition to see whether someone has the personality traits that you need. And since culture is vital, involve as many people as you can in helping you assess whether someone will fit in.

But its not enough to just have a history. You have to be able to apply it in a meaningful way to your current situation. And the Black Company does this. The leader of the group, generally referred to by his title as “The Captain”, often reads the selections of the annals to the company in the evenings. And he doesn’t just read them, he tries to draw meaning and inspiration from the experiences of the past.

Assuming you have made it this far, you are likely wondering what the point of this particular ramble is. Well, I think that online communities, and in particular, social curation afford us the opportunity to draw inspiration from our collective histories and wisdom. Unlike, the Black Company, we don’t have to rely on a single individual to collect our experiences. Community platforms give us all the means to contribute our observations, and to discuss the experiences of others. Like the Black Company, we can use these capabilities to build up a body of knowledge about ourselves, our interests, and our professions. And by continually revisiting it, discussing it, and applying to our current situations, we keep that knowledge alive — maybe even for 800 years!

And just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve outed myself as a complete geek by refering to fantasy novels (this post), Star Trek (Jan 17), and Dr. Who (Jan 4) in my recent blog posts.
]]> http://associcom.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/the-annalist/feed/ 0 coatta http://associcom.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-agile-association/ http://associcom.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-agile-association/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:13:57 +0000 Terry Coatta http://associcom.wordpress.com/?p=155 ]]> Is your association responding quickly enough to the changing needs of its members? If not, then you are probably seeing a decline in membership as people seek elsewhere for answers that might have come from you. How can you get back on track?

The software industry has gone through similar crises. Software projects were often behind schedule, and over budget. But even worse, when the systems were deployed, in many cases after years of work, people discovered that they were impossible to use or did not provide the capabilities that had been anticipated.

In reaction to this, a small number of people struck out in a new direction propelled by the idea that the whole way that software was developed was wrong. These become the leaders of the Agile movement and it has blossomed into one of the most popular ways to manage a software development.

What does this have to do with associations? I think it has everything to do with associations. Early on, the leaders of the Agile movement developed a manifesto representing their core beliefs about software development. Here they are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Notice that the word software only occurs once. And if you replace the word software with the word systems, you have a set of guidelines that can be broadly applied to any organization that provides products or services. This then, is the foundation of the agile association.

In the software industry, adoption of agile was slow at first. The principles outlined above were often in direct opposition to “the way things are done.” But my experience is that teams that adopt agile are both successful and happy. I anticipate that associations will likewise benefit.

A lot of people think that communities will form naturally if you simply throw a bunch of people together who have some sort of attributes in common. For example, it’s not uncommon for associations to think that since their members share a common interest, that simply creating an online community and putting their members in it will result in success.

But for a community to actually succeed, people have to derive value from participating in it. From lurkers all the way through to those who help actively manage a community, each person is has a motivation for being there and for the activities they undertake in the context of the community.

The transition from new community to successful community is a sequence of related tasks:

• Understanding the potential value that a member could obtain from the community
• Creating an environment where that value can be realized within the community
• Ensuring that there is some initial value present in the community
• Convincing members that there is value in the community
• Ensuring that members experience the value when they participate in the community

You can’t succeed unless you succeed at each step along the way. The first step requires that you have an understanding of what your members need and want. If you have a rock solid grasp on that, you’re set. If you don’t, then consider “the needs of the one” (or the few). In other words, go talk to one of your members. Get a sense of what he or she faces on a day to day basis. Then talk to another one. Once you’ve got to know a few of your members, hopefully some common themes will start to emerge.

These themes should provide a framework for the types of value that an online community could provide. And with that in hand, you can begin to move through the tasks listed above. It’s likely to be hard work, but the reward of an online community that continuously provides value to your members will be worth it.

In short, private social networking sounds like an oxymoron. The notion of private runs at odds with everything that is supposed to be good about social networking. So, why would ever use such a phrase?

The answer lies in the fact that social networking or even more broadly, social media , encompasses a variety of goals and behaviours. Some of these benefit from a very open community in which you want to maximize your exposure to different people and different sources of information. Others actually benefit from more closed communities. For example, a learning community focused on a particular profession benefits from a high level of specialized knowledge in its members.

So I think private social networking does make sense, and it’s definitely not a replacement for public social networking, that is, sites like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, even if you have access to a private social networking site, I’m sure that you will continue to interact on public social networking sites with people who share your work interests.

What then, is the value in an association creating a private social networking site for their members? There are three advantages that come to mind immediately:

1. First, as noted above, your association’s private social networking site can bring together a set of people with highly specialized knowledge. This allows the technical aspects of discussions to operate at an elevated level because there is a presumption that the audience is familiar with the core components of the field. A set of experts discussing a particular topic is an incredible learning resource for others.
2. Second, as befits the moniker private social networking, the discussions remain within the confines of the association. There is less need for concern about how it will be perceived by the general public; although of course, there is never any perfect guarantee of privacy, any more than with other information which is shared with the membership in general. Still, my experience is that discussions can be more open and frank.
3. Third, a private community provides an excellent channel for getting feedback from your existing members. Since the community is composed, by definition, only of members of the association, you have a platform to interact very directly with them and get a much better sense of their needs and how the association could more effectively serve them.

Overall then, not only do I think private social networking makes sense, I think there are strong motivations for any association to make it a part of their overall strategy for communicating with and delivering value to their members.

I was thinking about this the other day and realized the analogy is a lot more powerful than helping guide how an individual behaves in the context of Twitter. In fact, I think it can be a powerful tool to help determine whether it makes sense to establish an online community, and also about how to structure and foster engagement within such a community. I’m going to tackle the first of these today, and the second in a later posting.

In both cases though, we begin with a thought experiment: Imagine bringing your members together for a cocktail party. If your association holds conferences, this should be a fairly easy exercise. If you don’t, then it may be a little challenging if you don’t have a good sense of the interests and personalities of your members. If you fall into the latter camp, that’s probably something you need to address anyways.

So, now you’ve got this picture in your head, what does it look like? Is everyone sitting there staring into their drink? Are there a few small clusters of people chatting, but not a lot of movement or interaction? Can you imagine a few hosts making their way around the room, introducing people and getting conversations started? If not, it’s unlikely that you will be able to create a vibrant online community for your members. In fact, I’d be worried about the future of your association.

On the other hand, and hopefully this is the picture you have in mind, you see lots of groups of people chatting. Some are large and some are small. Some people seem to stick with one group, while others circulate from group to group. It may be so loud that it’s hard to hear yourself think.

Wouldn’t you like to provide a way for your members to interact like that 365 days a year? That’s the ideal online community. It’s about meeting people, renewing relationships, exchanging information, and even having some fun. In fact, if this is how you imagine your members interacting, then you need an online community, because otherwise your members will figure out how to create one without you, and you’ll have lost one more way in which your association could be valuable to your members.