What’s my scene — user roles and needs in social computing

Do you allow people to comment, review, rate and ask questions on your website’s articles? If you do, you’ll be enjoying the fact that your own users are helping others know what information is valuable on your website. It’s also valuable feedback because it helps you improve the quality of your information.

Over the last month, I’ve been working on a strategy for a client to help them introduce this sort of user-to-user and business-to-user interaction. My client though, has until recently, thought of their users in the same way they do their print publications.

This has meant that their market segmentation is broken down into 3 (non-mutually exclusive) roles:

1. those that use the website,
2. those who read print-publications like magazines and brochureware, and
3. those who buy stuff.

Unfortunately, this is not enough granularity to make informed decisions on the functional requirements that are necessary to meet user’s needs. By using the taxonomy of social computing, the market segmentation, and user needs, become much clearer.

Creator

Approximately 13% of all users are made up of potential ‘Creators’. These are individuals who share their knowledge and expertise with other audience members, through writing blogs, and producing video and audio. Creators share their work through their own websites, blogging services, as well as through specific websites targeted social interaction, including YouTube (for video) and SlideShare (for presentations).

Needs:

• the ability to share their knowledge and information freely with other members of the same community on the organisation’s website
• encouragement to share information from their own websites
• encouragement to share information through other websites providing social interaction

Critic

Users can not only be Creators, but they can also be Critics. Approximately 19% of all users are made of potential ‘Critics’ and in this role, they post comments, as well as rate and review material. They expect to be able to perform these activities both on their own websites, others websites, and yours. This behaviour results in Critics leading others to an organisation’s website and bring them fame (and sometimes notoriety) in return.

Meeting the needs of Critics is important because Google’s search ranking algorithms weight the incoming-links from other websites very highly.

Needs:

• the ability to rate, review, critique, and comment on content on an organisation’s website
• encouragement to rate, review, critique, and comment on their own personal websites as well as on other social computing websites

Collector

15% of users are ‘Collectors’. Collectors primarily read websites through RSS feeds and tag items they find of importance through services like Ma.gnolia and Del.icio.us. Collectors rarely share information by email. Given the ability and the option, Collectors will also tag information within a website.

To meet Collectors’ needs, a website needs to deliver its content in RSS format and make information available through tags and offer the ability to tag content according to the Collector’s point-of-view. Showing popularly bookmarked material through website will lend a lot of credibility to the website.

Needs:

• all information made available through RSS feeds (maybe even IM and Twitter)
• the ability to tag information on the organisation’s website
• to easily share tagged information through bookmarking services with their other communities

Joiner

Approximately 19% of users are comprised of ‘Joiners’. Joiners are active members of communities of practice but are typically less involved than Creators or Critics. Their needs revolve around offering membership and association with specific communities of practice and their members.

Needs:

• ability to see members of the community and their profiles
• ability to interact directly and on a personal-level with the members of the community

Spectator

A ‘Spectator’ makes up approximately 33% of users and is very similar to the role played by a Website User in the traditional market segmentation. Their needs revolve around consuming information, reading blogs, watching peer-generated video and audio, but not interacting overtly with the community of practice.

Needs:

• ability to find information through a variety of sources, from others’ blogs to video and
  audio

Inactive

An ‘Inactive’ makes up a little over half of an organisation’s audience. These are individuals who either have no interest in the community of practice that revolves around an organisation’s activities, or is unaware of it and the potential it has to meet their needs.

Needs:

• Unknown

Of course these numbers don’t neatly add up to 100% — it’s because you can play multiple roles in this taxonomy.

This breakdown of users very useful when considering what sorts of social computing tools you may need to deliver. It will not only help with identifying functional requirements, but also help with creating your marketing strategy for their delivery. For BAs in particular, it’s a reminder that starting with a user-centred design is an excellent way of eliciting better requirements.

M

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