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Page 1: Socialize (Interaction Center) Spec Overview Background Problem · 2013-11-04 · Socialize (Interaction Center) Spec Overview A centralized control panel for Icebreakers and Chats.

Socialize (Interaction Center) SpecOverview

A centralized control panel for Icebreakers and Chats.

Background

For purposes of clarity Socialize will be referred to as SESE centralizes icebreakers and chats by putting it on a separate menu screen, thereby

putting emphasis on their weight in the app. With additional features to enhance the Anomointeraction experience, the SE will bring an additional level of depth and engagement to theapp.

Problem:

Our current model is similar to Facebook where users generate content and seek to elicitpotential interactions by engaging others with this content. However, content from strangerslack relevance and context, thereby detracting from the engaging potential of it; thus it doespoorly to generate inter­user interactions.

The livelihood of Anomo depends on meaningful connections between Anomo users,which can only be achieve through direct interaction, in the form of chats or icebreakers. Yet,the app does not establish a culture and infrastructure to encourage these interactions. Byputting an emphasis on status posting and user profiles, the app mimics a social sharingservice, rather than a social discovery service.

Solution:

The SE will create a better culture and infrastructure for inter­user interactions.

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Culture:

A separate menu just for interactions will make Ice Breakers and Chats more visible andaccessible.

Anomo's current sharing­centric culture arises from the app's interface. When users firstlogs in, they see the activity stream and they think "oh this is what I do." No explanationnecessary; the layout of the app guides the user experience.Icebreakers and chats however, are much less visible and accessible. They are embedded,through tiny buttons, in an almost "stowed away" fashion; that is, you have to go to a user'saccount to access these functions. (although the new shake­to­play and embedded Play buttonon status posts does well to alleviate this problem.)

The SE makes ice breakers and chats much more visible and does so in a dramaticfashion, thereby creating a UX that guides the behavior of direct, user to user,interactions.

Additionally, creating a separate category for icebreakers and chats, differentiatingthem from mere notifications, puts a psychological emphasis on the importance of these twofunctions in the Anomo experience.

The implementation of the SE will help foster a culture of socialization, not just contentsharing.

The importance of culture is obvious: it guides behavior, lessens barriers for new usersto adopt said behavior, and prevents users from deviating from said behavior.For example, Seattle is known for its Seattle freeze attitude. That is, people are nice but rarelysociable. This culture promotes a behavior of polite isolation, where people put little emphasison interacting with strangers. In this case, a long time inhabitant of Seattle will likely adoptsuch an attitude due to its perpetuation throughout the community, new inhabitants, althoughnormally socially inclined, will have less friction adopting to this new attitude, and allinhabitants will find it hard to become social because no one else is and because it is not theexpected norm.

Both social and psychological factors are crucial in shaping the users within a community.

Establishing a culture of interaction is important because Anomo users, as are allteenagers, are 'awkward' in a sense that they are inexperienced with interacting, especially withstrangers. Why else would they resort to spending time behind a screen when a world full of

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real experiences are available to them? Although a gross generalization, the premise issomewhat inclusive.From observation, and personal experience, teenagers all experience some sort of approachanxiety, that is, a fear of approaching strangers due to a fear of rejection, lack of conversationtopics, lack of conversational abilities, fear of making a bad impression, etc.

The anonymity of anomo alleviates some of these fears by isolating the user from thereal world consequences, but these behavioral residues will still exist to a certain extent. Thatis why it may be hard for some users to chat and interact Anomo strangers, regardless ofcompatibility.

This is ultimately fatal as Anomo depend on these interactions to thrive.

By fostering an interaction­centric culture, Anomo will mold its users to become socialand stay social, thereby generating more activity and increasing retention.

Imagine if all Anomo users became social, then new users will readily become socialand all user will stay social; in this ideal environment where direct interaction is widespread,the chances of meaningful connections occurring will increase, be it that romantic spark, thatbrilliant business alliance, or endearing friendship.

Creating this culture is more of a vision. The strategy to do so lies in the appropriateinfrastructure.

The SE will be the first step in creating an interaction­centric, rather than sharing­centric,Anomo. the specs and features of the SE will be outlined below:

1. Side Menu2. Chat3. Icebreaker4. Improved Icebreaker functionality5. Question Bank6. Gamification7. Recently played, most played8. Chat prompter9. Marking10. Queue

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Side Menu

The side Menu is just a menu that contains all functions ofdirect interaction: Icebreakers, Chats, and related features.

It can be accessed through left swiping which pulls up a menuthat covers all but a sliver of the Anomo stream. This gives theillusion of it being always accessible no matter where in the app youare. This illusion of accessibility aims to encourage impulseinteractions.

Chat

The menu would include a button to access chats. As ofcurrent, it takes 3­4 different clicks to access the chat menu.Additionally, the ux is very unintuitive. I'm not actually sure if we dohave a chat window. The closest to one, I think, is the People tabunder My Chat & Game History. And under that it ranks chats by user name and not by howrecent the chat was; both confusing and inefficient for pulling up relevant chats.

IceBreakers

The menu would also include a button to access Icebreakers. What the button actuallydoes is still being decided. Below are three potential cases:

1) Random 1­1 icebreaker2) Random group ice breaker3) Metrics menu

I think the Random 1­1 Icebreakers would be viable because group ice breakers can beaccessed via shaking and because of a new icebreaker feature that I will introduce later in thespec sheet.

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Improved Icebreaker Functionality

The Icebreaker can be improved in two ways: byintroducing user generated questions and a new system of play.

The Menu would include a button to access User GeneratedQuestions(My Questions), which pulls up a separate screenshowing all the user generated questions. This window will becalled the Queue. And it lists all the User generated questions thatAnomo users want to play and ranks them according to the user'spreference. It also shows how many times that question has beenanswered (and maybe for a future project the user replies to thatquestion over time).

To edit these questions the users can side swipe on aquestion to pull up three buttons: one to delete, one to edit, and oneto rerank. Reranking can be done by holding the reranking symboland dragging the question to the desired placement.

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Adding Questions

There will be a "+" button on a blank slate which allowsusers to add their desired questions. It pulls up the keyboard and theuser can then type in the question.

Adding Answers

After the user is finished, he can click add answers whichpulls up a drop down subsection to fill in answers, each time the"add answer" is pressed, a new answer is inserted. The user canadd however many answers they want with a limit of 6 answers.After listing all answers the user can also choose what his/heranswer to the question would be (if the user clicks finish withoutanswering there will be a prompter screen).

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End Result

The finish button cements the questions and answers and addsthe new question to the top of the Queue rankings. (The editbutton allows the user to reenter his answer if need be)

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Question Bank

On the top right corner of the Queue Menu will be a "+" button which accesses the QuestionBank.

The Question Bank has two subsections: SuggestedQuestions and User Generated. Suggested contains a bank ofsome popular Anomo Questions. User Generated contains all ofthe user generated questions, alphabetized. Every time a questionis created it gets recorded in the user generated question bank.Deleting a question in the Queue menu does not delete it in theBank which allows users to re­add the questions if desired. Ofcourse, the deleting the question in the bank will delete thequestion forever. The question bank is a great way to get usersstarted on customizing their question Queue. Some cool futurefeatures in the Bank could be:

1) Trending questions (sorted by week or day)2) Recently Generated Questions (Privacy concern)3) Ranking system for quality of questions

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Improved Method Of Play

The Method of playing icebreakers with user generated questions is the same as thecurrent method, but instead of randomly generated questions the questions will be generatedfrom the Queue list, according to rank. So the first game would display the 1st to 5th rankedquestion. The second 6th to 10th. And so on until the list has been exhausted. Then thequestions will be randomly generated from Anomo's question bank.

Since the user generated questions have already been answered by the user himself, it ispossible to incorporate ten questions in a 5 question game. Each player would receive theopponent's 5 user generated questions. At the end of the game 10 questions would have beenanswered allowing for a more accurate compatibility rating.

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Results Screen

The results screen would be composed of 3 tabs.1) Compatibility with him/her2) Compatibility with me3) Total compatibility

Compatibility with him/her would shows how the player'sanswers match up with the opponents answers.

Compatibility with me shows how the opponents answersmatch up with the player's answers.

Total compatibility shows all 10 questions and the meancompatibility.

This system of play, incorporating user generated questions, will make it fun andexciting to play icebreaker with new people because you'll never know what kind of questionsyou'll get and there will be a lesser chance of repeated questions, like in the case of randomlygenerated questions. Additionally, it lightens the load on the Anomo staff to generatequestions. And finally, it allows the creation of asker­relevant questions and also generalrelevance across all questions since the questions are generated by the users themselves.

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Potential Future Project

A cool future project would be community questions.These questions addresses the Anomo users as a whole and canbe posted as a status by users, or pinned to the top by Anomostaff. A button on the SE will allow access to CommunityCompatibility which shows the community's answers to aquestion in pie graph form. This way Anomo staff can stayinvolved in icebreakers and create event or location specificquestions. e.g. "What is your favorite drink?" at a bar or "I thinkthat the band that just played ______" at a concert.

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Gamification

Possible applications of Gamification toicebreakers:

As previously stated, Anomo keeps track ofthe number of times a user generated question hasbeen asked. Thus, a grand total of the number oftimes the user asks a question can be calculated.Trophies or Crowns can be assigned based on therange of questions asked. Below is an example ofcrown ranking:

Of course, this crown system is not verysophisticated and kind of club­penguiny, which fitsin with Anomo's current interface. If we were to usethe new interface, (the blue and white one), wewould have to think of some other method ofdisplaying rank.

Crown rankings are a great way to encourage people to create user generated questionsand play icebreakers. They are also an indicator of popularity, which can be an asset to attractother users.

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Recently­Played, Most­played

The SE will have a circle displaying recentinteractions. Swipe left or right to navigate through the users.Swipe up or down to navigate through Recently­played andmost played. (an additional one could be recently chatted).This will remind Anomo users of connections alreadyestablished so that they don't make the mistake of playingIcebreakers with some one for a while and completelystopping. Recently played and most played can also beexploited in push notifications with something like "Youhaven't played ____ in a while; she misses you!"

This is a great way to keep newmade friends close andon top of mind, encouraging the development of meaningfulconnections.

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Chat Prompter

This feature is still under consideration but I can definitely see this as an integral part of theSE. It basically primes the user with chat topics to facilitate conversation. The challenge is tomake this prompter feel 'natural' and not contrived.

Marking

This feature allows users to mark other users so that their posts show up in a differentcolor. It's a step down from following. Instead of following someone, which seems like a hugecommitment, they merely mark someone, which can serve as a reminder of interest. Perhapssomeone made a funny status, you could mark him. The next time he posts a funny status you'llbe reminded of his previous status and build your impression of him.

This works the same way real life interest works. Perhaps you see a girl at school who ispretty cute; you keep note of that, maybe remember her face or name. As time passes, you'llconstantly build an impression of her: maybe she made a witty comment during class, maybesomeone mentioned how smart she is, maybe you see her with a group of other people, whichattests to her popularity. As your impression build you become more and more interested inher. The problem is, how do you approach her? Luckily, on Anomo you can play a low stakegame of Icebreaker to introduce yourself!

Queue

This works similar to Marking. You can mark someone to be Queue'd for the nextrandom icebreaker game. Maybe you're on an status reading binge, you wouldn’t want to stopsporadically to play icebreaker with people you find interesting. You can simply Queue themfor the next time you play Icebreakers. this makes random Icebreakers more engaging becauseyou actually play people you find interesting instead of just a random girl.