The Designers Accord

For those interested in the results of the recent group administrator survey, here is a comprehensive explanation of the results, as well as the raw data below (with the exception of user answers, which are omitted for the privacy of users).

Most of our groups are small, between one and 25 members. People interacting with WE are there to meet like minded people (in their area of focus) and network with them. Unfortunately, based on question number three (Have you been successful in achieving your purpose?), it looks like many are not getting what they had originally came to WE for.

From the narrative responses to question three it seems like the lack (or perceived lack) of participation in groups has caused many people to feel that they are alone, or can not find the real community on WE. A few people say that the platform is difficult to navigate, understand or interact with, and some put this on group members for not being enthusiastic about participation.

This is in contrast to the next question about the usability of the site, in which there is a pretty even spread between people who think it is easy and people who think it is difficult. Could this be the squeaky wheel factor?  People have expressed that they want to be able to "figure it out" in less than five minutes, otherwise they lose interest.  This could be useful in thinking about what types of screencast tutorials we want to make, perhaps a more general introductory tutorial is appropriate, one that won't become obsolete when new features are added, but is still technical (as opposed to inspirational or visionary) in nature.

From question five it seems that more tutorials and FAQ's would be useful, and generally it seems that if each usability question we asked has a “yes” answer for more than 20 percent it would be good to update tutorials and FAQs based on that. A few people wrote in suggestions about what we already know--if you need a tutorial for a particular function, it is an indication that the function is not easy enough to begin with. The term “not intuitive” repeats itself in the comments.

I think that the demand from users is extremely high, and we need to keep it in context, but most of the comments about this (in other questions as well) seemed to say, “If I can't get it in five minutes, I am not interested.” This might just be a question of taking a second look at every part of the site and make sure there is at least one thing that someone could get in five minutes, figuring that they will at least be kept engaged long enough to decide that WE is worth their time. This will lead to further investment of time and energy, but they need to be convinced WE is worth their time first and foremost.

Question number six is related, about how users would prefer to access help. Video and chat are up front, as most useful for the most amount of people. Facebook, Yahoo Groups and Google Groups were popular as other similar sites that people used.

From question eight: I think that because Yahoo groups is the de-facto group organizing tool that many people use and are familiar with, we might do a study of what works, and see if there are any “low hanging fruit” changes we can make to be more Yahoo groups-like without a serious overhaul of the site. This might be another way to “meet people where they are at.” Seems like a majority of those surveyed did not use other sites such as MySpace, Social Platform (never heard of this myself), Ning, and almost no one had heard of WetPaint (again, me too).

Majority of users on DSL, but I imagine this will change if we are more successful with international outreach. Almost everyone also had flash, PDF, and other basic office programs on their computers.

48.9% of those surveyed worked at nonprofits, as expected. 26.7% at businesses.

Other tools that people wanted to see on WiserEarth fell into a few categories, but was overall consistent. People wanted data portability, the ability to use WiserEarth data externally, so the API, Iframes and Widgets get a +1 from the survey takers. Another category was ease of use: bigger text, less clutter, etc.. A third was that people wanted some form of Meetup functionality, but the specifics are not explained.

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Skip question 11

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Skip questions 13, 14, 15 (see narrative above).