It’s been fun and exciting witnessing the journey of 200wad, and I’m hoping to contribute to its growth by sharing some ideas. Putting on my hat as a UX/service/strategic designer, I see some potential opportunities for design. 

So here’s a brain dump of observations, thoughts and ideas from my (limited) experience…would love to hear about yours too, and start a conversation around this to make 200wad better for all of us. 

First question I always ask myself for any design project I do - who are the users?

Writers vs readers

I think people join 200wad want to write more and need some encouragement/tools to help with that. So primarily people join the platform as a writer. But the writer ends up reading posts by others, so the reader is the secondary user. So far I’d not yet seen people join just to comment, but that might change in the future (just like on Medium for instance). So there are the needs of a writer vs the needs of a reader. 

What exactly are their needs?

As a writer, I need/want to:

✍️ Write regularly so that I can get better at it. (Need for mastery)

✍️ Get feedback/reviews from other writers so that I can get better at it. (Need for mastery)

✍️ Get timely reminders to write so that I don’t forget to. (Need for salience)

✍️ Sustain motivation to write through public accountability (Extrinsic need)

✍️ Have fun using this platform, so that I enjoy using it and continue writing. (Need for play/fun)

✍️ Get affirmation from other writers so that I feel a sense of recognition. (Self-esteem needs)

✍️ Socialise (through comments and sharing) with other writers/readers in order to feel a sense of belonging. (Social need)

As a reader, I need/want to:

? Discover (lurking) posts, people and comment threads that I enjoy reading and following, based on certain themes

? Have easy, short-form ways to interact with the posts/authors in order to tell them how I feel about the post

? Longer form ways to interact with posts/authors by following comments/discussions where I have commented on

? Feel inspired and be nudged to start writing myself

It’ll be interesting to start mapping current/future features to the needs list above to see where priorities are and if there are any blindspots (especially if it’s an important need but efforts are not focused there).  

Anything missing from the list? How would we prioritise them? At this stage, which user group comes first? Writer or reader?

Next: some mapping perhaps, and some ideas…

? Day 33 of the #200wad challenge.