Synchronous Engagement on Reddit

FOCUS
USER-CENTERED DESIGN PROCESS
TIMELINE
JANUARY 2022 - JUNE 2022
ROLE
Poduct Designer
TEAM
Generous Yeh
Cindy Zhao
Kenny You
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PROJECT BRIEF

SnooVille — A virtual space that connects everyone, everywhere. Our proposed solution intorduces a platform where users can engage in virtual activities and dive into conversations with others on Reddit. Users can stream videos, join voice/video chat spaces, and explore different conversations with others.

PROBLEM

Many existing synchronous platforms poorly emulate social club behavior and lack processes for users to foster organic conversations. The online social behavior of the world is moving towards a desire for real-time engagement, community belonging, and authentic connection. In our project, we explored ways to structure synchronous engagement on Reddit.
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SOLUTION

SnooVille is a Gather.town inspired platform where users can utilize avatars to socialize and explore in a dynamic virtual space. Users can use this space to engage in live conversations through joining tables about suggested Reddit posts or chat freely with others. Audio and voice features emulate real life social club behavior when users approach others through surrounding video and voice previews. Users can immerse themselves into spaces based on their interests and desired subreddit communities to foster new connections.

RESEARCH

Primary Research
1) Surveys - Our team formulated a 13-question survey to understand what synchronous engagement could look like on Reddit. These questions were aimed to understand people’s experiences with synchronous platforms and their thoughts on moderation.

2) Interviews - The goal of our user research interviews was to foster a better understanding of how participants use synchronous tools and learn about their experience using Reddit.

3) Competitive Analysis
Competitors Chart - We compiled a list of Reddit’s competitors and gathered information about these platforms including DAU/MAU, Key Features, and platform for access. This information helped us understand where Reddit’s position compares to its competitors.
Competitor Summaries - For each competitor that we identified, our team further researched the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. We analyzed the effects of each strength and weakness on these platforms. This information informed us of the types of features we could potentially incorporate into our design.
Functionality Comparison - In this analysis chart, we analyzed competitors and checked for 9 synchronous features: voice chat, video, screen share, stage/spotlight, closed captioning, music sharing, plugins/bots, non-text engagement. This informed us of possible features to include in our design and avenues to consider when implementing them.

Secondary Research
At the start of the project, our team initially explored the problem space by doing desk research and reviewing white papers. As a team, we individually found white papers and our sponsors from Reddit also provided us with relevant papers. These documents were primarily about online communities and how different interactions are seen within them. A key finding from the research papers was that the definition of synchronous engagement is very broad and can incorporate different features through different mediums. This may include voice, video, text, etc. Our team noted the features to be further iterated during the ideation phase.

KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

PERSONAS

We created two personas for our two core user groups: Redditors and moderators.
Our personas will help center us and keep us focused on our user groups as we move forward into our ideation and design phases. Our Redditor persona was primarily based on our surveys and interview findings. Our moderator persona was based on our secondary research and insight from our sponsor. For our personas, we included an about section to provide context on the persona, a quote, a scenario, and the user pain points.

IDEATION

SKETCHING
We began with divergent ideation individually, coming up with 2-6 ideas and then coming together as a group to conduct convergent ideation with our best ideas. Our solutions ranged from smaller features such as a live chat for subreddits to entire platforms, like a Gather.town platform where users can mingle, discuss prompts, watch videos together and just hang out synchronously.

HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

Entry Point - Once a user enters Reddit, they are presented with a popup that showcases different subreddit villages the user could choose to enter based on suggested popular subreddits and whichever subreddits the user is currently part of. In addition, users will be able to search for a particular subreddit in the search bar if they do not see a subreddit on the popup they wish to join. If a user clicks out of the popup without selecting a subreddit to join, they will join a randomly generated subreddit.

Subreddit Conversation -
Users have a wide variety of mediums to create and maintain a community within Snooville. One of the more unique options we have designed is video streaming. Videos often describe stories and experiences that many times cannot be put into words such as posts.

Landing Screen - Once inside a particular subreddit village, the user will be greeted with a welcome message and an overview of how many active users are currently in the SnooVille village. There will also be a directory in the upper right-hand corner where users will be able to gauge what conversations and activities are currently happening within the village and be transported directly to that group if the user clicks on one of them.

Directory - If a user enters directly from a subreddit, they will immediately spawn within the SnooVille village about that subreddit without the aforementioned popup. Once inside a particular subreddit village, the user will be greeted with a welcome message and an overview of how many active users are currently in the SnooVille village. There will also be a directory in the upper right-hand corner where users will be able to gauge what conversations and activities are currently happening within the village and be transported directly to that group if the user clicks on one of them.

Video Calling - Once a user is in range of a group, they will be able to gain full access to the local chat, video share, and voice chat features. To preserve anonymity, which is a component that Reddit heavily values, users can use a filter in video calls to hide their face and use a voice disguise if they choose to through their settings.

Conversation Prompt - One of the most important pieces of feedback we received from our sponsors as well as our user testing participants, is there needs to be a reason for users to join in a conversation and then actively engage in a conversation. To solve this issue, our team decided to implement prompts that are based on the most popular posts for the pertaining subreddit that would refresh every hour. These prompts will be tied to gathering areas, such as tables to be easier to find for users.

REFECTION

After our last meeting with our sponsor, we had a conversation about aspects of the project we would alter if we could go back. Our design decisions will not be implemented on the Reddit platform directly as our project served as a proof of concept. However, we were told that the findings from our research somewhat aligned with their internal research. Our design recommendation had several flows like video streaming, music streaming, and gaming that we had not fully designed the entire flow. If we had more time, I would be interested in doing further research on how to make these designs seamless, especially on a social lively platform like Reddit.As Reddit grows in popularity, I would also be interested in how big design changes like adding synchronous engagement will impact the user experience on Reddit.If we had more time there are many avenues I would like to explore further with this project. Currently, users enter SnooVilles based on subreddits. However, I would like to explore how can we have one central SnooVille. That is because a different SnooVille per subreddit may create a lot of overall redundancy. Another aspect of SnooVille that I am interested in exploring further is how conversations can be more organic than simply joining a table with ambient noise. I would be curious to explore if it would be feasible for users to join a conversation directly when they are on a thread.