At 2020 Social, we use a simple Engagement Architecture framework for designing social platforms, including online communities. The framework has seven elements —
1. Three types of Social Objects: lifestyles, interests, causes.
2. Five types of Social Dynamics: consumer generated content, conversations, collaboration, community, collective intelligence.
3. Three elements of the Social Graph: profiles, activities, relationships.
4. Seven types of Social Roles (related to profiles): lurker, learner, connector, moderator, organizer, teacher, super-user.
5. Seven levels in the Ladder of Engagement (related to activities): consume content, curate content, create content, connect with others, collaborate with others, try offering, evangelize offering.
6. Four types of Social Contexts (related to relationships): alone, with others, with cohorts, with friends.
7. Three types of Social Intelligence Systems: reputation systems, recommendation systems, reward systems.
Each of these seven elements translate into a set of benchmark features and practices that can be modified to suit different types of users (employees, partners, or customers) and different business contexts (enterprise, business to business, business to consumer).
So far, we have been using the Engagement Architecture framework for designing communities, but haven’t really documented it.
In the next month, I’ll write about each of these seven elements in some detail, both to document the framework as a set of checklists and design references, and to share what we have learned with the social interaction design community. Stay tuned.
Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.
