engaging experience

What's So "Social" About LinkedIn?

I recently discovered Beth Kanter's blog on using social media for nonprofit strategy. Since the topic's right up my alley, I clicked through to her LinkedIn profile to check out her professional offerings. Her profile indicates she's open to being contacted for consulting opportunities or expertise requests. Since I'm a LinkedIn member, too, I decided to invite her to join my network, and clicked "Add Beth to your network" on her profile page.

This launched LinkedIn's Add Connections screen, below. Since I'm not sure whether Beth and I know anyone in common or are in any of the same groups, I decided to check the option "I don't know Beth" and type a friendly, personalized message in the note box:

Once I'd finished my note, I pressed Send Invitation. But LinkedIn threw this at me:

Clicking the only option in this lightbox returned me to Beth's LinkedIn profile, discarding the note I'd just composed.

LinkedIn violated a couple key UI rules, here:

• They offered the user an option that's not available. If there was no way that clicking "I don't know Beth" was going to get my message sent, LinkedIn shouldn't have showed me that option. I supposed it's possible this option is sometimes available to some users. In that case, it could be grayed and disabled for all other users, but only if there is a possibility of somehow meeting the criteria. For example, if upgrading my account would permit me to contact people I don't know, the option could be grayed-out but with a small note next to it asking for the sale.

• They threw the user's work away. LinkedIn didn't offer me the option of returning to the screen to edit my selections, or even to copy the note I'd so carefully crafted. What if I really knew Beth, but had checked the wrong radio button?

My uncharitable impression is that the rationale behind these UI choices is simply to reinforce LinkedIn's rules: "Don't contact people you don't know. They don't like it, and neither to we." Isn't there a nicer way to teach users "the rules" without scolding them?

As a social media site, LinkedIn needs to get a little more sociable.

Wild Helleborine

This orchid grows by our stone wall. Epipactis helleborine, the weed orchid. Each blossom is no bigger than a fairy's crown. The experience? Magical.

One Hundredth Post

This is my one hundredth post. The gravity of that milestone has muted me for weeks. What can I say that's special enough for the occasion?

Since launch, engaging experience has enjoyed 10,139 pageviews (and one more, now that you're reading this).  The average is 10.42 per day, the majority to posts I blogged live at the AI@50 Conference. Visitors seem also to be interested in meaning. Some even come straight to the home page. Now that's flattery.

So this one hundredth post is a tautology. It is about itself. And now I can move on.

Would you like to Next, or Submit?

Okay, buttons should be verbs. I think we can all agree. But Next and Previous, or even the ugly but more parallel Prev, are well established actions, or implied actions, so they're used a lot. But still, what verb?

At my husband's company, a vendor is developing a UI to collect clinical data about a medical procedure. First draft: a tabbed interface that requires the user to enter data on the first form, move to the next, and so on. Sound okay so far?

Each tabbed form is so long you have to scroll. Uh oh. Scrolling on tabbed interface = bad. We're not off to a strong start.

Then, here are the three buttons at the bottom of the first tab screen:

Previous  |  Next  |  Submit

Please take ten seconds and think about what each of these would do to the data you just entered into this (long, scrolling) form.

Ready?

Previous: Please recall that this is the first form. So why is previous even enabled? It does absolutely nothing.

Next: This takes you to the next tab of info to enter. But it doesn't save your data.

Submit: This runs a validation check on your data. If it passes, your data is saved. If it doesn't pass, your data is discarded. And in any case, it throws you out of the tabbed UI altogether.

Where to begin? This vendor obviously doesn't know thing one about UI design. In ten seconds I bet you came up with better ideas.

Discounting Charitable Gifts

"A survey last fall by American Express Publishing and Harrison Group found that 99% of wealthy consumers shop online, expecting goods to be discounted at least 30% from store prices." — Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2008

Twice in the last year my employer (and alma mater) has run a marketing campaign in which an anonymous donor promises $100,000 for each 1,000 gifts made during the challenge period. The goal is to drive participation by making each new gift, regardless of its value, worth an extra $100. The additional challenge money goes to financial aid, partly because it's an area of need, but also because it's broadly appealing to our constituency; an easy sell.

Challenges are a well-worn tactic of nonprofit fundraising: think public radio. They work because they lift gift value, but also because they create urgency. For us, the strategy works reasonably well. We usually see a few thousand donors fulfilling their pledges during these periods, many giving as little as $1, knowing their gift will amount to much more—up to 100 times more—when the challenge money comes in. But it's also not unusual for major annual fund donors, those who usually give in excess of $2,500, to fulfill their pledges during these campaigns, too. This is probably because we hit all non-donors hard with direct postal and email over a few weeks, and if you market, they will give. But we've always assumed the "extra $100" selling point probably doesn't carry much weight with these major donors.

But the above stat in the Wall Street Journal made me realize even the major donor might view such challenges as essentially a "discount" or "sale" on their charitable gift, because even a $2,500 gift yields a 4% premium if given during the challenge period. The donor doesn't realize a tax advantage of that additional money, but knowing it exists may make the donor feel like the "system" is giving them a better deal for the money.

This makes me wonder whether we could even more consciously leverage other mass-market phenomena like discounting, promotions, time-limited offers, and outlet sales without cheapening the enterprise. We're selling the undergraduate experience, essentially, but that's a pretty broad, generic product, even for an institution that has a strong reputation for excellence. What more specific products would connect with donors? And how can our product/marketing mix get more specific and targeted?