Our client wanted to build a free, fast and easy “decision engine” that provides quick feedback to the user's questions and comments. They wanted to provide Q&A for private and public-facing groups. The social media platform should allow the user to publish any question and get a fast response to their questions. The core idea is building a community-based platform for registered users, aiming to fulfill the growing need for information and knowledge. They also wanted to encourage users to respond with urgency, and give fast, graphical feedback through this cloud solution.
During the discovery stage, we understood that the client required a cloud-based platform that will be a substantive resource for individuals and entrepreneurs. They wanted writers, scholars, bloggers, investors, consultants, students and other users to use this Q/A site and grow in terms of knowledge sharing, connection building and information gathering. Based on our discussions we understood that the platform should allow people to post questions on a variety of topics as well as read high-quality knowledge content that is personalized and relevant.
We had to extensively increase our knowledge base to understand the nitty-gritties of Social Media Platform. Our aim was to help the client expand their user base; we researched various social platforms to understand what keeps the users engaged. We also conducted research to understand what doesn't work for them on a community platform.
The platform needed a roadmap that made communities discoverable in better ways and ensuring community engagement. Mapping out user flow took time and effort since it was essential to create a seamless user journey connecting all the other functionalities.
We had to break down complex flows into smaller chunks to make everything simple, be it signing in, auto email generation for questions posted privately, creating the questions etc.
We designed the application after acquiring a thorough insight into the social media industry. We understood that in user generated content platforms, a question answering system with online answers and other comments plays a huge role in building trust relationship between different users. Text mining from a Q&A platform with its online comments helps to collect content about issues users are most concerned about. And when similar and dissimilar responses are mined and compared, the results show that a Q&A platform influences user’s decision making to great extent. This insight was essential to understand the workings of the industry and understand how we could design a solution that catered to all these needs.
During our discovery stage we understood that we would also have to accommodate heaps of users with tons of information. Maintaining our commitment to aesthetic design, look and feel of the platform was also critical.
We began by diving into the ideation and design process, the first step was creating a user persona since it’s critical in the design process.
This insight was critical in separating the functionalities of the user groups and admin to define the operational parameters and goals. This helped us to simplify the functions and user flow. We incorporated functionalities like options to post open and closed questions either to the community, privately, or both. The users could also draft questions for later use as well. The platform also gave information about the top-rated question. We implemented conditions(formula) to boost the engagement to answer questions to highlight the top questions and top contributors.
One of the requirements of our client was multiple Social Media login options into an account. We gave multiple login functionality from the 4 most popular social media sites- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google.
The platform served both public and private audiences, it was important to consider the public and private question settings for different user profiles. The privacy settings of a group (Public/Private) tell who can view the group's content and its members. In a private group, only members can view other members and see what they post. But in a public group, any user can see other group members and see what they post, including non-members. We considered all these aspects and combinations to display content.
We had to extensively increase our knowledge base to understand the nitty-gritties of Social Media Platform. Our aim was to help the client expand their user base; we researched various social platforms to understand what keeps the users engaged. We also conducted research to understand what doesn't work for them on a community platform.
The platform needed a roadmap that made communities discoverable in better ways and ensuring community engagement. Mapping out user flow took time and effort since it was essential to create a seamless user journey connecting all the other functionalities.
We had to break down complex flows into smaller chunks to make everything simple, be it signing in, auto email generation for questions posted privately, creating the questions etc.
