Why build the profile directory first?

• Dmitry Ratnikov
• June 15, 2008

There are so many possible features for a site like CommunityCollab. Throughout our interview sessions with members of potential audiences, we have gotten many ideas for things that might be useful: a discussion platform, a job board, link- and file-exchange, maybe even a meeting scheduler. 

For obvious reasons, we cannot build every single feature that potential users or people on our team think of. We would like to focus on the low-hanging fruit—building features that provide the most value to members while not taking very long to develop.

One of the goals of CommunityCollab is to help its members establish new professional relationships. If we can help every member meet at least one person whom they didn’t know before but who can help them in some small way, we’ve achieved quite a bit, right? 

Over and over during our research we have heard questions like “Who else is out there,” “What are they up to?” "How can I find out what other organizations are doing about foreclosure?" We think answering these sorts of questions is an important first objective for the portal.

A directory of practitioners in all areas of community revitalization—a Yellow Pages of sorts—could be a great tool in helping members establish new relationships. Maybe someone reads or hears a name of a colleague or organization they didn’t know before. They can look-up that name (provided that they are a member of CommunityCollab) and get a quick overview of who this person or group is and with what they are involved. Or maybe a user is looking for someone involved with “foreclosure” in Chicago. The directory can help.

Balancing the amount of information people would like to read about others (a lot) vs. the amount they are willing to write online for themselves (very little) was one of the hardest parts of designing the directory.

We ended up focusing on getting the most useful information from users that required the least amount of effort. We asked three or four interesting questions: name, title, organization, areas of expertise and a brief description of the project that’s been taking your time lately.

Members will be able to add all sorts of other detail at a later stage, but we expect the basic profiles to get the connection-making started.

Here's a prototype of our very short sign-up wizard:

We think it’s a good start. The programmers are working on the code and expect to have it ready to go shortly after July 4.

We plan to be on the phone with a few initial beta users as they go through the registration process. Are there things they don't understand or don't want to reveal? Let’s see how our first round of usability tests go. We'll make changes immediately based on what we learn.