Idea: No showing feedback on posts but tap or swipe once to see feedback counts on Facebook/Twitter/etc (#95)

Purpose is to try to encourage people to share without thinking about how other people perceive if their posts are worthwhile based on feedback.

Start on the feed. Tap on the down arrow to show hearts/views/comments, tap again to close, then tap again to open, then scroll down then tap the left arrow to open then tap again to close to see the alternative version, then swipe right to left to open. You could swipe left to right to close if you wanted. Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

Facebook/Twitter/social products today:

• Snapchat does not show any feedback by other people. Only the person who posted can see who viewed their posts and who replied with private comments. Snapchat is the leading design for encouraging sharing including by giving people the feeling of a real audience based on who views while also avoiding the judgment that goes with showing any annotation.
• You can swipe up to send a private chat back to people about Snapchat Stories which can be useful feedback to help figure whether your posts are interesting or not.
• Facebook shows counts for likes/reactions and video views on posts. You can’t see who exactly viewed your posts.
• Instagram shows counts for likes on photos, and counts for views on videos. And tapping on the view count for videos shows if any people liked the video. I like that likes were less emphasized.
• A challenge with social products that encourage feedback I think is that over time people feel less inclined to share in part because they feel that there is a certain number of likes that a post they make needs to get in order for posting to be worthwhile. This is a massive challenge now as Snapchat and potentially future social products find ways for people to be comfortable with sharing more content and particularly video because even if content doesn’t earn a lot of likes does not mean that the content wouldn’t be interesting to watch.
• So video even without attracting feedback can still be very appealing to watch.
• Still, people enjoy getting feedback, perhaps in part at least to know what people enjoyed more than something else.

Proposed idea:

1. Start on the feed. Note that no feedback is shown about posts. Tap on the down arrow to show likes/reactions/hearts, views, and comments.
2. Scroll down and see an alternative version that shows an arrow pointing left. Tap on that arrow to open the likes/reactions/hearts, views, and comments on the post.
3. Tap on the arrow to close.
4. Swipe right to left to open again as an alternative way to view using a gesture.

Comments:

• Opportunity is to encourage people to share without thinking about the feedback being visible to other people unless people choose to look up that info.
• Key metric is about sharing per person.
• Opportunity is for people who create content to still know info about feedback, as well as people who care to look more closely.
• Alternative is to make all feedback private, but there may be some benefits for letting people know what amount of feedback there is as well.
• Question is about what impact there may be on what people view. Perhaps not seeing feedback keeps people open to look at the post/media/video anyway because of an interest in that person’s content without being influenced by what other people choose to do with feedback or viewing.

Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

© 2016 D.J. Sherrets