COLLABORATION
Cas Cornelissen, Developer and owner of Onefinity.

INFO
Seven inspires to help people from the creative industries to reach their goals by taking small, approachable steps on a daily basis. Seven is a graduation project from both a designer (me) and a developer (Cas Cornelissen). Seven is an online community where people from the creative industries get motivated, inspired and facilitated to start and keep up with daily challenges. The things you create during a challenge are only limited by your personal imagination. There are no customers or clients, no questions and no limitations. 

USER RESEARCH

It's very important for a starting online community to understand their users and target group. That's why we decided to interview designers all around the world about this subject. In the end, around 60 designers from at least 13 countries did participate in this research. We got some very valuable insights from this research, which formed a great foundation for the interaction design. 

INSIGHT #1
At all times, the user must know what and when something is expected in order to complete the challenge and achieve their goals. 

INSIGHT #4
Users should be able to skip days when their daily routine differs from their average days (i.e. weekdays vs weekenddays) without any consequences. 

INSIGHT #7
Personal growth and development over time should always be clear to the user. This allows us to speak to the two main forms of commitment; needs-based and identity-based commitment.

INSIGHT #2
One of the hardest challenges is thinking about what you want to create everyday. Providing a starting point could start the creative process.  

INSIGHT #5
We can support the user in creating a new habit by analysing the user generated data and translating it to personal feedback. Let the user know that Seven is here to help. 

INSIGHT #8
A starting online community will be more attractive to new members when the platform has an initial value to the user. 

INSIGHT #3
Developing a new habit is one of the biggest challenges. However, a new habit will ensure that the challenge becomes part of your daily routine. 

INSIGHT #6
We only communicate positive messages to our users. Even a negative message can end on a positive note. We think positive messages will keep the user motivated.

INSIGHT #9
Too much external motivation or rewards for simple tasks can decrease intrinsic motivation.

DATA DRIVEN FEEDBACK

There are different ways Seven communicates with its users, one of those things are data driven messages. We analyse user generated data and translate this to personal feedback specific to every user. By sending personal messages that only apply to one user we hope to hold the user accountable for the challenge on a personal level. 

SOURCE BASED CHALLENGES

Source-based challenges are challenges where the user gets a little less freedom, but we do provide a starting point to start designing. In these types of challenges we give them content to start with. For example, when somebody is doing a logo challenge we could generate different business cases for a new logo. In the example below we generate a name for the company, two different colors and the industry they are operating in for every new assignment.  

INTERACTION DESIGN

Shown above are just two of the concepts to solve some of the problems designers have when doing a daily challenge, but the online community is much bigger than that. We graphed out the all important pages and content categories that were present in the online community. Then we structured the way they related and connected the content together. We built a consistent and adaptable method of organization that could easily expand with the community.

DESIGN

Based on the new informational structure, I jumped in and built some designs that were closely connected to the Seven brand and would insure a great user experience. At all times we reflected on our designs and user experience with the insights of our research in the back of our minds.