RE: Steemit Onboarding: Low Hanging Fruit
Regarding the progress bar approach of LinkedIn, I have two words for you: hell no. I love LinkedIn and have used it many times over the years, but I absolutely hate firing up the app and being told my profile isn't complete, I still need to do this, yada yada yada.
However I do like the idea of a less intrusive gamification approach that doesn't try to overtly force you into doing certain things. I've seen forum sites that reward you with badges for achieving certain milestones. That, combined with small rewards, could work really well for Steemit. Imagine how encouraging it would feel for a new user to hit, say, 10 followers, and then get a badge and an e-mail from Steemit saying "congratulations on this milestone, you've earned 10 Steem to celebrate your achievement!".
I'm very much with you there. I completely agree that the intrusiveness of the linkedIn progress bar is way over the top, merely used that as an example. Simply having a 'good idea' list that can be muted for new users would be plenty on this, just something to make steemit.chat, the avatar option and maybe a help channel be known. The way linkedIn does it is extremely annoying at best.
I love the non-intrusive ones you mentioned like badges, achievements, congrats emails (if infrequent) etc. Really anything to provide that nice little 'ding' effect. While I'm sure some will disagree with me, I very much approach Steemit (and just about anything in life) as some form of game where I need to figure out the rules and methodology to then find a way to 'win.' Imo there is a lot of benefit to providing these little benchmarks for users so they feel the progress (even if trivialized) they are making. I'd hate to see users putting out crappy posts or comments just to reach certain achievements. But I have no doubt there is a great medium we can find for it here.
I've talked on the badges with a few users which we may try providing on our own to people. This would at least give them a way to 'show off' a bit in their posts or avatar much like the steemverify badge many of us currently have. But this would take time to talk through and do in a truly beneficial way.
There definitely needs to be some sort of guidance for new users. I remember having no idea how to get started when I first joined, and it took a couple weeks before I even realized Steemit Chat existed. It was like feeling my way around in a dark room, slowly learning the contours of the furniture.
Life is always more interesting when you treat it as a game! Even at work, gamification is used on the internal company web site. You get a certain number of points for every code check in, employee peer review, and post on the firm's internal social network (designed to promote the sharing of business knowledge). I'm currently an "Apprentice User" with around 200 points.
Sounds like the seed of a great new Steemit project! Habe you mentioned it to @good-karma ? I wonder if he would be willing to build an achievement system into some new version of the eSteem mobile app.
Hi @cryptomancer,
Yes I have plan to build achievement badges on eSteem. Before that we as developers (steemit, esteem, busy, etc.) need to think through everything and make it standard so that all apps can use similar approach. Initial badges on eSteem will most likely be similar to what stackoverflow.com has, later can be improved. Also have been thinking about games on Steem as a proof of concept, if I find time, I might implement simple game. A lot of ideas to explore for sure, but they need some sort of funding model to incentivize users as well as developers to build.
Cool, I'm glad to see this is at least on your radar. It's definitely more of a long-term vision. I wonder if Ned and Dan have any thoughts on this.
A blockchain might be well suited to turn-based games where the game state evolves from block to block. I'd certainly give it a try!