“Community design is an approach that is applied in all those contexts in which you want to create value from relationships. Community design does not design community but designs the context within which people move, interact, get information, and so on.”
Designing a community is an art. It’s not just about choosing the right colors, fonts and layout. The design needs to be attractive and inviting for the community members at all levels.
This article will help you understand what makes good design for a community, how to choose the right design for your community and what are some of the best practices when designing communities.
Designing Communities: How to Tackle this Complex Task?
Designing communities is a complex task. It requires a lot of skills and knowledge to do it well. But what are the tools and knowledge that professionals need?
Understanding your community
The first thing is empathy. You have to understand the needs of your community members, their pain points, what they want to get out of the community, and what they are looking for.
Listening to your community
The second skill is listening – you have to listen to your community members, understand their feedback and take it into consideration when designing the community.
Facilitating your community members’ discussions
The third skill is facilitation – you have to be able to facilitate discussions in a way that makes everyone feel heard and understood.
Creative community design
And finally, you need creativity – you have to be able to think outside of the box when designing communities so that it can meet all the needs of its members.
Top Tools For Designing a Community
Designing communities is a complex task, but it doesn’t have to be. There are many tools and guides that help professionals tackle this task. We’ll review some of them in the following section.
Slack Community Resource Center
One of the most popular of these tools is the Community Resource center by Slack.
This toolkit helps community designers create and manage communities with ease. They do this by providing templates, guidelines, and other resources for designing communities.
Canva designs
Canva is a great platform to get your visuals quickly out, in the forms of logos, banners and more.
Typeform survey
Typeform is a community’s designer best friend. It will allow you to quickly survey your members and get their feedback
It’s also very important to design guidelines for your community. If you haven’t, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with 9 examples of outstanding community guidelines.
Community Design Tactics that Actually Worked and Why
Let’s explore the design tactics that have worked for communities and why they were successful. We’ll also look at how to apply these tactics to your own community.
1. A sense of community
A sense of community is the most important thing for any online community to have. It’s what will drive people to be active and stay active, and it’s what will make them feel like they are part of something larger than themselves.
Diginomads’s example
The Diginomads platform‘s primary focus is to connect Digital Nomads all over the world. They share tips and advice and match based on their goals and interests
2. A clear call-to-action
A clear call-to-action is essential for getting people involved in your online community, but it can’t just be any call-to-action – you need a specific one that will work for your particular audience and context.
Workaway’s example
Workaway is a leading community for cultural exchange, working holidays and volunteering all around the world.
3. Mission statement
When you are designing your mission statement, it is important to include a call to action which directs members on what they should do next when they are done reading the mission statement.
Ted’s Example
TED exists to share ideas worth spreading online for free.
The 5 Essentials of Good Designing a Community from Scratch
1) Know Your Audience: The first step in designing your online community is to know who your audience is and what they want.
2) Define Your Goals: Once you know your audience, define what you want to achieve with them.
3) Hook Your Audience: Every page or post on your website needs to have an introduction paragraph with a hook sentence, which will attract readers’ attention and make them read more content on the page or post.
4) Know Your Resources: Before beginning any design project, it’s important to know what resources are at your disposal and how much time and money you have available for the project.
5) Create Content: Content is the backbone of any online community. You should know what content you want to publish on your blog and how often you are going to publish it.
In conclusion, finding the right design for your community requires some thoughts and good tools. But remember that your members are the key component and therefore they must be involved from the start in the development of your community.
And if you have tips or best practices that work for you and your community, please leave a comment!
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