Turning Mind Maps into an Online Community | Human Centric UX

This week the?Mind Map Nation community website went from mind map concept to reality! Today I'll share how I used Mind Maps, user feedback and personas to create a full fledged product.

?? Note before we start: How we describe our users is important to the designer mindset. The word "user" is imo overused in tech and turns us into faceless masses feeding on a product. On the other hand, giving your users a name brings back the empathy (not to mention fun!). Niantic Labs for example calls their Ingress and Pokemon Go players "Agents" and "Trainers" respectively. I still use "users" as tech jargon in this article for ease of communication, but to me they are "House members", which I'll explain in a bit.

1. Mapping User Needs

There were several steps that went into designing the MMN community, which is currently invite only. In the?membership application, there are two specific questions that tell me what my audience is looking for in a mind mapping community.

I carefully read through *all* of their responses (which were awesome!), extracted the key themes in the above Mind Map and connected them to the different features of the community site.

This exercise helped me gauge if the final product will capture my users' needs. And if not, what features can I add to do so, such as a new discussion channel or "House" dedicated to professional mind mapping scenarios (more on this later).

2. Designing the Community

Below you'll see a few things:

1. Lit Community Logo

The community and website logos are different. The community version is lit up by a glowing orb in its center to represent how?my members are the heart of Mind Map Nation. Without a vibrant group of people, MMN would just be another content site floating in the vast interwebs.

The logo itself reflects the user-centric nature of the product.

It also makes it slightly easier to differentiate the two sites on the browser side by side - though this is probably my OCD designer side talking ;)

2. The Town Square

This is where the user starts her journey, make intros, attend live events, learn continuously, and suggest community improvements.

It's typical for Circle communities to just name this section "Community", but honestly that's kind of boring.

I asked myself "what is the purpose of this section?" and determined that it was a common meeting ground for everyone regardless of interest to meet for the first time and celebrate our growth together.

In other words, a "Town Square"

Our member can even check out "books" from the community library (i.e. Knowledge Vault) and voice her opinions in Suggestions.

Town Square is also two syllables vs four ("com·mu·ni·ty") as I prefer efficiency.

Here are a few highlights.

Community Wins?is one of my favorite channels because recognizing and celebrating our incremental successes is critical to growing in anything. Whether it's finishing a big presentation, closing out your latest 2-week sprint, or making your first mind map, this is where the whole community can root you on!

The?Community Handbook?(with aesthetic and functional on-brand iconography) has a quick start guide plus everything you need to make the most of your membership.

The?Knowledge Vault?contains MMN's shared educational collection like ebooks, courses, and workshop recordings, which will continue to grow as the community expands.

3. Challenges

Many of my audience told me the need for?accountability partners. This is where they'll find folks to level up together on 1-2 week challenges. I'll go into more detail about these programs in the next write up.

4. Five Conversation "Houses"

Outside the Town Square lie the Houses. These are the conversation channels of MMN where members dive into different topics.

Why name them "houses"? Harry Potter references aside, a real world house provides a space for likeminded people to gather and mingle. Just like Gryffindor and Slytherin, I'd like my members to eventually grow to have their own identities as well as respect the diversity of our mindsets. Besides, just calling such an important part of the community "Channels" would be quite bland without any personality.

I thought a lot about the "user personas" of who would love to frequent each House and named them accordingly.

For instance,?Strategy Nerds?are philosophical-leaning folks like the Charlie Mungers, Ray Dalios and Ben Thompsons of the world who analyze everything in a high-level abstract way. I then include examples of the types of conversations/posts that would take place in each House.

The other personas are:?Creative Geniuses?(Jonathon Ives and Ed Catmulls),?Productivity Gurus?(Ali Abdaals and Tiago Fortes),?Tactical Masterminds?(the professional LinkedIn crowd here and my coaching clients), and?Sensitive Poets?(Brene Browns and Paulo Coelhos).

For those who follow my?Silver & Steel newsletter, you'll notice that Geniuses and Poets are?Silver?leaning, while Gurus and Masterminds are?Steel?practitioners, whereas Nerds is a blend of the two. This makes for a balanced community where everyone can find a House where they can feel most at home in.

New members are encouraged to take their time to explore each House to see which ones they naturally gravitate towards (maybe it's all of them!). Even if they don't immediately resonate with the nature of a particular House, it's useful to?peek in and learn from minds outside our bubble. That's in fact how we become innovative Connected Thinkers.

?? Fun note: I personally have a strong affinity to House Strategy Nerds + Sensitive Poets, but shift between all of them depending on the situation. Right now, for example, I'm squarely in Creative Genius + Productivity Guru mode as I'm building MMN.

Okay that's it for now! Next week is a huge milestone as?membership invitations go out?(apply now?if you haven't already - you won't want to miss our launch week events!) along with the Community Events calendar and Challenge details. Or follow along my product building journey by subscribing to Epiphany, MMN's newsletter.

Finally, shout out to Brian Mun and Olivia Buba for brainstorming with me on structuring and naming the Houses. Brian's basically Baidu's CNO (Chief Naming Officer ;) so it was great to bounce back and forth to come up with fun descriptive names.