Everything in Moderation
NextDoor is a social media platform geared towards connecting neighbors. My team aimed to enhance NextDoor by redesigning the moderation experience for local “leads” and the community they steward.
The Challenge
NextDoor promotes this tagline:
“We believe by bringing neighbors together we can cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on”
Our team recognized that there was a clear divide between the message that NextDoor has promoted and the actual experience of (some) users.
Through design, how might we improve the communication between users experience difficulty?
The Solution
Using user research, competitive analysis, and usability tests we were able to develop a new moderation experience that improved the communication with neighborhood “leads” and the neighbors they are tasked with stewarding.
Lead tools were made more clear and accessible, and getting in contact with your leads became easier and more direct.
The Results
Based on usability test results from real NextDoor users, we received positive feedback in comparison to the current experience:
✅ Usability scores increased by 25% for “reporting content”
✅ The “Who are my leads” widget increased lead awareness by almost 100%
✅ Usability scores increased by 40% for all moderator tasks (reviewing content, following up with users, etc.)
Research and Design Approach
User Research
User surveys and forum post audits allowed us to gather powerful insights about the experience some users were having on the platform. Card sorting was useful in organizing the feedback into actionable categories based on priority, urgency, LoE, etc.
2. Personas and Journey Maps
After identifying the moderation process as priority, we created personas that represented the two sides of the relationship. This helped us to keep real people in mind while we brainstormed solutions to their pain points.
Ken the “Lead”
Ken is a Lead for NextDoor. He took on the role because he happened to be the neighborhood association president at the time.
However, he took the responsibilities seriously until he found himself overwhelmed with the amount of notifications he was receiving on a daily basis. He started avoiding the moderator tasks altogether, leaving his community without an active Lead.
“I want to be able to better moderate and uphold community guidelines within my local NextDoor community and neighborhood".”
Sara the Neighbor
Sara just moved to a new neighborhood in Atlanta. She created an account on NextDoor, looking to connect with her new community.
There are many features that she loves, but she often sees posts that aren’t relevant to her, or make her feel uncomfortable and offended. She finds herself using the platform less as a result.
Her goals are to see content that is relevant to her and her new neighborhood. She also wants to avoid seeing posts that are racially and/or politically charged.
“I want a better way to sort the content on NextDoor because I want to know what is going on in my neighborhood.”
3. User Flows and Wireframes
Using our personas, we began to sketch and wireframe solutions that addressed the concerns of our users. Flow maps provided a structure to the decision-making and tasks that the users were performing.
4. Delivery and Testing
We built prototypes and tested them with real NextDoor users to gather feedback and tweak our designs.
Prototype 1: Lead Experience
Check out the prototype we built for the moderator experience
Prototype 2: Basic User
Check out the prototype we built for the basic user
With any project, I make notes along the way in order to improve the working relationship between teams. Collaboration is a living and breathing organism!
5. Reflections
A larger user set probably could have helped us gather more accurate data. It’s a balance between timelines and quality of data.
Hi-Fi prototypes should be the goal. With mid-fi, we ran into some issues of clarity because of the disconnect between the actual NextDoor app and the prototype.
Creating a wireframe kit for ourselves early on really helped to streamline the design and prototype process
Early priority maps make design direction a lot easier to pinpoint. NextDoor had so many potential improvements that we had to triage.
Overall, I think we balanced the LoE well across each stage of the project. Given another shot, I would have spent a little less time on research and more time with the prototype.
With all projects, I want to identify next steps in order to create a continuum of goal-setting and achieving.
6. Next Steps
Priority 1: Build out the rest of the lead mobile experience
This is key in gathering more feedback on the entire lead dashboard. That way, we can make sure the moderation experience fits seamlessly in the existing product.
Priority 2: Create an onboarding experience for new leads
We need familiarize them with the role and make it clear that their responsibilities are important. We want to emphasize to leads that if they feel they don’t have bandwidth to take care of lead duties, they need to able to pass the torch.
Thank you!
Please share any questions or feedback!