Interaction 09: Designing the Viral App

February 8, 2009by Luke Wroblewski

Christina Wodtke’s Designing the Viral App session at Interaction 09 described several patterns for accelerating viral adoption of Web services.

Behavior is a function of a person and his environment. We cannot control people but we do have power over the environment.
Make things frictionless: want to remove doubts that people have about doing things.
Privacy & virality oppose each other. If you go public by default, you need a way to let people go private.
Cannot make systems less complicated, can only move complexity around –to the user, designer, or the back-end.
Having things right at hand: people need to know what they should do. Prioritize what is on the page.
Asymmetric follow: do not need two-way connections to allow people to pay attention. Two way handshake makes for more compelling relevance. One way gives you broader reach.
Reciprocity: if someone gives you a gift, you will feel an urge to pay them back.
Targeted: who are the most useful people in a network –the connectors, mavens, salesman?
Group manager sets things up, organizes, and keep conversation going. Can provide tools for managers that are specific to them. Optimize for the people doing the heavy lifting.
Outreach: probably need to do some marketing. One of the best ways to do this is search engine optimization.
Can utilize network to aggregate what is most relevant based on popularity: most emailed, etc.
A checklist is a powerful way to make sure you accomplish your objectives.