As is often quipped, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But how might a company measure something as elusive as community health? How might we know if investments in proactive design are improving player experience?
- Digital companies have significant control over community health because online platforms allow the company full control and insight on how people can interact, which grants better ability to measure social interaction.
- Breaking the big idea of “health” into smaller subparts — and then determining effective indicators for measuring those subparts — makes it manageable to measure the overall health of your community.
What is a community?
A community is a social unit that shares something in common, such as customs, identifying characteristics, values, beliefs, or norms. There are many different types of communities, and people can simultaneously be a part of many. What’s most important for being considered a “part” of a specific community is that a person experiences regular contact, either physically or digitally, with others.
Individuals can be members of both healthy and unhealthy communities. Healthy communities fulfill social needs and lead to elevated well-being for those involved. They are characterized by certain patterns of interaction among their members. These include:
- Shared interest in topics.
- Mutual respect for others, even when cultural or social backgrounds differ, contributing to physical and psychological safety.
- Willingness to support other community members and sufficient trust to accept help from the community.
- Investment of resources and time in the community.
- A sense of influence and ownership in the community.
What does “community” mean in a digital world?
The main difference between “real world” communities and digital communities is the lack of physicality. All contact and connection in digital communities happen via online communication methods, making them more limited. These limitations can make it difficult to discern context or nuance, which should be kept in mind when considering measurements of health.
Another key difference is the influence of the company over the digital community. While organizations, such as schools or churches, may have a high degree of influence on physical communities, they do not have the extensive control afforded by digital platforms, whereby all social connections and communications are able to be seen and managed. This allows companies to actively shape how community members meet each other’s social needs and makes it possible to track and measure the social health of the digital community in unique ways.
What does good look like?
While our end-goal may be the holistic health of our digital community, it is more feasible to identify underlying aspects of health and then track bite-sized metrics that together help us see how the parts contribute to the whole.
The following pillars of community health are good starting points for thinking about and measuring the overall health of your community. It should be noted that these are not meant to be an exhaustive list, nor should any one be considered enough to claim overall community health. Additionally, some will be more relevant to certain contexts than others. Designers and researchers can, together, think about the specific social affordances of their digital space and choose to focus on a handful of pillars that most align to their goals and design.
Pillars of community health
- Mutual interest
- Mutual respect
- Psychological safety
- Willingness to help and support (trust)
- Community investment
- Community influence
- Community resilience
Now what?
Having identified some pillars of community health, you can now articulate possible indicators for each. See the Strategy From Pillars of Healthy to KPIs of Thriving for more.
Many companies already track negative outcomes fairly well. Yes, we want to activate our tools when things are bad. But we likewise need to acknowledge that less bad doesn’t always mean more good. So, it’s important to also track measures of prosocial behavior (a type of productive behavior).
See also all articles on Measurement.
References
- Garrison, M. B. et al. (2005). Religious beliefs, faith community involvement and depression: A study of rural, low-income mothers.
- Greenberg, J. & Edwards, M. S. (2009). Voice and Silence in Organizations.
- Lambe, J. et al. (2017). Minority stress, community involvement, and mental health among bisexual women.
- Mah, A. & Carpenter, M. (2016). Community. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology.
- Smith, A. C. & Stewart, B. (2011). Organizational rituals: Features, functions, and mechanisms.
- Wilkins, A. L. (1983). Organizational stories as symbols which control the organization. In L. R. Pondy, P. J. Frost, T. C. Dandridge, G. Morgan, & S. B. Bacharach (Eds.), Organizational Symbolism.
