Community manager -- hmm, that role sounds kinda familiar...

Having seen more and more references to a role called "community manager" in recent months, I decided to find out what people in that role do. In doing so, I found out that I had been a community manager -- a very good community manager -- in different contexts for years.

Wikipedia refers to this role as the "online community manager," and the role is sometimes confused with that of the social media manager. Some have tried to clarify how these two roles are distinct, but UserVoice's Evan Hamilton is one of probably many community managers who find themselves performing the social media manager role in addition to others.

Indeed, community managers often play a wide variety of roles, as revealed at a recent community manager breakfast hosted by Evan. Roles played by one or more of the community managers in attendance include:

• helping customers (i.e., the community members) have a great experience;
• trying to get customers to stay customers;
• finding product bugs;
• giving feedback to product managers;
• being a gatekeeper for all customer communications;
• figuring out the right kind of metrics to use to measure their own effectiveness;
• managing social media activity;
• driving the brand voice;
• advocating for users;
• organizing events/contests/...

Attendees reported that they work in businesses of a wide variety of sizes and find themselves positioned organizationally in a wide variety of departments, including marketing, engineering, product, customer service, and sales support. Views varied as to which department community managers should report to, but all thought it best that the role evolve to be a "horizontal, strategic role" touching all parts of the company and that it should eventually include a C-level role known, perhaps, as the Chief Happiness Officer.

All these topics and many more were discussed by ~200 community managers nearly a week ago at the Community Leadership Summit (CLS) West 2012 held at eBay Town Hall in San Jose, CA. CLS West was an unconference with a packed agenda of 40 different sessions, and all attendees were enthusiastic participants.

Why so much attention to the role of community manager? A John Hagel and John Seely Brown blog posting from earlier this week provides one answer:

"Building an effective virtual community is no simple task. Most importantly, it requires a deep understanding of the unmet needs of potential community members rather than simply approaching it as a marketing opportunity for the company. It is no wonder that so many have tried to create these communities and yet so few have succeeded."

However, what is most interesting to me about all this is the similarity of some of the community manager roles and challenges and aspirations to some of the roles and challenges and aspirations of user/customer experience personnel: advocating for users; understanding their unmet needs; helping customers have a great experience; providing input to product managers; figuring out the best location in the organizational structure; evolving into strategic roles; the Chief Experience or Customer Officer; ...

Also of interest to me is how many of these roles and challenges and aspirations are among those which I dealt with in my past roles as a community manager (though I never had that specific title). Having had extensive experience with the world's first online community -- PLATO -- while in graduate school, I developed and oversaw the use of social media tools modeled on PLATO's tools to employees working at Pacific Bell, then became much more of a community manager during the founding and early years of BayCHI. After years of serving the BayCHI community, I became a manager of an international community of community managers in the role of SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair. In this role, I provided support to (potential) local community leaders in multiple forms, including workshops and articles, some of which remain of relevance to community managers of today. Two examples:

• The Social Design of a Local SIG: this discussion of the key elements of the design of cutting-edge virtual communities is as fitting today as it was in 1997;
• Challenges Facing CHI Local SIGs: (potential) community managers of today can benefit from being aware of these lists of challenges identified by a large international group of CHI local chapter leaders in 1998.

As suggested earlier, user/customer experience personnel also have (had) experiences that should be of interest to community managers. I'd like to someday see a large-scale meeting (of the minds) of UX/CX personnel and community managers to the probable benefit of both communities.

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Note that I've played the role of community manager in another context as well (Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine), and it is possible that I will be playing the role again in yet another context in the future. Will the label of "community manager" finally be appropriate for me then? We shall see.

Lifetime Award

When Peter O'Toole was informed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was to present him with an honorary lifetime award in 2003, "he originally intended to turn it down feeling that the lifetime award signaled the end of his career. He wrote the Academy a letter stating that he was 'still in the game'."

Peter's recent, wonderful Oscar-nominated performance in Venus and his upcoming appearances in several other movies shows how right he was.

At CHI 2007 this spring, SIGCHI will be giving me its Lifetime Service Award, even though I, too, am "still in the game." Peter O'Toole was decades older when he wrote that letter than I am now, but I greatly appreciate the award and am happy to have been able to contribute to the field worldwide via SIGCHI.

Here is what SIGCHI has published about me in its award announcement:

"Richard I. Anderson is a user experience practice, management, and organizational development consultant with more than 20 years of experience. He was on the founding committee and served as program chair (1990-2002) and chair (first elected chair) of BayCHI, the largest chapter of SIGCHI, but has also traveled around the world growing and facilitating SIGCHI chapters internationally. Richard was the SIGCHI Local Chapters Chair for 5 years, from 1996-2001. He authored numerous SIGCHI Bulletin articles, wherein he offered case studies, advice and support for local SIG leadership. He organized and led popular annual workshops for chapter leaders at the CHI conference. Richard also served as a member of 4 CHI conference committees (including the upcoming CHI '08) and served as the CHI 2005 Development Consortium Chair, in addition to serving on the committee for 3 DUX conferences. Finally, Richard has authored multiple articles for interactions magazine. Through his leadership, he has facilitated and spread the word about human-computer interaction literally around the world."

I've written about some of the above-referenced work in various places. For example, in "Offshoring user experience work," I wrote:

"As SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair for 5 years, I somewhat unknowingly helped make offshoring of user experience work a fact of life, working with people around the world to help them set up and successfully lead and manage regional and national HCI communities. Countries in which I helped establish and grow SIGCHI chapters included India, Russia, Romania, Brazil, Korea, South Africa, Poland, Mexico, Czech Republic, Israel, Chile, New Zealand, and Bulgaria, many of which are identified in a January 2006 issue of BusinessWeek as countries competing for offshore outsourcing by U.S. and Western European companies."

In "1996-2001 CHI Local SIGs Column Sampler," I review the many articles I wrote and edited about forming, leading, and promoting professional organizations around the world. Many of them are still relevant and of value to (potential) chapter leaders of any professional association, not just SIGCHI, and to some extent even to (potential) leaders of user experience organizations in for-profit companies, though that was not my intent.

A list of the dozens of BayCHI programs I put together is still accessible on my website, though it and additional information about each program can now be found on BayCHI's website.

I still get called "Mr. BayCHI" every so often, even though I ended my 12-year stint as BayCHI Program Chair and emcee a few years ago. And, delightfully, I still communicate with and run into people from around the world that I worked with as SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair.

I miss all that work sometimes. I still lend SIGCHI a bit of a hand, but my professional association attention has shifted more towards the cross-disciplinary focus of UXnet, for which I am a member of the Board of Directors. (UXnet is still in its early stages of development, but it recently launched an Organizations network to facilitate communication and collaboration among major non-profit, user experience related organizations; SIGCHI is among the network's initial members. Additionally, BayCHI has helped sponsor the UXnet ambassadors in the San Francisco Bay Area.)

I most miss my work for SIGCHI in and for other countries. I have done other work in other countries, but I am interested in working and having an impact on work in other countries much more. So, if you are, for example, looking for someone to oversee and coordinate development of your international user experience research and design practice and organization...

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No, of course I'm not comparing myself to Peter O'Toole, and, unfortunately, I never did make it to the Arabian desert, as he did as T.E. Lawrence.

The quote about Peter O'Toole comes from the Internet Movie Database.

Special thanks to Marilyn Tremaine.

Easy7

Lots is going on in the world of User Experience in India these days:

• World Usability Day 2006 featured events in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore;
• a Doors of Perception conference will be held in India for the third time during 2007;
• a Design for All Institute is getting started in Delhi;
• more U.S.-based companies are building user experience groups in India (see, for example, "Usability professionals: You've come a long way baby!"), and more Western companies are learning the importance of involving India-based user experience professionals in designing for the multi-dimensional India market (see "Designing for emerging, non-Western markets");
• an active yahoogroup of HCI professionals in India now has almost 1100 members;
• etc.

As I referenced in a previous posting, I played a role in getting things going in India (as well as in many other countries), and I've continued to provide a bit of help over the years, in part by finding keynote speakers for CHI South India's annual conference in Bangalore. This year was no exception, though a new conference format features no single keynote speaker.

If you are in India or plan to be in India early next month, look into swinging by the Leela Palace in Bangalore for Easy7 on Friday, January 5. It promises to be an excellent event.

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My humble thanks to Pradeep Henry and CHI-SI for including an interview of me on their website.

User experience work offshore/offshoring

While reading through interactions magazine's March+April 2006 special section entitled, "Offshoring Usability," I'm reminded of Fred Sampson's article entitled, "Taking UX Offshore," in the November+December 2005 issue. In that article, Fred describes abit of the early controversy surrounding offshoring (offshore outsourcing), but then states:

"Today, I think of offshoring as a non-issue. There's no point in lobbying against it, in writing letters to Congress or Parliament, much less to business executives. It's a done deal, a fact of life. Deal with it."

At CHI 2005, I moderated a panel entitled, ("Outsourcing and Offshoring: Impact and Consequences for the User Experience." Panelists discussed issues such as the impact of:

• time, language, and cultural differences;
• the nature and level of process development;
• infrastructure (both electronic and physical);
• location of users relative to offshore teams;
• level of training and expertise offshore; and
  
• characteristics of the work being offshored.

The panel's answer to the controversial question of whether offshoring of user experience work was good or bad pre-echoed Fred's view: don't view offshoring as good or bad; view it as a fact of life you must deal with.

As SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair for 5 years, I somewhat unknowingly helped make offshoring of user experience work a fact of life, working with people around the world to help them set up and successfully lead and manage regional and national HCI communities. Countries in which I helped establish and grow SIGCHI chapters included India, Russia, Romania, Brazil, Korea, South Africa, Poland, Mexico, Czech Republic, Israel, Chile, New Zealand, and Bulgaria, many of which are identified in a January 2006 issue of BusinessWeek as countries competing for offshore outsourcing by U.S. and Western European companies.

For those 5 years, I worked with (prospective) chapter leaders from long range as well as face-to-face, bringing many of these leaders together for annual workshops. I wrote and edited numerous articles to help (prospective) chapter leaders in all locations; articles included:

• Shaping the Roles to be Played During the 21st Century by Local Chapters of ACM SIGCHI, an article about the workshop for which I brought together leaders of 27 chapters from 18 countries;
• How New Local Chapters Work: The Experience of Czech SIGCHI, an article by Pavel Slavik and Boba Mannova about Czech SIGCHI's first two years and its plans for the future; and
• Diversity Within Unity: The Purpose of a Local SIG, about variations in chapter purpose and approach around the world.

And I represented the interests of local chapters worldwide as a member of an international SIGCHI Executive Committee.

Now, I'm a member of the Executive Council of the User Experience network (UXnet) which has Local Ambassadors in a rapidly increasing number of countries (25, I believe, as I write this) working to foster the growth of user experience communities and to facilitate networking among them (see UXnet Local Ambassadors: Building a Global Community One Locale at a Time). And I'm presently interacting with people in Asia and elsewhere to make UXnet's Advisory Board international.

I have also led expansion of user experience capability outside of the U.S. within businesses which have employed me, working with and within offices in multiple countries to develop and promote their user experience practice. I have hired, managed, coached, and advised individuals and teams in these offices, and worked to improve working relationships of user experience personnel with others within as well as across geographic boundaries.

I am very proud of all of this work, and I've delighted in getting to know and work with so many people around the world, traveling to Italy, France, Netherlands, India, Australia, Germany, U.K., Austria, and elsewhere to make it happen. Indeed, I hope much more work and travel of a related nature lies ahead for me.

Last November, I visited Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing to learn more about Neema Moraveji's exploration of issues of designing for the Chinese. As I stated in a recent blog entry:

"Great dividends await those companies who put ample resources in understanding the culture and living patterns of emerging markets, and in applying that understanding to identifying new opportunities for design for user experience."

Presently, I'm learning Mandarin via podcasts. I would have benefited from such learning when in Beijing last year, though I was able to get by reasonably well as the use of the English language in China is increasing. However, knowing more Mandarin than I did is important.

Offshore, and the offshoring of, user experience work is a reality that will increasingly affect us all.

Designing for emerging, non-Western markets

During the recent Designing for User eXperience (DUX 2005) conference, Ashwini Asokan demonstrated a coffee preparation ritual of Southern India during which coffee is poured back and forth between tumbler and cup several times. As she explained, alternative means of coffee preparation imported from other parts of the world haven't caught on, because they do not support this graceful ritual which is filled with "social, religious, traditional, emotional, and cultural significances related to the daily event." However, attending to and understanding the ritual enables identification of new opportunities for coffee product design more likely to succeed in India.

Also during DUX 2005, Neema Moraveji described "fundamental and broadly-applicable issues of designing for the Chinese" that surfaced during an exploration in interface design for the Chinese migrant worker population. These issues included "difficulties in Chinese character input, interfaces on a Chinese scale, and the Chinese people's sense of privacy." As in the case with India described above, attending to and understanding these issues should enable identification of new opportunities for product design more likely to succeed in China.

Other DUX 2005 presentations addressed related issues, such as in the context of designing an Arabic user experience, and even in the context of redesigning General Motors websites in differing world markets.

I visited Neema at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing abit more than a month ago, and while there was able to attend demos they prepared for attendees of the Design for the New China Markets Conference sponsored by IIT's Institute of Design. As stated on that conference website:

"Western companies interested in selling products and services to the new China market are discovering that, as Chinese consumers become more sophisticated, their development teams must compete more aggressively to create offerings that better fit the Chinese culture and living patterns. Companies who thought it was sufficient simply to understand 'the China market' are shocked to find there are actually several China markets, and that their offerings need to be created with the same care and sophistication as the offerings they create for the sophisticated and diverse markets in the West."

And as Ashwini and her co-author state in the paper they prepared for DUX 2005:

"Technological innovation and development has reached a high point in the world today. In this context, people all over the world demand for more value addition and meaningful experiences. Demands for novel and fancy experiences with technology are being replaced by the need to return back to the roots of their culture. Organizations ranging from small companies to big nations are struggling to redefine their identities by finding a balance between technology and culture, and innovation and experience."

Clearly, great dividends await those companies who put ample resources in understanding the culture and living patterns of emerging, non-Western markets, and in applying that understanding to identifying new opportunities for design for user experience.

Easy5: India's fifth usability conference

And speaking of offshore user experience research, design, and development...

I used to teach a full-semester (15-week) "user-centered design / usability engineering" workshop via University of California Berkeley Extension. It was a very successful course, one which significantly changed many of the participants' worklives for many years to come.

One of those participants was Pradeep Henry, who after taking the course, returned to India to, among other things, build India's first usability lab, write a textbook on user-centered information design, found and chair CHI South India (India's only chartered SIGCHI chapter), build a usability & design team at Cognizant (which has completed more than 225 offshore user interface evaluation and design projects), and chair India's first five conferences on software usability.

For each of these software usability conferences, Pradeep has asked for my recommendations regarding who to invite to appear as a plenary speaker, and he has followed my recommendations each year, beginning with Susan Wolfe for 2001, then Joe Konstan for 2002, me for 2003 (hey, he had actually asked me to be the plenary speaker for 2001 and then for 2002, so when he failed to ask me for 2003, who else was I going to recommend? ;-), Aaron Marcus for 2004, and Marc Rettig for this year.

This year's conference -- Easy5 -- takes place later this week in Bangalore.

(Pradeep will be a member of the "Outsourcing & Offshoring: Impact on the User Experience" panel I'll be moderating at CHI 2005.)