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If you can design an app, you can design a community
Summary
What if we applied our experience design and research skills to a new domain: designing communities? Historically, UX hasn’t paid attention to community as a solution space. And yet… at a business level: products, brands and creators build community to deepen their bonds with users and customers. At an organisation level: the best teams are modelled on communities. At a personal level: community brings meaning to our world, in our neighbourhoods and our personal interests. In this session, we’ll explore what's involved in creating and sustaining healthy communities. We’ll draw on the wealth of knowledge in fields as diverse as economics, network theory, social work and the design of cities, and on case studies of community efforts like Burning Man, Parkrun and Meetups. At the end, you'll have a good idea of how you might apply your skills to creating communities, whether in your organization, your brand, or your life outside of work. We'll introduce our toolkit, and show you how you could get involved in our project. Finally...let’s acknowledge that many people in UX are demoralised about their work right now. They’re in roles that underutilise their skills, they’re feeling undervalued, or are working on products they don’t love. Using your skills to build community might be just the change you need.
Key Insights
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Your UX research and design skills can be effectively transposed to designing communities.
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Community is best defined by the feeling of belonging it creates, rather than size or formality.
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Community building often involves intentionally introducing friction to foster safety and reflection, contrary to typical UX goals.
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Scaling communities differs from products; propagation and chapter models work better than mass scale.
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Dunbar's number (~150) suggests communities are healthiest and most sustainable at smaller, manageable sizes.
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Community design is akin to gardening — working with natural human social needs rather than mechanical design.
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Ethical considerations in community design are heightened; misuse can cause serious emotional harm.
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Metrics like repeat attendance and reciprocal acts of generosity matter more than vanity metrics like group size.
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Succession planning and clear roles are crucial to sustain communities beyond the initial enthusiasm phase.
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Many commercial community efforts risk becoming extractive; authentic community building requires non-extractive motives.
Notable Quotes
"If you can design an app, you can design a community."
"Community is a thing that fosters a sense of belonging and wanting to identify with it."
"We often introduce friction deliberately in community building to make it safe and meaningful."
"Scaling communities is about propagation, not just growing as big as possible."
"Dunbar's number explains why groups around 150 people work best as communities."
"Designing community is more like gardening than building a machine."
"The ethics in community design are critical — emotional damage can be severe if mishandled."
"Vanity metrics like membership numbers don’t tell you if the community is healthy."
"Early enthusiasm fades; succession planning is key to keeping communities alive."
"Extractive, commercially-driven communities aren’t really communities in the pure sense."
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