The Importance of User Experience Research in Ecosystem Platform Design
Lately I have delved into decentralized technologies and ecosystem platform design for sustainability transformation. These tools will flourish with tangible impact through value co-creation and the purpose coming from human interactions within a thriving community. In this article I will propose a few guidelines and methods to enable ecosystem platform design. These are based on the following 3 principles:
Businesses are to serve social systems & not other way around
User experience research is the strategic trigger for organization design and systemic approach
The shift from building products & services to building communities
User Experience Research is the strategic enabler for Ecosystem Platform Design. It helps to deal with uncertainty and the multi-dimensionality of business models. Primarily, it channels participation in a business ecosystem — serving an existing or a new one — by investigating these components:
- People who share data with one another, and collaboratively build knowledge for themselves or an organization, a common.
- Goals and attitudes of the members, as individuals and as participants.
- The digital technologies that they use to interact with one another in meaningful ways.
Think of human interactions as agents of transformations in community building business models.
From sharing economy to ecosystem economy
The drive to co-create value socially, culturally and of course economically is nested in our behaviors as we seek for a sense of belonging. Yet, businesses are still to understand how to adapt processes, standards and KPI community dynamics. The inherent perception of growth based on profit will not be able to sustain itself in front of societal, cultural and ecological challenges.
Airbnb-like-platforms can’t solve systemic challenges. In order to deliver value, they produce predictive models to inform key decisions with a data-driven approach to leverage a network effect. This value is not co-created. Instead we need platforms-powered ecosystems that sustain the ongoing exchange and evolution of resources between members. We are moving from the sharing economy to an ecosystem economy. Waves of open source, cooperative approaches and global commons are going to be the roots of collaborative landscapes able to adapt and evolve.
Ecosystem. We can most likely relate this word to biology, with its rich and complex interactions between animals, plants, natural resources and the environment.If User Experience Researchers and Designers want to fix today’s challenges, this mindset is key
Within communities, ‘users’ are members, participants. They are the values holders. So members thrive when they exchange activities, tasks and information. We need to consider a research and design process tailored not just to individuals but to the ecosystem interactions.
Today’s businesses and organizations of any size, solo entrepreneurs, are network orchestrators to serve the economy and society. Their role is to facilitate community building by designing incentives and rewards. The strategic research focus should be on the participants’ interactions and the value stream generated by activities. Also, less control and more ‘adapting’ mode will help to translate their input to nurture the community purpose for the given ecosystem. For example, the creation of a manifesto. The collaborative ideation will shape itself as the community evolves through co-creation.
Learnings from the Cobiom Case Study
One of the UX research challenges we overcame at cobiom was the ambiguity of the Sustainability transformation conundrum. By adopting three mindsets derived from archetypes, along with hard interdisciplinary work inspired by Carolina’s approach, we navigated our understanding to research the ecosystem needs.
As a result of the UX research strategy we applied a ‘Customer Journey Mapping’ exercise that helped to align the team towards co-creation and inclusiveness. Finally, this tool contextualized how we could interact with different actors and the communities in the ecosystem.
The power of collaboration over competition: a systemic approach
A systemic research and design perspective is paramount to tackle “systemic” opportunities. Systems come with multiple stakeholders, longer relationships between parties, usually bigger transactions and call for more participative governance processes.
Let’s consider GiffGaff: a UK-based mobile virtual network operator using a community-based business model. It delivers business benefits as the operator actively involves customers in running the business through co-innovation and ongoing membership support. Members get rewarded for running parts of the business like answering questions in the community, getting new members, or helping to promote the company.
An Open Innovation approach boosts value exchange by connecting the ability to explore and adapt new knowledge. The Interoperability of platform ecosystem could leverage the ability to build communities and inspire alignment around the purpose and its success.
An example of a framework for complex system design is given by the Commons Stack toolkit. At the core of their aims is a paradigm shift from profit-based to cooperative-based networked institutions, with collaborative behaviours encouraged through aligned incentives.
The goal of the Commons Stack infrastructure is to empower communities with funding, governance, and monitoring tools. By facilitating cooperative platforms to bootstrap funding, make decisions and sustain themselves, they enable the empowerment of the commons, which are leveraged through network effects. Read more here.
Cobiom, GiffGaff, Common Stack and more organizations are trying hard to show the power of collaboration over competition through value co-creation. Enable resilient ecosystems to mature and evolve just like with organisms in nature. Ecosystem is where the change has its deepest impact. This implies a large amount of information with multiple patterns to behaviours, attitude that require creative research and complex problem solving toolkit.
How can we turn this strategic vision into implementation?
1 — Set up guidelines questions to start your ecosystem design approach
The following questions are just seeds to inspire your own understanding of how you aim for an ecosystem platform approach.
Also consider carefully to structure the following areas:
Create an internal communication framework of user research methods and outcomes. This needs practice to train alignment, inclusivity and diversity within your team.
Research and design incentives to build tribes and communities. What are their challenges? Create a network journey mapping asking entry questions to members.
2 — Methods to explore the tangible impact of ecosystem platform design
These are participatory methods that create a cycle of actions and research. They aim for framing and reframing opportunities inside organizations and teams.
3 — How to apply these methods in my organization, project
Hackspace, workshop, showcase: think of these spaces physically and digitally to co-create internally and externally, to engage your communities and stakeholders.
These tools can be adjusted, honed, redefined. They are not silver bullets.
With many innovators I keep discussing insights and questions to bring forward a designed approach between research and strategy with actionable steps. For example, I am going to contribute to the Platform Design toolkit Whitepaper 2020. One the biggest challenges in ecosystem design approach is to create value, capture it and distribute it in the community. Therefore, we must imbue ourselves with patience, listening and openness to relearn.
Last 25th of February 2020 at Factory Berlin, I pulled together an ensemble of innovators to boost an interdisciplinary approach around the Platform Ecosystem design topic. See me in action here in two videos from the workshop:
If your team, organization are looking at community value co-creation as a leverage for a business ecosystem model, I will be happy to hear from you to find out how we could work together. You can contact me on LinkedIn.
