I had a great email conversation with WetPaint’s Michael Bolognino about how they empower their users to be part of the design process. Here’s what I learned.
Chris Brogan: You clearly treat your users like part of the design process. Where did the idea of Super Painters come from, and how did it come to be?
Michael Bolognino: For the last year and a half we’ve been fortunate to have a direct link to our users on Wetpaint Central—our FAQ/Help/News wiki. After reading the endless amounts of their feedback and suggestions, we quickly realized that our users know our product just as well if not potentially better than we do. Reaching out and integrating key users into our design process has proven to be a huge asset—the more help we can get to make better decisions means that we’re hopefully making the best possible product. It was also important that we foster advocacy for our platform by reaching out to our core users and giving them a voice—and keeping them engaged with access to exclusive information and Wetpaint swag.
Is this just for tech software sites? Can you envision a consumer or b2b product having this kind of relationship?
There are already a number of consumer & b2b partners who are using wikis to connect with our users. For example, T-Mobile’s Sidekick Wiki has a wish list where users share ideas for the next generation of the device—or Fox’s Sarah Connor Chronicles Wiki, where in the wake of rumors of its cancellation, super fans have compiled over 200 passionate pleas to the network to keep the show alive for (at least) another season.
People are contributing to the design of a product they obviously enjoy using. How did you encourage this interaction, or did you?
We used a variety of approaches for finding the right mix Super Painters—first we looked in Wetpaint Central to identify the users who had risen up to take an active role providing support—simply because they want to help others, pro bono. Then internally we nominated stand out users that we’ve encountered and collaborated with, and we also took a look at contribution data to seek out our most active painters across the network. The group is made up of an eclectic cross section of 14 users—a super fan of the As the World Turns soap opera, a physiology professor, a teenage developer/fish keeper, a Linguistics PhD student, the list goes on.
If another company were on the fence about inviting their community into the design process, what would you tell them about the experiences you encountered, and how would you counsel them?
I would most definitely encourage them to go for it—the rewards of showing your best users/customers that you are invested in them and actually act on their opinions far outweigh the risk/discomfort of sharing half baked or secret concepts with the outside world. There are three ways that we mitigate this risk—first, we created a private, invite only wiki. Second, we crafted a simple NDA like agreement. Third, we believe that the bond that we make with these users is strengthened by empowering them with exclusive opportunities and information and inviting them inside of the virtual walls of our company.
The results have really knocked our socks off. In just over a month there have been hundreds of contributions (ideas, feedback, comments, suggestions) and we’ve already been able to show them that we mean business making a major revision to our latest release, thanks to their immediate hand raising. (see your original post about Wetpaint)
As I mentioned in my original email, the Super Painters have blown us away with their dedication to bringing feedback to our attention—for example, the day after I launched an idea bank page (it was a clean slate), they had assembled over 70 ideas and suggestions for us. The next day, one of them rearranged the ideas into like categories—and a few days later, they built a new page and system for voting on and prioritizing the list so that we could easily see what was most important to them. Thanks to the Super Painters, we now have a living, breathing, prioritized set of potential enhancements. Pretty unbelievable (and helpful)!
Michael Bolognino works for WetPaint, and spoke to me via email.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.
ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
- Go on a guided video tour of Thesis and see the amazing things you can do with this theme! Seriously, you’ll love it.
- Check out the Thesis demo site
- See more Thesis-based sites in the gallery showcase
sign up for the 
subscribe to the 
follow Chris on 
