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# Portefolio - Homies MOB
[TOC]
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# 🤼♂️ HOMIES MOB : Design a creative community online.
``` concept definition, human design, gamification, process, differenciation, brand value definition, wording, simplification, ux design, community animation```
October 2019 | 20 min read
## TL;DR
The *Marcus and Trane* collective designed a **fun and homely project accelerator**. It is **mostly based online**, and nests projects for the members, the collective, and every association in between.
Community life is heavily based on **self-imposed traditions** and **homemade processes** in order **to avoid apathy** and **boost projects**.
## Context
**Marcus and Trane** (M&T) is a collective of creatives and entreprenarial people.
The idea is to **create various projects** together, help each other, all **while having a good time**.
- We made the choice to **focus on creating products, art or services first**, with little or no focus on communication. Of course, we knew that **we needed a little audience** to provide early feedback and to spread the good word when a project hatched.
- As each member started to recommend that this friend or that acquaintance joined the group, we realised **not everyone was a good fit** for Marcus and Trane. Some people had very impressive skills and track records, but didn't fit enterely the culture we wanted to promote. Letting them go was often felt as **a missed opportunity**.
- Also, **some people were very curious towards Marcus and Trane** and drawn to its philosophy, but were'nt especialy interested in any project, considering **they already had their own side-projects**.
That's why we came up with the idea of creating a separated group, a different community. At the begining we wanted Super-fans that will try all our products, vote for wanted features and praise every knowledge bite we threw at them. **We wanted Fanboy Alpha Testers**, but FAT isn't always good for health.
:::success
Fortunatly, we realised **we had to create a two-way relationship**, we had to offer them more.
We started considering that we needed to really help them on a daily basis if we wanted to get a little help back from time to time.
:::
This is what we created :
## Product : The Homies Mob, a creative club to grow together
::: info
Welcoming artists, entrepreneurs and multi-enthusiasts, the homies mob is a deep dive into a mixture of unusual skills and strange interests.
The Homies ( that's how we call the members ) are looking for **personal growth and professional fulfilment**, with an attraction for creativity or entrepreneurship, and an appetite for some of the cultures that shaped Marcus & Trane.
Homies are encouraged and assisted by the Marcus and Trane collective, each member has access to exclusive resources and caring sponsors.
For now, we consider the Homies Mob as an **online accelerator**, where we help each other, trick by trick, step by step, project after project. We also share a lot of Gifs 😅 !
:::
:::info
Here are some of the advantages of being an Homies :
- Being part of the Homies discord, an **online chat space** we consider as a personal and profesionnal accelerator, your own **experimentation sandbox**.
- Helping other members **launch projects**, and getting help from this **mixed expert community**.
- Enjoying **daily motivation, advice and strategic intelligence** for your projects.
- Participating to learning sessions to learn and share **new knowledge and skills**.
- Launching projets with Homies or Marcus and Trane members.
- Getting invited to Creative Rooms and Creative Fests (private events organized by M&T).
- Being able to test early on M&T product, and buy them at production cost.
:::
## Design
Now onto the design phase with the study of people involved, the philosophy to respect, the tools choices, the design tweaks and the main focus point :
### Stakeholders
The Homies Mob is made out of people that orbit around Marcus & Trane. They share, to some extend, the spirit and vision of the collective, but aren't necesarely interested of being a part of it. The mob is also composed by members of M&T, that are invited to participate daily, and aren't treated as VIP members.
Here is a list of different actors we identified :
- Homies Mob members typology :
- **Community Homie** : This Homie has solo projects, but is ready to share them. He also likes to be stimulated by new ideas, and is ready to help others or join existing projects. He loves to shares its discoveries and to debate.
**```Basically the perfect fit !```**
- **Solo Homie** : This one is used to working solo, and is here to accelerate its own projects. He is more a watcher than an actor online, and crafts awesome products without sharing it with anyone, caveman style.
**```Great potential we hope to convert to a more active community member.```**
- **Helper Homie** : Helpers are curious who haven't took the steps to launching projects, but love to discover new ideas and fields. They seem to be searching for the "right project" before commiting to it. They are awesome at helping others, sometime with a disconcerting ease.
**```Essential members we hope to help flourish, or will help us do so.```**
- **M&T members** : Similar to "Community Homie", but with the added responsability of helping recruting and sponsor new members. **```Keep it up !```**
- **Group animators** : M&T members that take the role of creating events, moderating, stating rules an setting up systems. **```Love those guys```:wink:**
- Brands involved :
- **Projects brands** : Projects seems to all respect a bootstrapping strategy ( doing it with what you have, no fundraising, except maybe crowdfunding :smile: ). They all share a love for D.I.Y ( do it yourself ) and a hate for bullshit lingo.
They seem guided by values close to M&T like professional fun or knowledge sharing. They also and follow interest M&T loves like geekculture, art, technology, webculture, marketing, hacking, strangeness, and streeculture.
**```We select projects to try keeping it that way, but stay open to novelty.```**
- **Marcus and Trane** : M&T is here in a umbrella role, providing a common base for projects in term of finance, marketing, and legal stuff. The brand provides direction, ressources, and oppotunity for boosting projects (like community events)
**```We are happy with this umbrella model that helps to mutualise most things.```**
- **The Homies mob** : Last brand, the accelerator itself. We are currently growing and, for now, stay in the shadows with an invite-only system.
**```Still very close to M&T, the brand is still very mysterious for exterior eyes.```**
Here is a data recap made by observing current members :
:::info
**Age** : between 22 and 35.
**Gender** : 75% Men 25% Women
**Occupation** : Jack of all trades *( Developers, Strategists, UX designers, Makers, Visual designers, Researchers, Illustrators, Videomakers, Teachers, Graphists ... )*
**Income** : between 500 and 3000 €/month
**Education** : Bachelor or Master's Degree ( BAC +5 and more )
**Hobbies,interests** : Technology, Art, Popculture, Music, Litterature, Cinema, Gaming, Role play, Wearing, Cooking, Sport ( bouldering !) and many, many more.
**Goals** : Create weird stuff, learn new stuff, connect with interesting people. Get motivation, feedback and help for side-projects. Grow while having a good time.
**Motivations** : Professional fun, community links, skills building, money making.
**Frustrations** : Not enough space to experiment at work, not much daily connexion with like-minded folks, not enough progress on side-projects.
:::
### Design philosophy
To respect our inclinations, the group must be **fun and stimulating**, but also **effective and useful**.
> I used here an ideation tool I made especialy for team bulding, the [pragmamide](https://medium.com/@Endi_Pons/prototyper-un-ev%C3%A9nement-team-building-1fb02093adab).
For the fun part of it, we're not worried... but for the efficiency of this online accelerator, we feel the urge to set up mecanisms.
:::danger
We know that **design beats willpower**, and we want to build motivating systems.
:::
Most interactions between members happen on the Homies Discord, an online chat tool, where M&T members are also present on a daily basis.
We all have a hunch that **managing an online group and keeping it alive is a tough task** that can make administrators go nuts. **```It's true !```**
That's why we designed sytems to keep it manageable and avoid [common issues](https://hackmd.io/0cZypabuT2KmalDAimOAaA?view#Main-focus-the-group%E2%80%99s-projects).
### Weapons of choice
Speaking from experience, I tend to consider an online-based project organization as good if it had implemented **tree main tools** :
> My triangle of good tool setup for online projects.
- **Communication tool** : The place to share daily infos, discuss issues and contact people.
- **Task managing tool** : The place to get a macro view of tasks, goals and overall progress.
- **Collaborative File sharing tool** : The place to share working docs, and collaborate on it.
Concerning the communication tool, we knew it will be the most impacting choice for the accelerator.
One of the first rule for information sharing is **clarity**. That's why we knew we wanted to use a tool like Slack or Discord rather than Facebook groups of other Whatsappy-messaging-nonsence, that tend to mix up subjects and drown information.
Slack and Discord can be divided by **rooms dedicated to one subject only**. This allows more clarity and usages like muting a subject, or creating ephemeral ones.
We chose Discord because of its price policy and its **community-based features**.
At the begining, we were mainly attracted by the possibility to install a community radio on it, as we believed music to be a great social binder.
Also, voice chat feature seemed to be good advantage over slack.
Ultimately, Discord was a good choice, even though we miss Slack's thread feature.
Regarding the file sharing tool, all members already used **google drive**, so it was an obvious choice. Sometime we use **other collaborative tools** such as Invision, Github or Figma.
For the Task managing tool, we will adress it in the [Main focus section](https://hackmd.io/0cZypabuT2KmalDAimOAaA?view#Main-focus-the-group%E2%80%99s-projects).
### Small tweaks
Even if the main tool seemed tailored to our needs, we had to organize it, and tweak it, a lot.
We divided the chat into sections :
:::info
- **YO.** : All welcoming and meta-information
- **LET'S CHAT !** : Main subjects with discoveries and idea-throwing channel
- **PROJECTS** : All project have their own room
- **CULTURA ?** : This is where we talk music, movie, books and games
- **BIG TALKS** : Everyone can vote for a new subject to be added here like cryptocurrencies, bouldering, deskporn or cooking.
- **ARCH1V3D** : You guessed it.
:::
Here are some working mecanisms :
- Members are first directed to the **#welcome** channel, that is read-only and remind the concept and the rules ( like *"don't share anything you wouldn't want you grandma to see"*)
- Members are then urged to introduce themself in **#present-yourself** with a non-work related form we provide.
- Members can now navigate and participate everywhere (we have no private channels). They can consult descriptions and pinned posts to understand each channel's purpose without needing help from other members.
Here are some channels and tips we use :
- **```#storm```** : A Crucial chan ! This is the ideal place to discuss a new idea, seek advice, opinion or constructive feedback.
- **```#discorvery```** : The place to share interesting links you find online, acting as a collaborative strategic intelligence.
- **```#1day1music```** : A channel to incentivize members to share music regularly.
- **```#we-love-memes```** : created to avoid memes invasions on other channels.
- **Moving channels** : If needed, we move very active chan, or urgent subjects in a more visible section.
- **Ephemeral channels** : For special events or "duty homework" (we'll get into that soon), we don't hesitate to create channels that will disapear or get archived.
### Big issues and their solutions
Outside of work, I tried many times to keep in touch with people with the help of online groups, but most of the time it only lasted about 3 month, due to lack of motivation, purpose or commitment. I already knew **these problem will occur** :
:::warning
- **Spamming sessions** : Sometimes members are connected at the same time and play around with the "Send" button in passionate debates or trivial arguments. This shows some life in the group, but can be a major stress for non-participants, that get flooded by notifications. Who hasn't muted a friend group ?
- **FOMO scrolling** : If you miss a few hours (or days) of conversation, you feel "obligated" to scroll up and catch up with what's been said. This can either get you into a time hole or paralyse you ( *"i didn't had time to catch up, so i won't participate until i checked all unread messages"* ).
- **Sharing things online** : It's also hard to get into the habit of sharing things on a group, where you're unsure it will be read, reacted to, or just usefull to somebody else. Likewise, it can be hard to get into the habit of responding to people, providing feedback or ideas in a project you're not really involved in.
- **Everyday life** : Everyone will have rough weeks, months or years. Everyone have other priorities than online messaging. It's easy to lose the habit of opening up the chat. You may feel unsure about the aim of the group or the value it brings you.
It's easy to slip off.
:::
To adress the Spam and Fomo problem, we used **pedagogy** and information :
- We reminded people that what some consider as spam or flood is what other consider spontaneity and joy of discution. After all, we are a club of creatives and not imune to the cliche of untidy people.
- We made **tutorials** on how to mute a chan, and a list of spam-risky rooms ( like **```#cuteanimals```** or **```#triviagame```** ).
- We tried to clarify that you don't need to catch up on everything, coz we're cool ! Relax.
- We decided to make **monthly recaps** to outline what's been said, how projects are, and what novelty is coming to the Homies Mob.
- We asked every member to pray that Discord next update include a ripoff of Slack's Thread feature :pray: !
Regarding the habit of sharing things online, we set up a simple points and levels gamification system, with the help of [MEE6](https://mee6.xyz/), a discord bot.
>We have a **```#rank```** channel where we can see our points and ranks, go ego battles !
For each message you send, you get experience points that can unlock new titles for you.
Of course we created various funny title to motivate members to discover them all ( we kept most of them a mystery ).
>Here are the first roles name. I guarrantee they become funnier after lvl 10 !
This play on the human **motivation for uncovering the unknown**, as well a natural **drive for friendly competition**.
Lastly, we tackle the motivation problem with what we call traditions.
:::danger
**To change a culture, change its traditions**
:::
We now propose a bimonthly and facultative tradition, that is sorted or voted for, between these three concepts :
- :beers: **VideoBar** : We make a videocall meeting at night and talk around hot beverages or cold beers. The idea is to meet new members, confront ideas and talk about ongoing matters. We use discord's voice channels or google hangout. Of course if some members can meet in real life (IRL), it's for the best.
- :dancers: **Pairing** : Mini-Groups of two people are made randomly. They have to set up a one-on-one meeting, by phone, in real life or even in a videogame session. The idea is to get to know each other, get news, and talk shop, or not.
- :golf: **Duty** : Small individual homework to complete in a given time, and to share with the community. Those are sorted in a list made by members and administrators, and can reflect the needs of other members, or the current news.
( Here's a duty example inspired by Spotify's #YearWrapped : [HommiesWrapped](http://marcusandtrane.com/homies/duties/wrap18/index3.html) )
Of course we have other traditions like the Creative Room, a yearly weekend seminar where every member are convied to have fun, share discoveries and boost projects.
### Main focus : the group's projects
Let's talk about the main topic of the accelerator, **projects to boost and how to do so**.
We saw that conversation and knowledge sharing happend naturaly on the chat, but we needed more **action-oriented discussions**.
That's why we created the **```PROJECT```** section, that contains channels for each project, and is amongst top sections to remain visible.
One of the top channel in **```PROJECT```** is **```#my-project```**, which serves as a reminder for member : they can ask a moderators to add their project channel whenever they want.
:::info
We left the choice to each members to **get their own channel for every project they lead** and wanted to share. Some did accepted to have their own space, while other prefered to keep projects underground and talk about it from time to time in appropriate rooms.
Once a project channel is created, the **initiators of the projet are made administrator** of this chan only ( another nice feature of discord ! ) and it becomes their own space : they can change all settings and even invite exterior people to the channel.
We only ask them to set up an explicit description of the project and maybe to pin complementary files.
They can now use the chan to **post update on their work**, but, even more important, other members have a designated place to post when they come across a link or idea that makes them think of "*that homie project*".
This boosts **sincere and unrequired help** habits.
:::
The issue now becomes a series of questions we got :
- How to follow every project progress ?
- How to know who works on what ?
- How to present this project to other people in my network ? Is it even allowed ?
- What's the link to this project's site ? And that project's spreasheet ?
This is why we decided to create a file (using our favorite task manager, Trello :heart: ) that shows all the project and their main info.
All project existing in the discord **```PROJECT```** section are here. We even added M&T and The Homies Mob ( how meta ?!)
Here are infos members can find on that board :
:::info
- Project name
- Abreviation ( used on the site and in sub-domains)
- Emoji-logo ( an experimental branding attempt :water_buffalo: )
- Standarized project photo
- Members of the projet ( with small avatar pics )
- Project Tagline ( that we try to fit in one-line, a good branding exercice )
- Pragmatic description of the projet between **"*"** ( for those catchy tagline that aren't explicit at all )
:::
> Yep, we speak french-glish
Each project is also granted these cards to dig in :
- :zap: **PITCH** : A pitch for each project that follows the same template. A good exercice to clarify what you do, how you do it, and of course who is it for.
- :tada: **MARKETING** : All other pitch, wording bites and arguments are gathered here with promotional images, logos and even analogies to use. This helps other talk about your project.
- :link: **LINKS** : This is where the magic happens. All links concerning the project live here : Website url, social media pages, press kit ... but also working documents ( Google Drive fils, Github repositories, Trello boards ). The aim is to allow other Homies to help, catch up, read over, and comment and maybe more.
- :four_leaf_clover: **SALADE D'IDEES** : This is yet another place you can leave an idea for a project, even if it's not yours.
- :soon: **NEXT UP** : And finaly, this card shows last task completed, and next task to do for each project. Some people already had their task manager so they linked it here, other just update a status now and then. Most users use the checklist function inside the card and the project macro vision lives here !
The aim is to **spread information equaly amongst members**, and to serve newcomers during the **onboarding phase**.
If members forget to update a project, moderators will do it (when they get the info).
To get a sense of momentum, we set up the first chan in **```PROJECT```** as **```#activity```**, a channel ruled by a bot which posts messages everytime a file is modified or a task is updated, thanks to Zapier automation tool.
Concerning working documents, each project can work as its initiators wish, but **we suggest a single document in a collaborative tool**, when possible. We provide storage space, and a template called the bible. Yep, the bible.
:::warning
The **bible template** is an single document that regroups all project infos, structured as follows :
- :honey_pot: **Product** : design brief and versionning
- :lollipop: **Marketing** : brand book, communication strategy
- :crown: **Strategy** : growth book, selling strategy, tactics and long term strategies
:::
### Delight
With all those systems to design, we had little time to think about delighting our community members with nice usage details.
We explored a few ideas :
:::info
- **The Youtube notification** : We know the favorite youtube channel of all our members, thanks to the **```#introduce-yourself```** form they completed. We set up our MEE6 bot to post every time a "favorite" content creator updated a new video, with a special ping and message for the fan member. You're sure to never miss any important content, and get easily get reactions from others.
- **The groupings tags** : We attributed special tags to members, trying to predict needed usages. For example you could send a message to all parisians members with the alias **```@les-parisiens```** or contact every xbox plays with **```@joueurs-de-xbox```**
- **The custom emojis** : Discord allows us to get custom emojis for all members, so we played with it and added emojis that corresponded to private jokes, language tics of some, and even project logos.
- **La Ressourcerie** : French again ? We are setting up a big file for every member, that contains usefull links and templates, as well as cultural recommandations.
- **The IRL goodies** : When we meet IRL, for example during a Creative Room event, we try to surprise members with goodies like stickers, shirts or caps, and even presents like books or tech.
- **The Deejay(s)** : As teased, we have a community radio, but we don't use it since Discord launch a Spotify "follow along" feature that allows a member to become the DJ of others for a while, a practise we promoted with a duty assignment.
:::
I may have missed some, but we do so much for the Homies :stuck_out_tongue: .
## Results and next steps
We are very proud of this community we've built during the past year and a half :
:::success
**```First post```** : 14 of june 2018
**```Last post```** : probably a few minutes ago
**```Size```** : For now we are only **15 members**, but we're a big family.
**```Projects progress```** : Amongst the **12 projects** we nest, 7 are up and running.
---
:golf: Duties assigned : **13+**
:dancers: Pairing sessions completed : **24+**
:beers: Videobars that really took place : **4** ( one before Game of Thrones final episode !)
:bulb: Creative Rooms : **2**
:::
The **traditions are a great engine for community interactions**, and it keeps the chat active. Surprisingly, the **gamification system also works** wonders, even if there is nothing to win except domination over others.
**Monthly recaps of project progress** and **meetings in real life** are also great assets.
Our next steps are :
- **Recruitment** : Is word-of-mouth and invite-only enough ? What if we open canditatures to everyone ? Or what if we used derived techniques such as constest or games to find out new talents ?
- **Monetisation** : Money was never the point, but some expanses like events are growing. A small yearly membership could do the trick. A patreon system ? Donations of fans ? Nested Projects could also give back a small percent of their gains, to help other projects. We need a model that sustain itself.
- **Onboarding** : Welcoming a new member is tedius, and we feel that we sometime lose some of them because of the apparent complexity of a new tool like Discord, paired with the information overload of seeing all nested projects at the same time. Even the various topics discussed on the chat could make anyone dizzy. How to welcome people the right way ?
- **Communication** : It's time to spread the world, especialy now that we have finished projects that need audience. What stategy will we use ? Can M&T speak about nested projects without having to teach its audience about the Homies Mob accelerator and how it works first ?
:::danger
**We still consider this project as an ongoing experiment.**
We are open to redesign tweaks, make new traditions and play with the rules !
We search daily for community feedback and ideas, and stay up-to-date with similar projects.
:::
### Testimonials
I asked members the two following questions :
- *What problem is the Homies Mob solving for you ?*
- *What adjectives would you use to describe the Homies Mob ?*
and got the following answers :
:::info
**Welcoming Geeks** :
> The Homies allows to talk about lots of things with people that are either conoisseur or potentially interested, without risking rejection or lack of listening.
> **Adjectives** : fucked up, brilliants, creatives, techies, artists, nerds
:::
:::info
**Real social network** :
> This community allows us to ask a question and get enlightned, usefull or benevolant feedback. This is different from Facebook where feedback aren't always relevant (because the community isn't qualified). This is also different from Twitter or a random forum where feedback are often not benevolant nor relevant (online trolls and haughty comments).
:::
:::info
**Emulation Hub, Collective watch** :
> The inspiration, the emulation, the motivation brought by a community like this, that is not "anonymous", is 100% cool !
> My strategic intelligence is also facilitated, I see many more things that have a chance to interest me, and I also share what allows the community to discuss, optimizing even more what I draw from my classic information watch.
:::
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