9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

After conducting my wave 3 of interviews have successfully able to divide the general user base into 2 categories for those Who/Who’s not, What/What is not, Needs/what is it not need.

Who	What	Needs
Those who wish to learn and socialize about technology.	Easy to access, something even a toddler can use. A way for users to connect with each like they do on other social media platforms. Friend request, incentives to log in, DMs.	This is great for those who wish to learn as well as discuss tech.
Those with no interest in technology.	To create a hive mind of those promoting one good over another a.k.a a biased resource.	What this platform doesn’t need is paid reviews/ bots/ anyone who is potentially using this platform to promote their goods or need.

What I’ve learned from wave 3 the most is that most people feel as though they will be intimidated by the presence of those who know more than them. It is the idea that the site will one day become very niche and newcomers will become intimate with the site-made diction. One way I was suggested to make this more pleasant for most users is the idea of making the interface to user-friendly that it's welcoming to newcomers. The problem lies in designing a site that is welcoming while also being technical enough to incite meaningful conversations. I have found that many social media site opts for more lighter themes are they seem more welcoming than darker themed sites, but many would agree that darker themed sites look better and many including myself have installed various dark themed modes for various of sites. Another suggestion I received was the fear of impending bot accounts and self -promoters. As there is no way (yet) to stop this from happening I would just need to vignette in stopping this before it happens as once the site gets a reputation for being unreliable it will be hard for it to come back. I’ve also heard that working with bigger sites is the best way to go but the validity of that statement has not yet been proven. It is true that working with big celebrities do in fact bring in their fanbase but it does provide retention unless it gets a stream constant promotion. This is another route I will have look into for the future.