Nextdoor Behavioral Diagnosis
My assignment was to complete a behavioral diagnosis of Nextdoor, a private social network for neighbors to collect locally. Popular use cases include sharing news in one’s community, giving or asking for support, and soliciting recommendations for local services. A behavioral diagnosis is a structured process that uses behavioral science to understand why individuals do (or don’t do) a specific action, then design interventions to drive the desired outcome.
Note, this project was a hypothetical case; I was not engaged by Nextdoor for this work.
My Role:
As a behavioral scientist / designer, my role was to review the Nextdoor user experience and create three solution mocks for prioritized recommendations.
Approach Summary:
Identified a target user behavior, and made it wildly-specific — intentionally: new users create a post within 5 minutes of onboarding.
Documented assumptions and constraints for the project (e.g., in light of actual Nextdoor funnel conversion data, I assumed which parts of the journey have high user drop-off).
Conducted a behavioral diagnosis.
Outlined every step user must take to complete the target behavior.
Conducted a literature review to understand existing research and how it might apply to this context (e.g., what motivates individuals to participate in online communities).
Summarized logistical barriers, psychological biases, and benefits.
Prioritized potential interventions for experimentation.
Developed design solution mocks for the top 3 experiments (shown below).
What I’m Proud of:
Applied learnings from Irrational Labs’ Behavioral Economics Bootcamp, among other self-directed learnings and experience, demonstrating proficiency in behavioral science.
Leveraged AI (Figma Make) to accelerate the production of design mocks.
[NOTE - images below to be updated]
Design Solution Overview
Below are the top 3 prioritized experiments to drive the target behavior (create a post within 5 minutes of onboarding), ordered from lowest to highest complexity.
Experiment 1:
Email marketing enhancements
Hypothesis: If we implement copy and light design enhancements to the initial email, then more prospective users will be inclined to create an account because Nextdoor appears as a vibrant and trustworthy online community to which I (the user) can contribute.
Experiment 2:
Lower-stakes first post
Hypothesis: If we encourage users to respond to outstanding Q&A as their first engagement on Nextdoor (instead of creating a post from scratch), then they will be more likely to take action because this decreases the barriers to posting and promotes reciprocity.
Experiment 3:
First post incentive
Hypothesis: If we offer rewards for creating or responding to Nextdoor posts, then users will be more likely to contribute content and they’ll internalize that motivation over time.