community building - burdastyle

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A community analysisby Kristel Coolen, An Porters, Johanna Sachtleben, Hannah Schönholz & Kristin Terhaar

Community Building 2011Hogeschool Zuyd Maastricht

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Online communities

Belonging to a community

Sewing community

“Many studies1 suggest that virtual communities are places where people go to find emotional support, sense of belonging, and encouragement, in addition to instrumental aid.”2 Moreover, an online community can be considered as a place that is build up from several social media element like forums, blogs etc.3 To sum up, you can say that a “virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community include social networking services, which consist of various online communities.”4 It is all about sharing something with the other community members. Thus, a community is like a network or a “web of relations among personas who share something useful.”5 Therefore, the “key elements [are] information, (computer mediated) communication, social support [and] friendship.”6

“The main features in virtual online communities that attract people are a shared communica-tion environment, relationships formed and nurtured virtually, a sense of belonging to a group, an internal structure of the group and common space shared by people with similar ideas and interests. The three most critical issues are belonging, identity, and interest.”7 Especially, belon-ging attracts the user the most to be part of a community. To make the members feel that they are a part of the community, evolving member profiles helps a lot. By having an own identity in the community the users are able to “feel at home.”8 This is like getting personal. “You can personalize each member‘s community experience, by offering only the content and activities they‘ve expressed an interest in. Although this can reinforce a member‘s sense of belonging, and create a feeling of being ‚known‘, it‘s a very tricky line to walk: you want your members to feel welcomed without feeling like Big Brother is watching their every move.”9

The community we have chosen to study is the sewing community. It is an activity-based DIY (Do-it-yourself) community where sewers, knitters, designers and weavers meet to keep track of their yarn, tools, projects and pattern information. The idea is to look at others for ideas and inspiration or to show your projects to help others. Because there is lots of information on DIY stuff out there on the Internet, finding the needed and right information is just getting harder with the growing number of blogs etc. Therefore, the people of the sewing community seek help among each other.

1 Furlong, 1989; Hiltz, 1984; Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Korenman & Wyatt, 1996; M. A. Smith, 1999; Sproull & Faraj, 1997; Wellman, 1996; Wellman et al., 1996

2 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/ridings_gefen.html (visited on November 12, 2011)

3 Katrien Dreessen, presentation week 2, p. 31

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community (visited on November 12, 2011)

5 Katrien Dreessen, presentation week 2, p. 28

6 ib.

7 Tardini, Stefano and Cantoin, Lorenzo (2005). A Semiotic Approach to Online Communities: Belonging, Interest and Identity in Websites‘ and Videogames‘ Communities. Academia.edu.“ Universita‘ Della Svizzera Italiana.

8 Jo Kim, Amy (2000). Community Building On the Web (p. 143). Berkeley: Peachpit Press.


Introduction, Platform and Place

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All in all, it is about one shared thing in our community: the hobby, sewing. The main aspects are learning, teaching and experience exchange.

During our research we found some sewing platforms like www.ravelry.com, www.sewingdis-trict.com and www.sewing.com, but we mainly focused on www.burdastyle.com. This com-munity was founded in 2007. It is a community platform for people who sew or would like to learn how to do it. On the platform BurdaStyle.com people can share their way of sewing and their own patterns. Every user’s project can be rated and commented.

The “learning collaboration” is the main subject of the community. There are picture or video tutorials and instructions to teach the members how to sew with different techniques. With the user’s profile, a member can get connected to other members and organize all patterns and techniques in his or her own “studio”. Additionally, there is a discussion forum for like-minded to exchange ideas and help each other. The origin/basis of BurdaStyle.com is the German community BurdaStyle.de (founded in 2001) and the magazine “burda”, which had its first publication in 1950.10

We figured out that a “successful community serves a clear purpose in the lives of its members and meet the fundamental goals of its owners.”11 The online community BurdaStyle promotes itself with “We are a friendly bunch using the web to bring the craft of sewing to a new generati-on of designers, hobbyists, DIYers and anyone looking to sew”.12

The publisher Aenne Burda wanted to build the online platform BurdaStyle to offer the chance to get to know the Burda products and services worldwide. She created a network to bring people together who like to sew and offers the products, like free and inexpensive sewing patterns, step-by-step tutorials, skill sharing, inspiration and project ideas to people all over the world (20 millions clicks per month).13

On the BurdaStyle website, the participation of the members is the most important thing. Every user can publish/upload own projects to extend the content on BurdaStyle. All the projects can be commented on or rated by other members, so the people communicate with each other and get in contact. A lot of feedback is provided. Moreover, there are the tutorials that help the members to learn sewing. These tutorials are posted by BurdaStyle and members as well. Besides, everyone can publish patterns online (the origin was the paper patterns in the German ”burda” magazine) to which everyone has access. Thus, the members play an important (may-be the most important) role in creating content for the community.

10 http://www.burdastyle.de/wir-ueber-uns/ (visited on November 13, 2011)


12 http://www.burdastyle.com/statics/about (visited on November 12, 2011)

13 http://www.burdastyle.de/wir-ueber-uns/ (visited on November 12, 2011)

Platform: BurdaStyle.com

Purpose for the platform’s existence

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With all its features the activity-based community BurdaStyle satisfies most of the main needs of the members of the sewing community. As we know now, the social factor in a community “belonging to the community as a whole, and to subgroups within the community”14 is one of the most important needs of a member. On BurdaStyle the users are forming the content. Therefore, they can talk or discuss via the comment function, personal messages or on the discussion board. By helping others with feedback, tutorials, skills and ideas, it is very easy to come together and build up a social network. Additionally, the members get the chance to be recognized for their contributions in the community. When they publish e.g. their own projects they can get comments and appraisal for that. The feedback on their actions influences their self-esteem.

Nevertheless, we think that there are needs which are a bit neglected:The feeling of security and safety is really important for a user of an online community. “Pro-tection from hacking and personal attacks, [together with] the sense of having a level playing field“15, need to be a fundamental part of every community. On BurdaStyle a member can mark a comment as an inappropriate one. It is also possible to report an other member. But it is hard to block a member if you get abusive messages or comments. It is unclear and not that trans-parent how to deal with impolite/abusive members. The “contract” a member has to agree with at the beginning of signing up for BurdaStyle is written in a very formal language and difficult to understand.

Moreover, there is not really the opportunity to “take on a community role that develops skills and opens up new opportunities (self-actualization)”16. Although you can build up a certain de-gree of reputation, there is no credit system that rewards you participation. Contributing actively and consequently does not broaden your self-actualization.Therefore, we think that the fulfillment of these users’ needs could and should be improved in the future.

As we learned, BurdaStyle is a so called ‚place‘ where members of the sewing community can meet. We found out that all “communities need gathering places. [...] On the Web, a gathering place can be [...] a discussion topic, a chat room, a multiplayer game, a virtual world, a website, or some combination of these spaces. To build a successful community, you‘ll want to set up gathering places that reinforce your purpose and meet the needs of your target audience.”17 BurdaStyle fulfills everything stated in the comment above. This community exists and grows with the participation of its members. By interviewing some real users of the community, we found out that they above all, like the “casual attitude and the free-flow of information”. Burda-Style is a really open-minded community, whose members enjoy exchanging information and especially sharing their styles and knowledge. They do not compete against each other, but try to form a supporting and peaceful community.

Online participation is the most relevant part on BurdaStyle. Especially sharing and exchanging information and projects by using the project section, the pattern section and the personal messages are most important to the members. User “Urban Don”18 says: “The sewing commu-nity enjoys exchanging information and sharing what they have learnt. We are not competition but community.” Moreover, getting information in the forum or commenting on other members’


15 ib.

16 ib.


18 http://www.burdastyle.com/profiles/urbandon/my_activity (visited on November 14, 2011)

Needs – satisfied or not

Online, offline and hybrid participation

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project are crucial to the community. User “The Fabled Needle”19 confirms that, by saying that for her, leaving and getting comments on a project is the most essential on BurdaStyle.

With reference to the interviewed members we get the impression that offline participation does not play such an important role for the BurdaStyle community yet. “Jen” and “Don” have heard of some users who became real-life friends and meet offline, but both of them are not interested in this kind of participation. We know that there are offline sewing and fabric adven-tures joined by members of the community, but meeting online is still the most common form of participation.

In the BurdaStyle community there are a couple of hybrid participation possibilities. For instance the BurdaStyle sewing clubs that you can set up online and invite other members to meet offline and sew together. Moreover, there are some events (fairs and fashion shows) that are planned and organized online. Afterwards they take place in real life and everybody of the community can visit. Besides, there are also contests and competitions that are organized in the same way. Users take part in the online announced contests, by sewing their garments offline and then again posting their items online to get rated highly and challenge the other members.

Our interview partners did not participate hybridly yet, but they know the possibilities. Thus, we assume that hybrid participation is quite important to some users, but the majority of the Burda-Style community stays with online participation only.

19 http://www.burdastyle.com/profiles/thefabledneedle/my_activity (visited on November 14, 2011)

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Different types ofactors

“All around the world, in all kinds of communities, you see the same timeless social roles in ac-tion. Newcomers arrive and must prove themselves before being fully accepted. Natural leaders emerge and take charge of running the show. And old-timers sit on the sidelines telling stories, performing rituals, and kvetching about how much things have changed.”1

Within each community, as well as in ours, we can find different kinds of actors. It is needless to say that not every human is the same, which we can also say for the community users. By means of the research of our personas we have established three kinds of actors. We found the creative designer, which plays more of an active role within the community, the passive follo-wer, which is on the community but does not contribute as much. And the elderly experienced, which is more of an extreme user to our platform, and is not that much represented within the community.

We have to acknowledge these actors within our community, and ask ourselves what they contribute to the community. By observing these actors we can get a better idea of what is needed, and what can be changed. “Each individual‘s role, however, changes over time. Shy vi-sitors evolve into confident contributors; eager students become knowledgeable teachers; and novice game players become tournament champions. It‘s your job as a community builder to create an environment that fosters these basic social roles, while meeting the changing needs of your members as they become progressively more involved in community life.”2

The different actors obviously participate differently within the community. Features our creative designer uses: • adding friends • comment function • personal messages • facebook login Aspects: • project section: uploads own projects, rates and comments on other projects • technique section: shares own techniques and describes them • favourite section: shows others what her favourite projects and patterns are • connects her Burda profile to her blog • makes sewing videos and publishes them on her YouTube-channel


2 ib.

Participation and Personas

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Opposite: • discussion forum • does not use online shop because she only downloads free patterns on BurdaSty-

le and other sites (freevintageknitting.com, Vintage Purls)

Features our passive follower uses: • posts on the wall • send personal messages • uses her facebook login Aspects: • project and patterns section to get new patterns and ideas • learning section to learn new techniques Opposite: • does not join discussion (forum) • does not use the Gallery • does not read the Burda Blog • does not use online shop because she only downloads free patterns because she

has not that much money (student)

Features the elderly experienced uses: • comment system • sending personal messages Aspects: • discussion forum • learning section • project section Opposite: • does not like to use the wall • Facebook log-in • does not use the online shop (only free patterns, and Burdastyle magazine pat-

terns) To represent our sewing community we have created two personas. They fit within the ‘actor-roles’ of the creative designer and the passive follower, mainly because these are the 2 main actors within the community. Casey Cartwright is our creative designer and Lisa Wong is the passive follower. Generally, we can say that Casey is our active member and Lisa is the passive member. “Every contribution to digital identity is the result of a conscious decision to include or exclude particular information pertinent to their digital identity.”3 The digital identity, which our actors depict on the sewing community are a compilation of our research. We have established a pro-totype identity for both our actors.

3 Katrien Dreessen, presentation Identity, p. 16

digital identity / relation to real life

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Casey Cartwright is a 26-year-old woman who loves fashion, sushi and fast cars. She has been sewing since she was a little girl. She loves to go to garage sales, in order to find new and dif-ferent fabrics. She is eager to find vintage accessories, because of her love for the mid 30’s to late 50’s. This is why her clothes are based on this period.

Lisa Wong is a 20 year old college student who is addicted to Facebook and Youtube. In her free time she relaxes by playing her guitar. She wants to be unique and feel good in her clothing. She does not like mainstream clothing designs. She is eager to get good grades and succeed at school.

Every person has got goals in real life. These goals can also be translated to the community in which they take part.Casey Cartwright’s goals are both internal as external. She participates in the community for herself, but also for other people. That is why she loves to help other people. She shares her creations with other Burdastyle members. This can not only be seen as an external goal but also internal. One of the reasons Casey wants to help other people, is so she can feel better about her self, and get better self-esteem. Casey also wants to sell her own fashion, she is always eager to learn new things. And that is why she is a member of Burdastyle, because this community helps her learn new things and get inspiration. Casey also is the founder of a Burda-style sewing club, where she teaches other her love for vintage clothing.

Lisa Wong’s goals are particularly based internal. She wants to look good and fashionable, but does not like mainstream clothing that can be found in local stores. That is why she designs her own clothing. Her goal is to improve her sewing skills and get inspired on the Burdastyle com-munity. Evenso, most of Lisa’s friends are on Burdastyle online, where they meet. Lisa thinks it is really important to connect with people on the community. She likes to establish new friend-ships, in order to keep connected with other people.

Goals and reasons for the participation

The two personas

Casey Lisa

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Currently missing or lacking

Although BurdaStyle is a really matured community, there a still some aspects that could be improved. Nowadays it is important that users get an appropriate access to a website on every device. The usage of mobile devices increases incessantly. Therefore the online appearance has to be adapted to the different devices. BurdaStyle has not accomplished these adjustment for instance with an app yet. For the members it is hardly possible to get the suitable access to their community features on their mobile devices like they are used to on the official website. According to Amy Jo Kim “System access [and] the ability to maintain one‘s identity, and par-ticipate in a Web community” is a physiological need, that has to be fulfilled in order to enable a successful community. If BurdaStyle would adjust this lack the sense of community could be empowered. For instance questions could be answered more frequently and messages ex-changed while being on the way. Besides it is more handy to use a mobile phone while you are sewing. Members could recall online tutorials directly on their phone in order to solve a “sewing-problem” instantly. Another quality that is missing on BurdaStyle is the “Membership Life Cycle” that actually should be a part of every community’s basis. In fact the users can estimate themselves and post their status afterwards. But that only refers to their sewing skills not to the activity within the com-munity. Such a system with different social roles holds a community together and enables the members to participate easily and consequently improve their identity and community status. The “Membership Life Cycle” Amy Jo Kim developed includes five different stages a member can represent: visitor, novice, regular, leader and elder1 depending on the level of contributing. The different stages could be connected to special tasks a member can apply. “Regulars” keep everything in business by contributing actively. “Leaders” in turn keep the community running by occupying official roles additionally. They may welcome, introduce and instruct new mem-bers for example or offer tutorials. Dividing tasks could lead to a circular flow of interaction. The members feel connected and above all responsible for their roles. Thereof the whole community can benefit.

On BurdaStyle there is only one special status with which users can extend their own reputati-on. The can become “Featured Members”. The “Featured Members” are selected by the Burda-Style team. The election is based on a combination of beautiful photography, creativity and a unique aesthetic. Featured Members usually have a fair amount of projects in their studio to be considered. They are chosen based on overall quality and presentation of work and their activity on the site. However, there are now special tasks that are connected to this rank. The user who becomes such a member earns selfesteem but that does not really influences and empowers the rest of community. For our sister group we started to analyze a fashion community that did develop a “Membership Life Cycle”. On chictopia.com user can have four different ranks: They can be a usual user, a Style Council member, a Style Icon or a Chic VIP. The last three ranks of-fer the users new opportunities you do not have as a usual user. To become e.g. a Style Council


Proposal

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member you have to have 200 or more Chicpoints. After you got this rank your votes on user outfits count more the regular votes. With their votes the Style Council members can decide which outfits will appear in the Style Gallery.

As already stated above BurdaStyle is a very well organized community. It became an impor-tant platform for sewing-lovers all over the world. Of course there is a need of improvements in some sections but a community prospers with its members, ans BurdaStyle definitely does.

To improve the BurdaStyle platform it is important to come up with new features which help the community and therefore empower the members. Some features do not fit to that kind of a community or some are just too often to find in other platforms like a credit-system or a shop function. BurdaStyle is a platform with the purpose bringing people together who like sewing or would like to learn how to sew. In our opinion a credit system would destroy the sense of the community. It is part on BurdaStyle to help each other, participate with own experiences, patterns or tutorials. If a member should pay for the help, the goal of the platform would not fit anymore. BurdaStyle leaves it up to its members if they want to show a link to their shop (e.g. etsy.com or dawanda.de) in their profile. We firstly thought of integrating a shop function into the website, but selling clothes is neither the purpose of BurdaStyle nor is it a function the members really need on this specific platform, because it is mostly about sewing and creating outfits, not selling them.

“[...] Web communities usually start with relatively few gathering places and a minimal feature set.”2 BurdaStyle is already a huge platform with lots of features. But with time the communi-ty grew and it is possible to offer more features to enhance it. So we had ideas of some new and remarkable features to extend the BurdaStyle community and make it more unique. But a feature cannot be created overnight, you have to plan, build, get feedback on it and then launch it. Of course there are smaller features that can be introduced in a quite short time (e.g. online streaming, technology is already existing Skype), but there are also broader extensions for the community like real strategies for the future. They have to be planned (structures, policies), designed, built and implemented over a long period of time. There can be as well a company, other platforms or business partners who have their credits in it and are published together with the feature.After launching a feature it needs to be clear for the members why they should use this fea-ture, what does make it easier, what are the advantages for the members and the community holders. “In any case, the community will run more smoothly if members are empowered to work [...]” Very important is the participation of the members in BurdaStyle, they are responsible for the content. To give them another tasks like helping or participating in new features, it is an extension for them as well as for the whole community.

When you download a pattern from the current BurdaStyle site, you get this pattern only for sizes that are made by the creator of the pattern. Mostly, there are several sizes drawn in one pattern. To find out the right size for you, you have to take several measures of yourself and look them up in the BurdaStyle size chart. If one of the sizes offered in the pattern you want to use fits you, you have to print it and then cut out the pattern in this size. This can be very com-plicated because you constantly have to figure out which are the lines for your size to cut along them. Moreover, some member maybe need very big or small or in another way extraordinary sizes. Right now they nearly cannot find any fitting patterns or they have to re-design already existing patterns.

2 Jo Kim, Amy (2000). Community Building On the Web (p. 66). Berkeley: Peachpit Press

New feature propo-sals

Start small and then grow

Measure Assistant

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To solve this problem and make the process of getting the fitting pattern more comfortable we thought of a measuring assistant: If you have found a pattern you like, you can start the assis-tant and type in all the required measures. You can type in your individual measures. After that, the measure assistant will create your very own pattern. All the measures you typed in will be saved in your profile (not visible for public) and can be reused for the next projects you want to make.

The measure assistant can integrate members with an extraordinary size and members who cannot re-design the pattern into their size. It is an additional feature for the community to sim-plify handling with sizes, which are very important for sewing. This feature might be taken more time to launch, because it needs to be fully developed.

At the moment there is only one possibility for the members to communicate with each other with help of communication tools other than writing/messages. This possibility consists of the ‚normal‘ tutorials available on BurdaStyle. The members can watch video or photo tutorials that have been produced by other members in forefront. Actually, this is not interactive and does not enhance social behaviour. Therefore, we thought of a way to provide more possibilities for the members to communicate with each other and make them interactive: live tutorials.

Live tutorials that are offered online could extend the possibilities of the already existing video tutorials. These tutorials could be offered as ‚online classes‘. Everyone who wants to join has to sign up for a class and when there are enough participants the list is closed and the class will take place at a certain date. During the class the ‚teacher‘ puts a video stream online in which the ‚student‘ can see what he is doing. He shows something like e.g. sewing a skirt and explains it at the same time. When the students have a question they simply can ask because every student joins a live tutorial via a live voice chat. Additionally, they can also join by using a webcam. Then they can show the teacher what they have sewed to get more feedback. This makes this kind of live tutorials very interactive.

Live Tutorials

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The online classes brings people worldwide together in a virtual classroom to talk and learn about their hobby sewing. Members who are giving a live-tutorial can become more popular on BurdaStyle and therefore the chance to become a featured member. The technology for a feature like this is already existing. BurdaStyle and its members could use a software like Skype to interact in the live tutorial, no matter in which part of the world they are. They can come together virtually.

On the platform an event calender might be a very useful addition because “[in] each commu-nity, the event programming reflects the needs, interests, and daily rhythms of the people who hang out there.“# Calendars can be another lively place, with a lot going on. With a weekly or daily calendar all ongoing events at BurdaStyle could be displayed in an appealing way. The different activities might be divided into several sections. By clicking on a particular section, the information is filtered and only the section-specific events are shown to the members. Possible sections are “Live Tutorials”, “Get-Togethers”, “Contests”, “Fairs”…

Another feature we want to implement can be understood as a strategy for BurdaStyle to work together with other companies and broaden the platform’s offer of features a lot. We thought of a Burda Button Designer which is an application of BurdaStyle. With this app the users can create their own buttons and buy them afterwards. The production of the designed buttons will be performed by a third party like a rapid prototype developer like e.g. shapesways.com.

This attempt of working together with a third party to realize the user’s needs can be transferred to a lot of BurdaStyle sections. You could also imagine e.g. an app to make your own yarn or fabrics, order them and a third party produces them. There can be many ways to follow this strategy of corporations with different third party producers.

Burda-Button Designer

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Conclusion

Timeline

Setting up this strategy and implementing it is a long-term process that can be extended more and more in the future. With following this strategy BurdaStyle would not be only a community anymore where members can share a same interest, but it would be also a connection piece between the members and third parties. In this way the platform might become even more attractive to the users.

Our new proposed features could help the members and the platform a lot. It would extend BurdaStyle and make some things easier. New corporations could be created between Bur-daStyle and newly integrated partners like a video software company as Skype or different companies of rapid prototyping.

The timeline visualizes the chronological order in which our future features should be implen-mented into the existing community. The position in the timeline is dependent on the point of implementation (either now, or in the future).

now future

Online tutorials

Measure Assistant

BurdaButton Designer

community building - burdastyle

Lifestyle

community members

community platform

german community

successful community

members community experience

online community burdastyle

communitiesan online

members sense of belonging