Does the ask-a-question thing work? What else should we do, or what should we do instead?
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It can work if you are specific. People get scared-lost-mind blinded in front of some questions. Like…. write your 5 favourite movies ever!
You can design a visual space and ask the user to interact with them. I imagine a huge tag cloud in the centre with thematic areas that represent the topic you want to explore. (for example, the one I would like to see… public services design, environmental footprint, e-learning for children….). Then you ask people to add their tag with content inside. When the process is going on you will start to see difference between the themes, by colours, by size. But the difference with the normal tag clouds is that we are taking part of cloud generation, we enriching the clouds adding new ones. (I know that normally is an automatic process of counting words but here is from the user prospective.)
Maybe I am not saying anything new… but it’s a beginning.
Hope it’s clear, I am not a native English and I better express myself with sketches. (sketches…. this could be another idea!)
Btw, I am Raffaella, service designer
People LOVE questionnaires. They also love personality tests that tell them who they are after answering a few questions (roll eyes). I can’t believe how many hours my tween friends spend on answering personal questions and then posting and tagging their friends on fb, who in turn do the same thing… Isn’t that such a great way to survey and collect date for greater purposes?
Ask a question is just…weird. It’s close to too specific, while also remaining too general. “Say something” might generate things, but usually when a community is first forming, they need specific reasons to “say something”. It’s that social etiquette thing. No one wants to ask the first “dumb” question.
(And man, I’m using a lot of quotes in my post, many apologies for the poor grammar that requires it)