juliannechat

ux+viral case study: Order Of The Stick's turbo-Kickstart

Last week Rich Berlew's Kickstarter project became one of the top ten funded Kickstarter projects of all time, and the highest ranked one that's creative (not technical). Rich's goal was to raise $57,750 to reprint one of his web-comic compilations, and he received $400,000 in the first 12 days. As a comparison, of the top 10 comics-related Kickstarters in 2011, only one cracked the $100K barrier and most hovered around $25K.

How and why did this campaign go (comparatively) viral?

The usual elements for a successful Kickstart were in place: Rich's comic is high quality, with a solid base of long time readers (most of whom are geeky and thus more familiar with online fundraising). But he also has a design degree and prior self-publishing experience. He added extra elements to the usual Kickstarter campaign and those, combined with ongoing responsiveness to his target customers, are making the difference. Here are the distinguishing elements of user experience (ux) that helped this drive go viral:

Sponsor rewards are unique merchandise

Rich's self published books are sold in gaming stores. They contain significant extra content that has never been on his web site, and older titles are out of print. "Sponsoring" in this case is more like "purchasing merchandise" than with most Kickstarters.

Upbeat progress charts are linked by a narrative

Rich's updates are the heart of the campaign. His color-coded charts visually show how each new chunk of money will be used; they're the old "thermometer" progress graphics on steroids and mushrooms together.

The charts are linked by a story, which started with a comic on the project's home page (an opportunity to kick a character from the strip) and unfolds with developments on each new chart, so readers want to check the updates whether or not they've already signed up. (For the full effect, read from the back forward.)

Rewards are networked

Some sponsor rewards are PDFs of new stories that the fans want. As people kept donating, Rich added all the electronic rewards to EACH package. By now a person who bought in for the $10 "fridge magnet" level is getting a ton of special rewards that they didn't plan on getting, and the revelation of each new "Mystery Reward" also kept people checking back in and telling their fellow fans.

One of the latest rewards is a set of free downloads. Rich Berlew wrote, "That's my way of thanking all the fans who may be not be able to help out in monetary ways but are spreading the word and keeping it alive." To sum up, the networked-rewards technique uses swag to leverage the power of Metcalfe's law.

Kickstarter comments support viral behaviour

As various targets were reached, and more books are able to be reprinted, Berlew began offering full sets of the books, full sets signed, full sets signed with original art, and so on. And early sponsors switched to these better options. To quote Dave Freireich at approximately comment 1960, "Only 2 books? What was I thinking? I want all of the full color books. Pledge upped!"

Kickstarter doesn't allow projects to adjust or remove rewards that people have already signed up for. Berlew continually added various combinations of merchandise as requested by fans, so that now the list of sponsor packages is (a) mostly sold out and (b) an unholy mess.

But as people "managed their pledge" (which Kickstarter does support, quite elegantly), some of the early sold-out packages (rare Christmas ornaments, full sets of magnets that you would have had to attend three gaming cons to get, etc.) briefly "flicked on" as available. The comments list was a 24-hour party of fans around the world refreshing their browsers and trying to get the rare stuff. Then they praised Kickstarter's server capacity and decided to make a chart of where fans were geographically and showed all those other signs of a project going viral on the web.

Summary (at the half-way mark of 15 days)

To sum up, Rich Berlew was already taking good care of his target audience with high quality content and extras such as Christmas ornaments and fridge magnets. He took the basic Kickstarter template and added dramatic progress visualizations and networked rewards. His fans took this viral.

As of this posting (Sunday evening 5 Feb 2012) the drive is closing in on the #6 position (on the all-time list of Kickstart projects), but in his latest update Rich has also suggested that it will soon be OK to put on the brakes: "That should take us to a cool half a million dollars of OOTS products being created and shipped, which defies all logic and common sense." With 15 days to go, I can't wait to see where this ends up.

read | play link updates

I have updated the "read | play" list (to your right), a selection of people whose work with electrons has inspired me. You are invited to hover over the links to see WHY I think you might enjoy clicking each one. I have also collected list metadata & trivia for those of you who have read the hover text and want to have fun with it.

Many of the people listed create poetry as a primary or secondary activity, or just because they can. Grappling with their work takes everything I have. By now I know not to even start when I cannot pay full attention. That says more about me than about poetry, but I'm just explaining this because I don't like to hear, "I tried a poem once but I couldn't get into it." Rita Mae Brown recommends preparing physically for mental challenges and mentally for physical challenges. So a few hours of Pilates (or equiv) should set us right up...

No attempt has been made to be comprehensive; many more digital objects | opportunities to read | play can be purchased from Eastgate or the MIT Press and found in the directory maintained by the Electronic Literature Organization. I hope that if you find the list wanting (too many poets and visionaries? not enough history and theory? needs more Australians?), you will be inspired to update your own and send me a link.

As I checked all the links just now, several pieces in particular struck me.

 

Secret rules from within Rhetorical Devices for Electronic Literature

This node offers an alternative path into Deena Larsen's e-literature teaching site. It contains the most concise statement of ... I dare you to click it, that's all.

 

Torill Mortensen's thinking with my fingers entry "It feels final"

Excerpt: Living in Volda, the distinction between "real" and "virtual" world feels meaningless. What's real about living here? It's so secluded, so filled with its own rules, concerns and moving by its own rythm that living in the flesh world of Volda is like living in a virtual world. The insane beauty of the place, combined with the ruthless weather, the heavy darkness and the dreariness of the third month of rain and sleet, it turns Volda into something on the flip-side of other flesh world realities. At the same time - this is it. This is the reality, because reality is made up of a million little spots like this, places of heartbreaking beauty and equally numbing mundaneity, spread like random handfuls of marbles all over the planet.

Torill, your poetic way of ... *weeps quietly* Hope the move continues to go smoothly.

 

Elin Sjursen's posting on Barriers to Understanding Twitter

Excerpt: Journalists continue to fall prey to the most outrageously ridiculous claims from those with titles within fields like psychology who claim to understand something about human interactions in the online world. ... Sweeping generalizations that misguide the public on the reality of what happens online is a big problem.

Although perhaps my favourite bit is where she asks (after quoting some "experts"), "Are you on twitter? Is this how you feel?" Exactly!

 

The final two links have content about health, linked to matters of spirit and mortality:

Justine Larbalestier's posting on RSI and so much more, "Farewell For Now"

Bassey Ikpi's re-posting of "One Good Reason To Stay (A Poem for Phyllis Hyman)"

Excerpt from the introduction: Fuck Stigma. If you need help, get help. Those who wish to shame you aren’t going to ever come to your rescue. Fuck them. Seek treatment. Pity the ones not brave enough to seek help. Who only want to sit in judgment of those who do. Fuck them. Seek treatment. Talk about it. Fuck a stigma.

 

If you are listed here, and I have not linked to the preferred version of your online presence, please let me know (juliannechat at gmail dot com). All comments are welcome!

oooh! readinglisted again!

Every now and then a teacher assigns one of my URLs as class reading. It's always a thrill. (Susana Pajares Tosca and Chris Willerton were the first, I think.)

This particular link is embarrassing because I've written many usability reports, and this one is NOT one of my most professional. The tone is chatty (qualitative) and it reports only on a minor "icebreaker" activity, not a full review. However, most of my professional usability reports (including the ones for Trellix) have been too proprietary to post online so this sample is all that's out there. Dan Bricklin (the client in this case) believes in exposing all aspects of his process for others to learn from, and since the site was more or less a personal project of his, he included in the site one of the usability reviews of it.

A course syllabus from Berkeley SIMS IS 214; the other readings look terrific!

The usability report referenced; *blush*

You can follow Dan Bricklin's continuing (professional) adventures on his weblog.

I cannot resist adding a bonus link to one of the most fun (for me) samples of writing I did for Dan. (I did some sample documents in Trellix format that were LOTS more fun than this, but this is the most fun of the ones that are still out there in HTML.) He asked me to do a sample document for a fictional company going through a reorg. Here it is, inside one of his slide shows. The goal was to show how an online document could be made more "scannable" than the equivalent content on paper. I am amused to see that he posted the version that includes a "to do" list of what else could be done to make the document even better. (Again, Dan believes it's important to expose process.) Anyway, the fun part for me was that I got to include (what I hope was) some satire in the background memos...along with the usual...

Kappa's hard-charging Director, J. Osbert Kennell, will be leaving immediately to pursue other opportunities. Os has been a "true believer" whose ability to articulate the Kappa technology and approach have made Kappa what it is today...

In our global marketplace, the risks are great, but so are the rewards. These are difficult times, as Sigma attempts to adjust to global change while continuing to provide our customers with the best solutions possible and extend our domination of all three major product categories. Thank you in advance for remaining flexible and willing to make whatever changes may be necessary for all of us to succeed. Etc...

 

Ironically, I've just registered for the last two classes that I'll take as part of my UTS degree in interactive multimedia, and one of them is about "global IT management issues" - so I hope I'll be learning about the reality behind the hype-y language I parodied. Will report back on that!