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  • Community Insight: Enhancing Community Site Content and Engagement

We have a lot of people willing to contribute their part in the products. Of course there are some that are straight up bad, some not up to the mark.

But there are also quite a few really good concepts that are worth being implemented (completely as is, or even partially). One of those that comes to my mind right now is @Rahul’s widget concepts, although there are several others too, related to ID, UX, software concepts, etc. Of course, it needs a little more feasibility evaluation by the team and may be some sort of collaboration with the creator.

Such actions motivate us creators to contribute more and improve ourselves, increase the creative spirit among the community, increase collaborations among the community members and with the Nothing team. This will invite more creation from the community, and they’ll also become meaningful with the worthy concepts being actually implemented.

Again, it is a difficult thing to do, provided the scale of active contributors here in the community, but we only carefully pick those (maybe) 1% that really make sense being implemented.

    Related discussions

    RohitPakalapati

    A kind of content I love to see here is what creative developers made using the GDK: real apps people is enthusiastic to share, and that readers absolutely loved.

    So, why stop here? Since everybody is loving widgets designs a cool idea, that may contribute to populate the forum with creative developers, would be launching a widget API that works with nothing launcher, unleashing the power of using real View class (not only remoteViews) and vertical Pagers like the iconic nothing widgets.

    More developers, more real widgets, more engagement with readers, more engagement with nothing products (new buyers and more usage retention).

    I guess a lot of developers will not miss the chance to do creative widgets, and for sure they will post here to communicate with their users.

      Uday I’m not allowed to share anything, but there are definitely some interesting things happening behind the scenes. Collaboration is something the team is really focusing on. I also started a post about this, and you can check it out. But yes, you make a valid point. I’m hopeful that our community will continue to do great work, receive the recognition they deserve in the best possible way, and also gain inspiration, learn, and improve their skills along the way.

          It’d be cool to see some guardrails put around some of the contributions that the creative folks in the community are making…. Monthly challenges, ideation sessions with Nothing designers on new OS features/widgets/idea. And, more frequent community led Q&A opportunities /nconversations with designers/developers.

          I think the community 2A project was a shining example of great and, it’s how do you scale that down to make it more accessible and frequent so designers can be engaged monthly/year round.

          P.S. the work your are doing as CBO is ace and, I love the interviews with various functions, I think by giving value back to the community with things like this, you attract people too.

          Let’s start by having a system of badges for types of contributors and lurkers. Like we already for mods, employees,etc.

          Using badges to represent user contributions fosters recognition and belonging in the community. Seeing a badge on posts or comments helps identify whether someone is a committed contributor or just a casual participant.

            Sharath_0-8 Btw, thats exactly what we are doing at HBS. Our testers will be featured on the website as exclusive members of the group and share a Testers Button in recognition of their support and time. Something like this could also motivate users and testers big time.

              Hey Rohit, Hope you are doing well too. Thanks for putting up this discussion. I had some thoughts to share regarding the Nothing Community site with a Name that represent the Nothing Community. Is there any possibility to Rename the Nothing Community to something like “Matters - A Nothing Community”. Here in India, we use this word Matter a lot, be in any situation, event or occasion we often use the word Matter. Since everyone share their ideas, problems, creative thoughts, concepts, nothing community has a clean space that is allowing us to explore it and trying to figure it out how to fill the empty spaces around us. So far - the content is very engaging as I read out every article that gets posted regularly, I enjoy reading it. All the aspects you’ve mentioned above beautifully enhances the overall site experience. Though I am pretty new around here, I did feel the huge amount of creative presence among this community.

              When a creative talent shares his content the amount of retention received is slow in my opinion, can pinning the underrated post for a limited period of time, help boost its views so everyone can visit such posts and allow people to participate and share valuable feedback? The ‘Design with Nothing’ concept will definitely be a game changer as none of the popular brands allow such environment. Also, can we have a weekly challenge where one of the Nothing Creative Designer can share a symbol, be it glyph style, a shape or a unique object or simply a draft sketch and challenge the community to come up with a conceptual design based on the given hint. And which ever design theory gets votes (including from the design team as jury) the concept then be integrated either in software or physical product with a tagline “Design of the community” or “Community Edition” these small things will attract non-nothing users with curiosity to try and test the environment which will result in the long run active participation.

              1. Tutorials are a great way to share know how with community members like key factors considered behind every design on paper and other factors like design guidelines mentioned by @Ali Fakhruddin @Uday and @hrry oh and the Badge idea by @Sharath_0-8 I really like their ideas.
              2. When Nothing team reply to community driven posts, the engagement has much hype and attention and more people tend to click them, read them and participate them.
              3. If we could have a sub menu with all topics that are discussed. I mostly click the globe icon next to search bar to check out new feeds and then again go to the right tabs to check what else is new. (I am not sure about this as well)
              4. A section for ‘Share Nothing Experience’ allowing the community to express their concerns and thoughts freely keeping up the same safe environment.
              5. Nothing photography challenge is something I am really looking forward participating.
              6. Nothing composer is truly awesome, and I wonder what kind of sounds the community has cooked up. if only there could be a way to share our tunes with the community.

              There are the thoughts I have for now; I hope they may help someway. Thanks for reading!

              Really appreciate this post, Rohit.

              RohitPakalapati What kind of content or features do you think would attract new members to our community?

              If you really want to attract new members to the community, throw another Giveaway. There is insane love and engagement for those, but I guarantee you, not many will stick around after the giveaway ends.

              The approach should be - “How can we attract new members to the community and give them a platform for growth ?”. To that I have your answer.

              Get rid of the random giveaways, instead turn them into competitions/challenges. Have an extra Ear (open) to give ? Why don’t you ask the community to create music for the product’s ad. Best one gets the product. Have an extra phone 2a to give ? Create a specific challenge for the same. Stuff like that. Make sure the winners of one challenge cannot participate in the next one (they can participate in the one after that) so that everyone gets a fair shot at these challenges.

              This is so much better than selecting a random winner who made a random comment on a post. Even if they win they will not have much appreciation for it. But if they try to earn their rewards through these challenges, even if they fail they will learn something in the process, and if they win they will cherish and have a deeper appreciation for the reward.

              P.S. : What’s the font you’ve used in the center of this post’s thumbnail ? Looks cinematic.

                  RohitPakalapati

                  One way to encourage more creative users to join the Nothing Community is by introducing regular creative challenges that invite members to showcase their talents. These challenges could revolve around using Nothing products in innovative ways, such as creating original photos, designs, or unique user experiences. Offering rewards like exclusive products, badges, or recognition on the main site or social media platforms would incentivize participation and foster a sense of accomplishment. By providing a platform where users feel their work is valued and celebrated, the community can evolve into a dynamic space where creativity thrives, driving deeper engagement and encouraging new members to join and contribute meaningful content.

                    RohitPakalapati

                    Okay, someone has to say this Rohit, but lately this has become less of a place for constructive critiques and more of a place for people to complain about battery drain, pricing, camera, native apps, random bugs, some that are anomalies that occur for one or two(which should ideally be addressed by support), and all other sorts of incredibly random uninspiring stuff. What I feel can be done is, to define a set of clear guidelines for what this platform is for and have solid moderation aligning with these principles.

                    Sure feedback is important to collect information in order to fix the issues, some might actually generate some great ideas if discussed here. But this is something to be thought out to a good execution. May be giving feedback in the settings should be promoted more. May be niche complaints should be directed to the support section rather than here in the community. Maybe there should be active archiving to the solved posts, and so on.

                    But one can firmly say the current situation is far from ideal. For example, (I am giving my case here because I experienced it personally) I posted a redesign for the new smart drawer in the OS 3.0 beta, intending to provide some ideas to the software team so they can do a better job until the full release. But it got quickly buried under the feed(by those crappy complaints 😐) within a day or two, and it might not have impact that it might have otherwise had. Of course I can be biased since it is my case. But then, it happened to mine, it is quite likely to happen to other creators’ posts too.

                    Also, like @flo_rahil said, rewards or even some nice shoutouts can motivate us to do more.

                        Uday Exactly, this same thing happened to me and guess what nobody saw the post I previously wrote! and the justification I received was that the topic may had same context and hence they simply merged to similar 2 year old topic which was communicated to me of it being a very active topic and I have not seen a single response or like or reaction to the post I made because it never reached to anyone’s feed and nobody saw it. I can totally relate and fully agree to your points. I really think they just read first 2 lines and take a call without understanding whole concept and expression of the content.

                          Uday I have to disagree on that a bit. If I remember correctly my design concepts were not only reviewed by the team but they gave shout-out to many of the concepts I made earlier during the Community Edition project and before that. They have constantly recognised the brilliant works of far more experienced designers like @Rahul ior @AndreaFanelli or @aman ali c for that matter and many other brilliant people in the community. Yes I do agree there are complaints and it kinda gets faded away. But I hope they’ll find a way and hence concluded @RohitPakalapati Post to start this seeking a solution.

                              Ali Fakhruddin

                              Yeah the teams do appreciate the concepts that we share, I’m not denying that. In fact, I got a shout out for my Community Edition Project too. But as we mutually agreed, these “complaints” (not constructive feedbacks) are increasing day by day, and there is no visible resistance against these as of now. The new folks are not well-informed about what this platform is for, and this is fading out the content that is intended to improve Nothing and the creators.

                                RohitPakalapati The best way to attract creative users is by offering mockups and design guidelines for Nothing devices. This gives them the tools to create and innovate while aligning with the brand’s style.

                                  5 days later

                                  RohitPakalapati

                                  Personally I would say that we should not be looking into making tutorials, there many people out there doing it already, that would be a distracting from what we want to do as a community.

                                  For example during the phone 2 if I remember right some of the community members were randomly picked to come up with a concept from a core element of the design. It was fun, if only we could release something of that sort in the forums and make it open for all it would be a good place to start.

                                  And all of them could be recognised before the launch as a reveal screen, sounds exciting?

                                  Let me know what you think about it.

                                    15 days later

                                    Uday
                                    This aged like a fine wine 😂
                                    I’m so glad it happened!