Emotional Design
How we get there:
• Create the safe place where people can feel comfortable
  revealing their thoughts and trust they will be
  treated with respect.
•
• Members gain a stake in the community, and
  then the conversational exchange creates value.
•
• Information quality reaches a rarefied exclusivity.
How do you design the social enviornment to get them to talk?

Let’s look at two decisions Vanessa made and how they safeguard the emotional design of Executive Suite.

Not letting in vendors, consultants, or reporters not involved with community.
People with a financial interest in selling products or services or revealing members’ private information in a public forum would destroy the safety. Members wouldn’t talk. Computerworld has no product.

Career Doctor

It started out as a discussion, but EXS is a place where people get to talk about real career dilemmas with an expert. They need anonymity, so a discussion wouldn’t work. They want to send private email, anonymously through us, to the recruiter. So Vanessa made a page where they will fill out a form to be sent privately to Gordon. Then the question and answer will just be put on a page that members can click if they want to read about the topic.

This was a decision of choosing the right environment to fit people’s emotions about career moves when they operate at a senior executive level. They feel safe this way, and they will continue to talk. This was emotional design, which is crucial to the health of a community-information product.