Fifty Shades of Claps — A Case Study for ‘Clapping’ on Medium
Pros, cons, and proposed solutions
As many of you already know, Medium recently changed their react system. Instead of the old ‘recommend’ (the green heart icon), readers now can ‘clap’ up to fifty times for an article. In less than a month, there are many posts that talk about, either positively or negatively, seriously or sarcastically, about the new feature. As a designer, I was fascinated at how readers and writers reacted to this change. Thus, I put on my research- and design-hat and dug in. In this case study, I list out some of the pros and cons of ‘claps.’ In the end, I also brainstorm some potential solutions.
Pros:
- It is something new and unique. First of all, I really appreciate Medium’s willingness and boldness to try out different types of interaction. This is actually something different from dozens of social platforms out there that use ’Likes,’ ‘Upvotes,’ and ‘Hearts.’ And whether it is a successful redesign or not, Medium has skillfully gotten people to notice, and talk about this new feature. I remember I was so excited when Asana first put in the flying unicorn when you complete a task. People appreciate the uniqueness in products (mostly).
- It captures the non-binary nature of appreciation. As katie from Medium explained in this post, ‘appreciation’ sometimes is just not binary. ‘Clapping’ captures the magnitude of gratitude. If someone REALLY likes your article, he/she can express appreciation on different levels (to be specific, 50 different levels). From a business perspective, this new scale also brings in much more fine-grained data about the reader and the author.
- It feels natural and expressive. Clapping is what audience do after an inspirational speech, or a touching performance. Some people clap louder and longer than others. In real life, people don’t just put their thumbs up and be done with it or clap exactly once. Although it is debatable whether we should compare reading a static article to watching a live show, to me, both can be an inspiration and emotional journey.
Cons:
- ‘Giving appreciation’ and ‘evaluating an article’ are two different things. It makes total sense for readers to give the author some extra love, but that doesn’t mean those extra appreciation should be counted towards the article’s popularity/credibility/whatever the amount of ‘recommend’ meant before. I like to think of it as voting — it doesn’t matter ‘how good’ you think the candidate is — you either vote or not vote for that person. Everyone gets exactly one vote.
- Being able to multi-clap causes ‘clap-inflation.’ When it was just ‘recommend,’ every ‘heart’ matters. Now, when I see an article that has 50 claps, I wonder if it’s given by 50 different people, or by 1 single person. Also, as many readers mentioned, this new rule opens the gate for exploits. In any case, both readers and authors are going to take a while adjusting their standards when the new norms emerges. I’m also curious how people are going to treat the old articles that have a lot of ‘recommends.’
- More noise for the authors. With the inflation issue mentioned above, what should the authors be expecting? Which metrics should the authors care about (average claps or the number of people)? Although Medium is going to get more data to analyze, an average writer is not going to spend the time to parse out the noise and obtain the more refined insights.
- More work for the readers. After the new feature is implemented, I almost always have to think twice regarding how many claps I should give. Especially when I’m visiting a post written by my friends/coworkers. Knowing that he/she will see exactly how much claps I give, I became very self-aware when I click on that clap button. Clapping makes appreciation non-binary, which was supposed to be a benefit, but what if people are already used to the binary system on social networks? What if people’s mental models are already set on ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’? Jakob Nielsen’s article on ‘Mental Model Inertia,’ and Steve Krug’s book, ‘Don’t Make Me Think,’ are both very relevant in this case.
Prompt:
How might we give readers an easy way to show (extra) appreciation while not distorting the credibility of the article?
Solutions:
After identifying the pros and cons, I brainstormed some solutions that can mitigate some of the concerns, while still trying to keep the uniqueness and benefits of ‘claps.’ Some of the approaches I proposed might seem impractical, but the idea here is to push the boundary of claps.
- Separate appreciation from evaluation. As I mentioned in the ‘cons’ section, I find it weird to mix the two together. Fortunately, I think the two elements are able to co-exist. What if readers are still able to give, however, many claps to the author, and the magnitude of the appreciation is only sent to the author but not directly ‘countable’ by other readers?
- Incentivize responses. Commenting as an engagement metric is often underrated and overlooked. If a reader really appreciates an article, instead of holding the button for 12 seconds to give 50 likes, an even more fulfilling and meaningful interaction would be to comment on the article and start a conversation. In addition, the number of likes or claps will not generate additional value to a post, but meaningful comments will.
- Clap and … Super Clap? A trinary react system certainly is not something new. For example, on Tinder, you can choose to ‘pass,’ ‘like,’ or ‘super like’ a person. For some readers, the problem is that the scale is too fine-grained to choose from (1 to 50). Why not just give them 3-point scale to choose from? (not like, like, and VERY like)
Next Steps
Design doesn’t stop when the feature is pushed out. I believe ‘clapping’ is only the first step in rethinking the engagement between readers and writers. I am sure that Medium will continue to keep an eye on the metrics and use cases, and continue to improve on the feature. New changes can sometimes be awkward and difficult to adapt to, but I am very excited to see how this feature will evolve in the future.
