Community Gamification
Spaces for deeper community engagement ● Condé Nast
Problem
Finding ways to increase user engagement beyond passive interactions, ensuring that content remained relevant and fostering deeper community connections.
Insight
Gamification isn’t just about play, it’s about incentivising actions. Low-effort engagement tools, like emoji reactions and polls, lower the barrier to participation, while structured community spaces create a reason for users to return.
Solution
Condé Clubs & Societies; community hubs within My Condé that gamify engagement through discussions, challenges, and exclusive content. These spaces extend content longevity and build habitual user interaction, with potential expansion into tentpole event-driven societies.
Condé Clubs & Societies = Gamified Community Spaces
During my summer internship at Condé Nast, my task was to design a solution that encouraged engagement through playful rules and rewards, or, gamification.
Gamification can take many forms
It isn't just something playable; it's about rewarding users for their actions. I drew inspiration from solutions like Instagram Broadcast Channels and Goodreads, looking at how they use polls, badges, challenges and social incentives to engage users. A challenge was finding ways to motivate food brand users to return to the site after trying out a recipe in real life, what could motivate them to return?
Lowering the barrier to community
I really looked into “reaction furniture”— simple, quick interactions like in-recipe emoji sliders and polls, to extend engagement beyond the comments. These low-effort options, designed to make participation easy and inviting seemed like a good place to start.
Community as a destination, beyond the comments
A key focus from my discovery phase became creating tangible community destinations, hubs for interaction that go beyond traditional comment sections.
Clubs & Societies, bringing users back to the community
From these ideas, the concept of Clubs & Societies emerged, community spaces where users engage deeply with content through discussions and challenges. Think of them as “book clubs” for everything from AI articles in Wired, to dessert recipes in Bon Appétit.
Community moments around content
These moments, such as a Wired Society weekly discussion, live chat, behind-the-scenes content, or a Club BA cooking challenge, help keep content relevant and interactive for longer.
Condé Nast’s exceptional content can fade away after a release on a homepage. By creating these community moments and gamifying content releases, we can extend the content’s lifespan.
My Condé
Clubs & Societies are housed within My Condé, where users can manage memberships, stay updated on events and see their saved content. These spaces were designed to feel exclusive yet accessible, catering to both active and more passive users. Keeping users updated on club content at a card level.
Introducing these spaces to users
It had to be done naturally and unobtrusively, without cluttering the page or disrupting the content flow, In line with Condé’s goals for page decluttering.
I focused on introducing these new spaces in a way that felt contextual, personalised, and relevant to the user’s journey. This took a lot of ideation.
Community moderation challenges
Ensuring theses spaces have a respectful environment while allowing users to express themselves freely is especially tricky for brands like Wired, where topics and discussions could easily become contentious. Leading to deeper considerations around comment moderation, brand integrity, and editorial voice.
What next for Clubs and Societies?
One exciting opportunity is Tentpole* Events, themed societies centred around major events like the Met Gala or Thanksgiving. These events provide a familiar introduction touchpoint to Clubs and Societies for new users.
A notification system and limited-time discussions could strengthen that engagement hook and help create this habitual community environment for users.
*Tentpole – An editorial event at Condé that spans multiple brands.
Feedback!
I presented this discovery work to the wider engagement design team and senior Condé Nast design leaders.
Until then, only the community and utility team had seen my work, so getting fresh feedback and advice was reassuring. This was truly, insane exposure. It all still feels somewhat surreal?
My time at Condé Nast
Working across Condé’s diverse, exceptional brands, from Wired to Epicurious—was a dream; and the discovery work I did around community gamification will help inform the wider Condé design team.
This experience of designing for such varied audiences and collaborating in a global design team was unforgettable. It made me more creative, confident, and honesty, a better designer. I'm forever grateful for the opportunity and to everyone on the design team who guided me :)
