Lindsay Popowski

@julian @msbernst I think in practice, the small increase in upfront nerves caused by the push to post was short-lived. Because commit offered a warrant/justification for posting, people felt more comfortable in the act of posting and had the expectation of being supported/responded to by the rest of the group.

(6/7) Participants treated sustaining the conversation as a shared responsibility of the group. Commitment served as an excuse for messaging, lowering the social risk. These effects then compounded, since one user participating lowered the threshold for others to join in.

(In case it's relevant, this would be the admit weekend for *computer science* phds)

(2/7) Our design asks group members to “commit”: explicitly promise to participate in discussion on a regular basis. Committing is a condition of membership: there is no "social loafing" option.

(3/7) We built Commit: a smartphone group messaging app built around the commitment mechanism. In Commit, people commit to messaging the group at least once every two days. Users are reminded to fulfill and renew their commitment with notifications and in-app banners.

(4/7) We then ran an evaluation with 57 participants in 12 groups (split between Commit and a control condition) interacting for three weeks. The control condition employed similar notification and banner reminders, but without messaging around commitment.

(5/7) We found that Commit participants *doubled* their messaging activity without compromising quality. In fact, Commit participants had more interesting & deep conversations, growing closer with each other during the study. How did Commit achieve this effect?

(7/7) Why would this matter? Small-group interactions are beneficial to users' mental health and wellbeing, by providing opportunities for social support and relationship-building. However, these groups often struggle to reach a sustainable activity level, where Commit can help.