In our world of ever growing social media and social networking trends, the ability to voice an opinion and make a contribution is essential. Whether it be adding a comment, posting a link, or sharing a photo, users like to collaborate and participate socially online.
Our corporate social networking tool Innovate is no different, and allows users to collaborate ideas and thoughts on an informal level. Users can add comments, share files, and “like” others’ posts, all within a small but very powerful dedicated tool.
This ability to show appreciation for user content in some form is continuously on the rise, with the feature growing in sophistication based on user trends and demand. This poses the question of how best to implement such a feature; do users prefer a like/dislike option, or do they prefer the ability to evaluate content based on a star rating system? Choosing the best approach for your intranet platform is important both for the user experience, and for obtaining results.
Star rating
Implementing a star rating method is traditionally seen as a way to gather more accurate statistics, where ratings can be analysed based on the degree to which a user liked or disliked content. However, research shows that it may not be a reliable source of information. It appears that users are more likely to rate content as either 1 star or 5 star, rather than anything in the middle, to highlight that they disliked or liked something. The issue seems to be that it’s difficult to ascertain if content is worthy of a 2 star, 3 star, or 4 star rating. A star rating is simply too ambiguous, and too subjective; what represents a 3 star rating will differ from person to person, based on their individual perspective.
Like/dislike button
Employing a like/dislike option is much less misleading; users either like something or they don’t! Whilst this may be seen as limiting in terms of variation, it actually just formalises the way in which rating systems are used already, where users are effectively selecting 1 star in place of “dislike”, and 5 star in place of “like”. Research shows that users prefer the distinction of a “like” or “dislike” option, finding it easier and clearer to use.
So, which is best?
When you think about the largest social media sites out there, they all use a like/dislike option; Facebook utilities the “thumbs up” button, Twitter allows users to “favourite” tweets, and Youtube famously deprecated their star rating system in favour of a like/dislike option based on user trends. A star rating system certainly has a place, but perhaps not in terms of social media, where users want to simply show their appreciation for content (or not)!
Our corporate social networking module Innovate already utilises the “like” functionality, showing that we stay on top of user trends and understand what is needed to create the best user experience. Not only that, our latest Innovate release now includes a “trending” component, which analyses the posts with the most “likes” and highlights these as trending and important issues. This is incredibly useful for getting more users to collaborate on matters which are on-topic, and also emphasises what is important and relevant at the time.
