Slowclap Design Philsophy: Subscriptions

Today’s design philosophy post is about subscriptions and auto-allocation.

But in order to talk about this I need to talk about something everyone in the design business understands but I haven’t really seen people talk about: manipulation. No one likes to be manipulated, and most people don’t think they’re particularly susceptible to manipulation, but if this world of algorithmic timelines and echo chambers can teach us anything it’s this:

• All design is manipulation
• We’re all pretty easy to manipulate

I wanted to get that part out of the way first, because this thread is inevitably going to touch on elements of slowclap’s design that are designed to encourage and reward particular behavior. And continuing in my goals of transparency, I’d rather be up front about that.

I am absolutely, with every aspect of slowclap’s design, trying to encourage specific behavior. That’s fundamentally manipulation. But whether that makes you happy or pisses you off depends entirely on whether or not our goals are aligned. Design that is “user focused” encourages users to interact with a product or platform in a way that benefits them. That makes people happy. All “intuitive” design does this.

A big part of what’s triggering enshittification in modern web / app design is the fact that user interest and corporate interest are fundamentally misaligned. This is the difference between design that feels like it’s working for you and working against you.

So what are my design goals with slowclap? They’re pretty simple:

• Make the worst parts of subscribing happen up front
• Encourage people to be constantly applauding others

The second one is where the manipulation comes in. I’m actively trying to trick you into applauding people more often. Why shouldn’t that piss you off? Well, most people, certainly everyone interested in joining slowclap, WANT to support others. Being kind is fun. That’s the whole reason to be here!

So if our interests align in this, the design of slowclap should (if I did it right) feel like it’s working FOR you. If our interests don’t align and you don’t want to support indie creators and the open web, this is probably not the patronage platform for you.

So let’s move on to subscriptions. Everyone hates subscriptions. We’re all drowning in them and here I am asking people to add one more. This is the biggest hurdle to building this platform, but again: worst parts up front. I could offer the ability to buy one-off applause. I might even do so in a future update (though it will likely be limited to subscribers)

I could also have had applause accumulate at month end rather than auto-allocate. That actually would have been much easier to build. But the way that I want to go about getting us both what we want, which is to make it easy for you to feel good about supporting indie creators, is:

• Give you a big enough bucket of applause so you have no idea how to use it all
• Use it or lose it, punk! (but in a nice way)

This is why each clap is a micro-tip. This is why unused applause gets allocated to people you chose to support at the end of the month. It’s all in the interest of making it as easy as possible to say “yes I want to support this person.” Even if it’s just a single 👏

Once people are past that initial moment of indecision, holding down the button becomes easier. Unlike other platforms that provide tiered incentives or paywalls to validate or transactionalize your support, slowclap’s entire reward system is that you’re being generous and being generous feels good. Both of these systems work towards this goal. My hope and intention is that what ends up happening is that slowclap subscribers end up applauding a few people a lot (a couple dollars) but then still have applause leftover to applaud a lot of people a little.

This keeps you applauding, which keeps the people receiving your support dynamic and relevant to your current interests. It also gives you potentially hundreds of reasons to say yes to supporting people every single month. It’s one tough decision in exchange for a lot of validating ones.

This way you can applaud a funny picture. A heartfelt comment. Someone in need of a bit of help. Something that made you laugh. Someone you just discovered. And you can do it without spending any more than you already agreed was worth it to keep the indie web alive.

This way creators can work together to encourage their overlapping fanbase to make a single supportive decision that benefits the whole creative community, rather than competing over everyone’s limited patronage budget.

All design is manipulation. It’s all there to encourage behavior. My intent is to encourage behavior that empowers slowclap members to make active decisions about who to support. To make it easy to feel good about being kind, and to enable creative communities to work together to support each other.

Hopefully that’s manipulation you can all get behind.