Connecting people and groups around shared interests is what we’re all about, and we do this by matching users’ self-reported interests with those of other people and groups in each institution. The more keywords that people use to tag themselves—and the more accurate those words are—the more relevant connections we can help them make.
To make it easier for a first-time user to find their people and groups, our talented development team has revamped the signup step that asks for interest tags. Here’s a quick peek of a section of the new “Tag Yourself” step:
- We’ve changed from large, open text boxes for each category to smaller text fields, to encourage shorter tags.
- Now, next to each category, new members can see a list of the top tags in their Directory. This makes it easy to see what other people are excited about, and to add those interests with a click.
- When each tag is entered, we display the number of other users who share that tag. In the example above, 306 Directory members are also interested in Physics. It can be fun (and sometimes surprising) to see how common or unusual different interests can be.
The changes to this step make reporting interests more intuitive for new users, and as a result, they’ll be able to enter more relevant tags. This means that we can give them better recommendations and facilitate more connections.
