First in a series walking through Business Network OS, one screen at a time.
Every member lands here. It is the only screen most people see every day, so it is the one that has to earn its place.
Here is what is on it, and why.
The top: who you are
A welcome line with your name, your network, your chapter, and the roles you hold.
That last part sounds trivial. It isn't. In most organisations a member half-knows what a chapter president actually is, and a president half-knows what a network director does. Putting it on the screen, on every visit, does more for clarity than any amount of explaining.
Six cards, one line
They used to carry a sentence of explanation each. We took those out — six cards all explaining themselves is more words than anybody reads at the top of a page they open daily. The name and the link do the work.
Note the order. Received before given, deliberately: the first thing a member should see is what the network has done for them. Then what they have done for it. Then the button to do more.
The room
Beneath the cards, the left column: a feed for your chapter.
Members post — text, a picture, whatever. Others reply and like. You can edit and delete your own; a chapter president can hide somebody else's but never rewrite it. Those are different powers and they should not be the same button.
The system posts here too. A meeting scheduled, a member joining. Things that happened anyway, surfaced where people already are rather than in a notification nobody opens.
Between meetings, a networking group is silent. The feed is where
somebody says “just closed a deal from a referral Leah passed me in
March” — which is worth more to that room than any amount of
encouragement from the president.
The column on the right
Panels, arranged by whoever runs the network.
Some hold something typed: a welcome, a notice, a sponsor. Others read data that already exists — who joined lately, what is on this week, who has passed the most business. Those are marked Reads itself, and they are the reason the column is worth glancing at rather than furniture nobody notices after week one.
A network builds its own column, and can pass some of that down to chapter presidents kind by kind — letting somebody add a note is a different decision from letting them add a featured member. Chapter panels sit beneath the network's and never above.
What is not on it
Worth saying, because the absences were choices.
No quick actions
There was a row of them. Every one was a link to something already in the navigation, so we deleted it. A second menu is not a feature.
No notification count in your face
The bell is in the corner and stays there. An app that pings about everything gets muted, and then the referral that mattered is missed anyway.
No engagement metrics
No streaks, no “you haven't posted in five days”. The measure here is whether business got passed, not whether somebody clicked.
The idea underneath
A dashboard should answer one question: what should I do next?
Six cards tell you where you stand. The room tells you what is happening. The column tells you what your network wants you to know.
That is it. If a member opens this and closes it again without doing anything, the screen has failed — and we would rather know that than decorate it further.
Next in the series: the member profile, and the one
field that decides whether anybody can refer to you.
Business Network OS
Vancouver, British Columbia