Recently I’ve been working with clients that want to encourage some kind of po
litical or social action from their users. Nonprofit organizations, in particular, often want to encourage some type of action from users: write you congressman, sign a petition, donate to end poverty. I’ve been a little horrified at the poor approach many of the clients have taken, using designs that make even the simplest actions difficult and time consuming. I’m left wondering if anyone, ever, takes the time to take action in response to CTAs based in empathetic messaging online.
There are a wide range of approaches being used to encourage empathetic action online, and many are bad. To learn more about what works and what doesn’t (hint: the American Red Cross’s appeal to text donations for relief from the 2010 Haitian Earthquake worked), see Designing for Empathy.