Designing platform gravity – Attracting producers to multi-sided online platforms

Abstract

“Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate” (Goodwin, 2015). In his recognized article The Battle Is For The Customer Interface, Goodwin points to a major economic development of the recent years: Multi-sided online platforms, marketplaces that match two or more distinct groups of participants, while utilising their participants assets, are on the rise. In this context, Parker et al. (2016, ix) describe the rise of the platform as business model therefore as “[...] one of the most important economic and social developments of our time”.

Designing multi-sided online platforms is far from trivial and many fail as consequence of poor design as Roth (2015) emphasises. This thesis represents a basis for platform design research and thereby addresses an identified gap in academic research. Furthermore, it aims to provide guiding theory for practitioners to design successful platforms.

The research focused on the attraction of producers to multi-sided online platforms through de- sign. Design is hereby relating to a strategic application of User Experience design with a focus on the User Experience elements of strategy, scope and structure as introduced by Garrett (2000).

The thesis aimed to address the main research question how strategic experience design could support platform owners in attracting and retaining producers to multi-sided online platforms. It was answered through the development of a platform design framework. Furthermore, the identification of common practices for the design of the platform offering towards producers completes the results. The developed results are based on an interdisciplinary literature research and the analysis of 13 established platforms across industries. The approach and structuring of the findings enabled the identification of replicable design principles as well as an iterative frame-work development.

Within the developed framework, Information, Tools, Services and Rules were identified as Design Elements. The elements are applied to form the platform Design System. Said system consists of the spheres Core-Interaction Benefits, Trust, Safety and Added Benefits. Combined they shape the overall platform Interaction Experience which comprises the Connection Process and the Core Interaction Flow, a cycle of five interaction segments.