ProjectEvolve The Listserve History
About

Getting Started

Hello everyone,

Thank you for expressing interest in the idea to evolve the Listserve. 202 people from the Listserve community share the opinion that it would be fun and interesting to apply design thinking to create our own project with the Listserve as a launchpad.

How might we evolve the Listserve?

What is the Listserve? It has 25,000 readers, who are they? What do they get out of it? Does it bring them enjoyment? What are they looking for? Do they find it? Do they use it to escape? Does it make them think? Or rather, does it make them feel?

Design thinking will help us answer these questions and give us a better understanding of the Listserve. Then, we will use our insights to generate ideas for what we should build ourselves. This is project to find out how we can advance the existing Listserve, and do it.

About me and my motivations:

My name is Chris Stanley. I live in Los Angeles, currently a freelance data scientist. I’m 26, studied Economics and Psychology at Yale, worked on Wall St., and most recently transitioned my failed startup into an open source project.

I’ve always been intrigued with the Listserve–this anonymous email list, cultural exchange community, internet communication project all in one. I wanted to undertake this project because I think that there is a good chance we can create something that people love, a personal goal of mine.

How we do it:

I’ve received emails from a collection of interesting people - a University lecturer in Vietnam, UX designers, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, a cognitive psychologist in NYC, and a freelance blogger in France are just a few that immediately come to mind… the list goes on. I’m impressed by the number of people who took the time to reach out.

Because we have so many talented people willing to spend time on this project, I wanted to make sure I organized the group in a way that everyone can be engaged, heard, and contribute as much as they like. Originally, I had thought of weekly emails and surveys from me to all 200 people, but I now think that falls short on many levels.

Divide the 200 people willing to participate into small teams of 8-15 people. Each team will have the creative freedom to execute the project in the best way they see fit. I will work with teams to help develop shared resources to give scope and definition to the project to ensure everyone’s projects are on the right track.

Survey:

As a first step, I’d like to get a better idea of our group. Many people responded with detailed information, others responded with an enthusiastic “Count me in!” I will use this survey to learn about your interests in the project and also learn about your feelings towards the Listserve. We’ll also use survey responses to help organize teams as to ensure multidisciplinary and diverse teams.

This has the potential to be an extremely powerful project with a group of talented people who are going to spend their free time devoted to building something people love. Awesome!

Cheers,

Chris Stanley

How might we evolve the Listserve through Design Thinking?

The Listserve was a class project started in 2012 by five NYU Technology and Communications Graduate students.

Originator Alvin Chang in a Medium post weighed in on the design of the project:

“For most people, the Listserve is a daily e-mail from a stranger. But there are more facets to the experiment that we hope people play with. When someone wins the Listserve, they don’t just win the ability to send an e-mail to 25,000 people. The value of this opportunity lies in several mechanisms:

  • The synchronous nature: It’s all sent at once, and many people will read it at the same time.
  • The blank canvas: Sure, we only allow text. But what you do with the text doesn’t have to stay within the bounds of the e-mail, or within the bounds of the form. (‘Text’ ≠ ‘Words’)
  • The feedback: We think of every message as a pebble dropped in a lake. What’s interesting isn’t the pebble itself, but the ripples it causes.

In short, it’s an opportunity to experiment with the world.”

So, my question is, how can we use the Listserve in a more profound way, beyond telling stories, finding more about each other and the society we live in. Essentially, how might we ‘evolve’ the Listserve from how it currently exists?

My idea is to approach this using Design Thinking. Design Thinking is a powerful tool used by innovators to find solutions to problems. Design Thinking is commonly used as a two stage iterative process that seeks to 1) find the ‘right’ problem and 2) find A solution in a way that meets human needs and capabilities.

To start any Design Thinking project you must first a) define a goal and b) assemble a team.

  • Our Goal? Learn from what the Listserve has accomplished, iterate on different designs for innovative communication products, build ‘something’ that has an impact.
  • Team: We’re the team. I believe just being on the Listserve is a strong signal for one’s level of creative curiosity - I’m confident we’ll be able to put together an interesting group of people.

Let’s learn from something new together. If you’re interested in participating in this project please email me at ProjectEvolveListserve@gmail.com. You can expect about one email a week as we get started.

Here we go!

Chris Stanley

ProjectEvolveListserve@gmail.com

California