Gist uses a Dashboard metaphor to create a call to action for you during your morning coffee, when you need to prepare for a meeting, or when you need to find information in your email to a particular contact.  So, how do dashboards work?  Why should a simple “what’s new” prompt help you to take action where you otherwise wouldn’t respond? Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford discusses the behavior model of triggers and points out that the reason for triggers is simple: without them, we wouldn’t do a lot of things.  Gist uses behavioral triggers in our user interface design to help you know when changes have happened in your network that affect your most important contacts.

Fogg names three kinds of triggers: a “facilitator” trigger, which gives us high motivation and requires low ability to complete (think: a one-click login screen); a “spark” trigger , which may excite us initially but then requires high ability to complete (think: a contact merging activity); and a “signal” trigger, which balances these two drives by providing motivation to complete and a comparable amount of ability to complete that task.  The Gist Dashboard is designed to provide all of these triggers, depending upon the task at hand.

First, the Gist dashboard uses a facilitator trigger to make it easy for the first time user to get started.  The Actions > Optimize Dashboard option simplifies the information available on the Dashboard to the top 20 contacts and companies in your network.  This is an easy solution that requires low effort, yet provides a substantial amount of value to the user immediately.

Second, Gist allows the user to merge contacts from different networks into a single, de-duplicated list.  This can be thought of as a spark trigger — we like the idea of completing this task but are not motivated to complete it because it seems hard — but Gist provides several ways to complete this task.  Gist allows the user to merge contacts directly (on the people detail page for a person) or on the people list page.  In either place Gist allows you to combine multiple records into one quickly and easily.

Finally, Gist produces a signal trigger by using the concept of importance created by recency and frequency in email, number of connections, and meeting activity among contacts.  By using email data and combining this data with connectedness and recency, Gist produces signal in a noisy contact world by gradually increasing the importance of the contacts in your network you communicate with most and most meaningfully.  You need the Dashboard model because it produces behavioral triggers that help you to do things.  Like Dr. Fogg’s suggestion, “[a]n effective Trigger for a small behavior can lead people to perform harder behaviors.”  Teach people how to tag a contact or mark a post as “off-topic” and soon you will be encouraging them to share on multiple networks using the power of the Gist dashboard.