User Interface design:
Navigation:
The navigation bar is quite confusing. "New project" is a big red button, "Overview", and "Recommendations" are hyper links, while "Badges", "Profile", "Stats", "Invite" are tabs. I think to avoid confusion, all of them should be in the same format. I prefer the slanted tabs because they make the app look cooler. Also, the tabs could change color or something to indicate which page the user is on.
Home page (also the New Project page):
I think it's good to show users the 'New Project' page when they visit the app. But having the posting options below the input bar is quite misleading. Users may not be able to understand what the options are for, are they global settings or only applicable to the current posting. Also the first things users may want to see when visiting the app are the progress of their past projects and calls for help from other users. So I suggest that the posting options should only be shown after they click on "call for help!". The rest of the home page should be dedicated to showing other useful information.
Statistics page:
This page should be called "Leaderboard" instead. The nicknames shown next to the users' profile pics in this page are quite confusing. At first I thought "Mr. Good Samaritan", "The Great Guru"... are real Facebook names. Perhaps the real names could be put next to the profile pics instead to avoid such confusion.
Question/Project page:
This is the individual page of a need posted by a user. I think it's quite nicely done. It shows all the related information and functionality. The only thing I don't like about this page is the red buttons. They seem to draw all my attention while the thing I really need to see when visiting this page is the user's need.
Functionality and User Experience:
First, I want to comment a little bit about the idea. From what I understand, the developers were trying to create a combination of Yahoo Answers and Facebook News Feed. But for me, if I want to get help from my friends, I'll just post a big status message and tag some of the friends I know who might be able to help. If I want to get help from a bigger community, I'll just use Yahoo Answer or even Google. The problem with this app is that users don't have much incentive to use. The game mechanics can't help much. "Not everything can be gamified", said Prof Ben. If users don't have the incentive to use the app at the first place, there's no point for them to use it to gain levels and badges.
Next, the statistic page is quite "out of place". I don't think users care about who's the best helper. It would be more relevant to show statistics related to the user himself or his friends. Or if the developers want to show the leaderboard, I think they should include some options like "Ask the champion" to engage users.
Users will continue using the app if they receive useful answers for their questions. If not, they'll forget about the app after a while. Therefore, a mechanism to help users get fast and useful answers would be a good way to make the app more engaging. I would suggest some features like sending mass messages to all helpers about a user's need, or match the user with some potential helpers who have knowledge about what the user's asking.
Overall I think the biggest problem with "Get Help!" is getting a large number of users. After all, the app is all about crowdsourcing, and crowdsourcing without a crowd cannot work.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
VSee's sharing:
Today the CEO of VSee, Milton Chen, came down and gave a talk. I didn't know about VSee before (even though I vaguely heard about the company from the NOC seniors). But it doesn't matter. Mr Milton's talk just fascinated me.
VSee's video conferencing technology is amazing. It's able to deliver videos at high speed and high resolution. Not only that, VSee allows users to share files and work on the files in real time. It raises significant interest in me. Recently I've been particularly interested in XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). I've been trying to create stable web-based XMPP applications but failed many times. Making it work is not difficult, but keeping it stable and scalable is a huge technical challenge for a 2nd year student like me. That's why to me what's VSee has done is so magnificent. I really want to learn more about the technology the company's using as well as the XMPP video standard Mr Milton created.
Ok let's move away from the geeky stuff. The message that Mr Milton delivered to us today is actually about life, leadership, and relationship. I want to write everything here, but I'm quite sleepy already. So let's just summarize what I find the most interesting and meaningful:
- Breaking patterns: I've been doing it for many years already. Basically breaking patterns is about changing habits of doing normal, daily stuff. For example, sometimes I write with my left hand (I'm right-handed btw), open my room's door with my mouth, walk to school instead of taking bus, etc. I feel great everytime I do it. It makes my brain alive. I become much more aware of things around me. And it makes me feel even better knowing that Mr Milton, a successful entrepreneur, also does the same thing.
- The "Sandwich" method: It's a great human management technique that Mr Milton is applying. When you want to criticize someone, start with a compliment, then give the negative feedback, and end with a compliment again. I agree that the method works all the time even when the other party is aware of it. It helps the other party receive the negative message less painfully and prevent his defense mechanism from triggering. I'm gonna apply this technique extensively from now on.
- Being soft on people: I really respect the way Mr Milton treats his employees. He doesn't want them to call him boss. He listens to their criticisms, lets them work from home, applies the "Sandwich" method so that he doesn't heart their feelings. Most importantly, he makes them feel comfortable when working at VSee. His soft approach to people management promotes his employees' loyalty toward the company, as proved by the fact that his NOC interns are still working for VSee after their internships.
- Marrying the right person: Prof Ben's out-of-nowhere relationship lesson is super interesting. If you want to be workaholic, you have to marry the right person who can let you work on your own stuff. Also, you should get married first before being workaholic. If you do the opposite, you may not have time for dating and probably may end up alone. Well CS3216 is such a unusual course. I never know what I'm gonna learn :-P
One more thing I like about Mr Milton is his passion and affection for what he's doing. He can work 7 days a week simply because he loves his company. VSee has become a significant part of his life that he cannot live without.
And for me, I don't know if I'm a workaholic (yet), but I certainly love what I'm doing.
VSee's video conferencing technology is amazing. It's able to deliver videos at high speed and high resolution. Not only that, VSee allows users to share files and work on the files in real time. It raises significant interest in me. Recently I've been particularly interested in XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). I've been trying to create stable web-based XMPP applications but failed many times. Making it work is not difficult, but keeping it stable and scalable is a huge technical challenge for a 2nd year student like me. That's why to me what's VSee has done is so magnificent. I really want to learn more about the technology the company's using as well as the XMPP video standard Mr Milton created.
Ok let's move away from the geeky stuff. The message that Mr Milton delivered to us today is actually about life, leadership, and relationship. I want to write everything here, but I'm quite sleepy already. So let's just summarize what I find the most interesting and meaningful:
- Breaking patterns: I've been doing it for many years already. Basically breaking patterns is about changing habits of doing normal, daily stuff. For example, sometimes I write with my left hand (I'm right-handed btw), open my room's door with my mouth, walk to school instead of taking bus, etc. I feel great everytime I do it. It makes my brain alive. I become much more aware of things around me. And it makes me feel even better knowing that Mr Milton, a successful entrepreneur, also does the same thing.
- The "Sandwich" method: It's a great human management technique that Mr Milton is applying. When you want to criticize someone, start with a compliment, then give the negative feedback, and end with a compliment again. I agree that the method works all the time even when the other party is aware of it. It helps the other party receive the negative message less painfully and prevent his defense mechanism from triggering. I'm gonna apply this technique extensively from now on.
- Being soft on people: I really respect the way Mr Milton treats his employees. He doesn't want them to call him boss. He listens to their criticisms, lets them work from home, applies the "Sandwich" method so that he doesn't heart their feelings. Most importantly, he makes them feel comfortable when working at VSee. His soft approach to people management promotes his employees' loyalty toward the company, as proved by the fact that his NOC interns are still working for VSee after their internships.
- Marrying the right person: Prof Ben's out-of-nowhere relationship lesson is super interesting. If you want to be workaholic, you have to marry the right person who can let you work on your own stuff. Also, you should get married first before being workaholic. If you do the opposite, you may not have time for dating and probably may end up alone. Well CS3216 is such a unusual course. I never know what I'm gonna learn :-P
One more thing I like about Mr Milton is his passion and affection for what he's doing. He can work 7 days a week simply because he loves his company. VSee has become a significant part of his life that he cannot live without.
And for me, I don't know if I'm a workaholic (yet), but I certainly love what I'm doing.
Pitching session: Idea sharing or networking session?
Last week we have the annual CS3216 pitching session. It was quite boring I may say. Too many people came down to give presentations about what they wanted to do. I didn't get most of the presentations. Nevertheless, there were quite a number of interesting people coming down that really caught my attention.
- Dr. Dana Elliott Srither: His presentation is the coolest! I really learned a lot about AED (automated external defibrillator), which was a complete mystery to me before the presentation. His project is for a noble purpose: to save lives, which I think is a good enough incentive for computer geeks like us. Most programmers don't really work for money, instead, we work on things that are either cool, challenging, or meaningful. And as a proof, a lot of my classmates were interested in the idea and approached Dr. Dana after the session.
- Rueben - Founder of household.sg: Before the pitching session, I received quite a lot of spams from Prof Ben about household.sg. From that, I know it's a good business because well.. Prof Ben doesn't just spam about random people :-P I think household.sg is a good idea. It can be a life changing business if implemented well. Too bad I couldn't find Rueben after the session to ask more about it.
- Laurence from Chalkboard: The shortest presentation. Most of my friends didn't catch what he was talking about. But I found it quite interesting. He talked about an API that Chalkboard is offering for free. Basically, what the API does is that it gives developer's access to Chalkboard's database to create apps related to locations and promotion information of restaurants, cafes and other businesses. I thought it'd be a good idea for the HTML5 assignment and did have a conversation with Laurence after the session. But in the end, my group and I decided to work with Carpool instead.
- The business guy from Carpool: I can't remember his name >"< I'm always bad with names :( Anyways, I knew the guy before from the module MNO1001: Management and Organization I took last semester. Carpool is the project his team did for the module, and it ended up receiving the best project award. The idea is quite good: matching people who drive to NUS with those who need a ride to school. The Facebook group they've created has grown big and messy. That's why they need a more systematic way, i.e. an application, to manage the community more effectively. My fellow teammates and I are all interested in the idea and decided to work with the guy and his team for the HTML assignment.
Now when I think back about the pitching session, I realize that it's actually a networking session Prof Ben brought to us. It's the chance for CS3216 students to have a talk with people in the industry and find out what they're doing. The presentations are just for students to identify those who they want to talk to afterwards. It's one of the uniqueness that only CS3216 can offer.
- Dr. Dana Elliott Srither: His presentation is the coolest! I really learned a lot about AED (automated external defibrillator), which was a complete mystery to me before the presentation. His project is for a noble purpose: to save lives, which I think is a good enough incentive for computer geeks like us. Most programmers don't really work for money, instead, we work on things that are either cool, challenging, or meaningful. And as a proof, a lot of my classmates were interested in the idea and approached Dr. Dana after the session.
- Rueben - Founder of household.sg: Before the pitching session, I received quite a lot of spams from Prof Ben about household.sg. From that, I know it's a good business because well.. Prof Ben doesn't just spam about random people :-P I think household.sg is a good idea. It can be a life changing business if implemented well. Too bad I couldn't find Rueben after the session to ask more about it.
- Laurence from Chalkboard: The shortest presentation. Most of my friends didn't catch what he was talking about. But I found it quite interesting. He talked about an API that Chalkboard is offering for free. Basically, what the API does is that it gives developer's access to Chalkboard's database to create apps related to locations and promotion information of restaurants, cafes and other businesses. I thought it'd be a good idea for the HTML5 assignment and did have a conversation with Laurence after the session. But in the end, my group and I decided to work with Carpool instead.
- The business guy from Carpool: I can't remember his name >"< I'm always bad with names :( Anyways, I knew the guy before from the module MNO1001: Management and Organization I took last semester. Carpool is the project his team did for the module, and it ended up receiving the best project award. The idea is quite good: matching people who drive to NUS with those who need a ride to school. The Facebook group they've created has grown big and messy. That's why they need a more systematic way, i.e. an application, to manage the community more effectively. My fellow teammates and I are all interested in the idea and decided to work with the guy and his team for the HTML assignment.
Now when I think back about the pitching session, I realize that it's actually a networking session Prof Ben brought to us. It's the chance for CS3216 students to have a talk with people in the industry and find out what they're doing. The presentations are just for students to identify those who they want to talk to afterwards. It's one of the uniqueness that only CS3216 can offer.
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