It's 4pm on Friday. We've finished up our group discussion and selected a couple of favored ideas to develop for Monday. It's time to find some inspiration...
Meeting 2:
Clarke “Sanchez” Cooper
Welcomes the group back to the table. Thanks everyone for taking time out on Wednesday to meet outside of class hours. Proposes additional similar meetings in future.
Clarke has researched trends within student friendly web sites and proposed two themes for the feedback tool. “Make some noise” uses volume control imagery to show favoured design work. By turning up the volume students can rate and broadcast work.
His second proposal is a tagging system similar that used by Facebook (credits Stewart Ainslie as also working on a similar theme— pub chat).
Ondrej
Is keen to know more about the tagging system, he and Andy are both concerned about how tagging might get in the way of the work on display.
Stewart
Keen to defend the tagging concept, proposes that tags are listed as comments beneath the work and that a click or hover state could reveal the “pins” on the artwork.
Ondrej
Is interested in conversations stacking based on replies or new responses. How might this be conveyed visually?
Andy/Stewart
Briefly discuss splitting shapes, using the students designers logo as a graphic aid, pros / cons.
Clarke
Starts to think about colour/shape/icons.
Edwin
Discusses how Clarke’s make some noise theme. Would like to see how Clarke develops the music bars / volume control theme.
Clarke agrees with Edwin. He will pitch the idea to Alex & Matt on Monday.
Andy spent time on the student designers web page considering identity elements and how they might tie in to the interface. He has explored using the Student Designers mark as a graphic element within the design as well as what sliders buttons etc could look like. For Monday he is mocking up a simple visual of how we might make alterations to the profile page to reflect feedback incentives.
Clarke suggested giving the tool a name/logo/identity of its own.
Stewart shot the idea down, suggesting it would water down the student designer brand.
* Ultimately this was wrong of Stewart as the final decision rests with the client. However, time spent on an individual identity is time that could be better spent on the tool itself...
Andy Will pitch featured designers alongside general incentives on Monday.
Ondrej Has sketched up detailed plans for a “cover flow” presentation style for the tool. Benefits of this method of display are both that cover tool was developed and is ideal for mobile devices and also that it provides an addictive platform where “once you pop you just can’t stop”. It also provides ease of comparison between one piece of work and the next.
He also stressed the critical importance of industry professionals being involved with the site. This could be college/uni tutors as well as full time designers from agencies around the world.
Stewart talks through a few concepts and their pitfalls, is concerned about the quantity of active users and how to encourage interaction with the feedback tool. Is also interested in how social networking tools could be used alongside the site and why access is currently restricted to students.
His strongest concept for Monday is the “tagging” system. This would be used for giving feedback to particular areas of an image, similar to flickr. The differentiating factor would be that rather than the author it would be the users who tagged their favorite elements, or areas for improvement. Obviously this would still leave the need for general comments much more like a forum.
Edwin was inspired by Nike and their flash based NIKEiD customisation tool. Ideally this would allow students to change the colour and tweak layout options on each others work, an advanced markup system. Whilst this would be an incredible feature the worry he had was that it might cause offense and could be difficult to implement.
As we talked this idea through we quickly realised that the technical issues surrounding this concept would make creating it a mammoth task.
Implemented instead as a customisation option for designers profiles this could become a reward item for leaving feedback. As Edwin and Andy discussed the idea it became clear this is something we would have to run past Alex and Matt. What options are available for suggested alterations outside of the feedback section of the site?
Additional questions:
- How many active users?
- What can an unregistered user see?
- What can be shared via social networks? How valuable is the ability to share? We had taken it for granted that facebook and twitter would be essential links— perhaps this is not the case. Should the emphasis be on keeping work and review internal?
- Can we register without being a student? If so then why invite students only?
- Clarke will attempt to create a profile without proving he is a student. He will present “make a noise” on Monday.
- Andy will develop visuals supporting our customised profile/incentive scheme. These will be very simplistic at this point just to illustrate an idea.
- Ondrej will present his cover flow visual.
- Edwin is looking in to twitter with Stewart to ascertain what is visible to an “outsider”
- Stewart has just finished his secretarial duties, will proceed to drink tea.
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