GetHelp/Fan Gang

GetHelp

A few lessons about design/user interface:

User interface != user experience

Perform AB testing to find out which design/layout generates more traffic

Do lots of user testing to find out what user interface users want

Important : Coders shouldn't be thinking. Designers should come up with the design BEFORE coders start coding and able to communicate to coders with clarity so that coders don't waste time clarifying/making unnecessary decisions relating to design. Their understanding might differ with the designers as well.

Must have an undo button! 

Try out Balsamiq Mockups

Fan Gang

Idea first or team first? Ajay is on the idea first camp, because he's had teams that failed him. Yet there are many successful companies that change their initial idea along the way. A good read would be the book "Founders at Work". I think Alan shared about it during the show and tell. One of the stories, the founders formed a team without even having any idea! They just wanted to do something cool and fun together.

Personally, I think both are workable, but either way you must have a good team AND a good idea. If either is not good, doesn't matter if idea comes first or the team comes first, it will probably not work out.

Lessons about leadership:

Decision making - There needs to be a clear leader to lead the direction. I personally feel a high level of autonomy is better but given the context of our assignments, where there isn't really much time, like Prof Ben mentioned "too much democracy and you're screwed!"

Morale management - Don't be too ambitious. Go for small wins. I guess this is similar to the divide and conquer strategy for big problems. 

I liked Kenneth's closing statement "Having a leader is important, but having the team acknowledge the leader is more important". I think it sums up what being a leader really means. If he doesn't command awe and respect, then he's pretty much just a figurehead and ineffectual in his role.

Just spent the last couple of hours coming up with the interface for admins to add content to the database(part of the final project) and keeping in mind the above points in the design(undo buttons/options! and easy to understand/unambiguous design for coders so they don't have to think), played around with Balsamiq Mockups. Its really easy to use! much better than pen and paper, and learning curve is very gentle. I think everyone should give it a go! Still figuring out how to add pop up alerts though. 

GetHelp!

Ok, let's start with the design of the app's home page.

The slanted tags on the top right is too slanted! It affects readability and makes me a little dizzy. It's also a waste of the nice icons made for Badges/Profile/Stats/Invite because most people will focus their attention on trying to read the text below it. It is also occupying half of the width of the page, with the edges almost touching adjacent text like "Recommendations" and "I need help with". I think this makes that portion of the page looks very cramped. It might be better if the tags were made straight or just slightly slanted. Most of the problems can be rectified that way.

Next is the image to the right of the "I need help with". Its cool to have an option to have an image that further describes what the task is about, not to mention it looks nice on your friends' feeds. But I think the interface through which users enter this should be simplified. A simpler way might be to just have an option of what category the task falls under, and GetHelp automatically displays an image it has prepared for that category.

When users decide whether they want to use the platform to look for help, the ease of getting the message out is crucial. If it feels like too much work to even get the word out, people might not want to use it. Imagine if the default option to search in Google is the advanced search, and you have to enter the language, format, date, region etc to perform a search. Likewise, I think the default option should be to ask the users to enter only the crucial information needed to get word out - which is just a one line description of what it is they need help with, maybe a longer description if the task is more complicated.
The problem with information like when the deadline is or the estimated time required is that first, maybe I don't want to share when my deadline is, and I might not know what is the estimated time required (hey! I need help with this, how would I know how long it'll take?). Location is sort of redundant/ambiguous as well. I'm not really sure what this field is supposed to be. Suppose I am planning an event to be held in Orchard, but the planning work is done in NUS. So now I need someone to help emcee the event, what should the location be? Not to mention the benefit of its inclusion is questionable. Same thoughts with "Who do you want to ask?" and the RSS/Twitter/SMS integration. It should be "to all" by default. If users want to send to particular users only, they will know to look for "Advanced options" before hitting the Call for help! button. Its intuitive I guess. The RSS/Twitter/SMS integration is also very ambiguous. A first time user might not fully understand what ticking those boxes mean. For Twitter maybe people can rationalize that it will simply post the same help request in the Twitter profile, but for SMS? What does that mean? Will it sms all my friends? Or will I get updates through sms when I get a response for the help I requested?

Overall I think the home page looks cluttered and contains too many information that might confuse the users. Other than that, I think it is simply designed and attractive.

The Overview page looks good. I don't understand why the team decided to place the links for Recommendations and Overview separate from the other tabs(Badges/Profile/Stats/Invite) and also less visible than the tabs mentioned, especially since users are more likely to access the Overview page and Recommendations page compared to the tabs.

The system of acknowledging and rewarding the users for their efforts in helping friends is a good effort. This sort of reward mechanism is an element of gamification, which can work well in some cases, but in this case? I think not. Firstly, it is prone to abuse - users can potentially create fake requests and another friend in the know accepts it and do the same so now both of them have "helped" each other with a project. Rinse and repeat and you have a "Mr. Good Samaritan". Secondly, it just feels wrong for the kind of activity going on here. I mean, the intent of a reward is to motivate users so that they will work towards it, but in this case, working towards people in order to lengthen your e-penis just feels wrong. It is nice to acknowledge someone for being very helpful to others, but I feel it shouldn't be done in the form of an achievement based mechanism implemented. Ratings and reviews might be a better alternative. For the helper, I think a meaningful personal thank you message from the person he/she has helped will carry more weight. Thirdly, as mentioned, it just feels wrong to have a reward mechanism when your platform is meant for people to help others. Take a look at some successful crowd sourcing platforms, such as Wikipedia or NASA's Clickworkers program, they have no reward mechanism. People are motivated by goodwill and will help anyway if they want to help. I think the key here is not to create motivational elements so users are excited to use the platform, but rather to make it a really useful platform so people will want to use it in the first place.

That said, it is close to impossible to make a close to perfect product for the timeline CS3216 offers. To put in perspective, I think the Mad Fireman(cool name!) team did a fantastic job with their project!

VSee talk

VSee came down to give a talk this week. In contrast to last week's speakers, Milton was very engaging and captivating. I felt it was more of a talk on how to live life rather than a pitch about what VSee is all about. In particular, I loved how he ALWAYS smiled throughout his talk. His cheerful approach towards life is infectious. I loved listening to him. The points he raised also got me rethinking about my views towards life, and I felt kinda wasted that I didn't take notes cuz I thought his slides would be up on IVLE :(

He reminded me of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. From the fun culture, personal interrelationships between colleagues in the company, outlook towards life etc... I highly recommend anyone to pick up the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh.

Lesson(s) learnt? Do what is important, not what is urgent. Often this comes as a challenge, but to respond to his dare to NOT do something that is urgent, I decided not to do the UI case study......or not. Just kidding, on it now.

External Pitching Session

On Monday we heard quite a few presentations. Here are my comments:

Dreams Heartland & HDB project
The concept of bonding the youth and to spread awareness about environmental issues is good. However, do we really need such a platform to bond our youths, and will it work? I think CCAs and hanging out after class is fairly successful at bonding don't you think.
Nice to see that effort is being put in to engage the younger generation, but I'm afraid the approach might be wrong.

household.sg
Very interesting and cool! If it catches on maybe it can revolutionize the way we shop for groceries in future. Kinda reminded me of Tesco, this Korean company which display their real supermarket layout on subway stations and allow users to browse and shop while waiting for the train. Different idea, but both intend to provide even more convenience for regular citizens to buy their groceries. Went to check out their website and was impressed by the general layout and look and also the delivery time and range of products offered. Looks like a company that knows what its doing.

Burpple
I don't really get the whole food blogging/diary. I thought its somewhat a niche thing. Out of every 50 people I know, maybe 1 or 2 is into it. But if it points me to good food, I'm all for it!

ChalkBoard
I don't get how it works, except that it is fairly widely deployed. And then I got completely lost when the speaker said they pay publishers to use it? How does this work exactly, anyone?

YouTell
Cool idea...

Social Annotations/Teamie
Interesting and ambitious attempt to bring interactive learning to the online platform. This will definitely add value to the learning experience. For example, when lecturers make mistakes on their slides, they can annotate it and update it live. Definitely useful!

The Magnate + Candlestick
Gamification of education seems like the in thing nowadays. Sounds like he's trying to do something like the Cashflow 101 board game. Honestly, I felt the game was lame. I believe investing is a complex topic, and gamifying it might be a bad choice as it will either end up being too trivial, or too technical and deep that it won't be fun anymore, defeating the use of gamifying it in the first place. I think to effectively use games to teach such concepts, the target audience should be kids. But that idea has already been done with PlayMoolah, a company started by one of the NOC alumnus. As for Candlestick, I'm guessing many amongst us had similar skepticism about it. If it worked, one could easily and quietly amass an unbelievable amount of fortune. Besides, the stock market is an open system, affected by the speculators' actions themselves. While activities of this minuscule level won't have a visible effect, in general it holds true. I subscribe to George Soros' view and theory of reflexivity more than purely relying on technical analysis.

A Shocking Game!
Always heartening to see noble souls like Dr. Dana trying to save lives. The name is somewhat a poor choice though.

2359 Media
Really interesting project and opportunity.

Module Review
Idea is there. There are a few problems though - the app will only be relevant twice a year, when people need to bid. Also, I don't foresee students wanting to pay to use such a service so monetization would be a huge problem. Of course, it would be nice to integrate the currently available tools like CAP calculator, timetable builder and also add on things like a checker that tells you what you need to graduate. It is never a problem for me but I  know of many who had to constantly figure it out. The module review idea itself seems flawed though, as I foresee it will be more of "This module very easy to score A!" kind of thing, rather than "I really learned a lot from this module. It can be tough but its worth it." And sometimes it is just difficult to articulate what a module is like. The best way often is just to talk to peers who took the module before to tell you a few things and usually "Aiyah. It's difficult to say la. When you take it you will know la!". I think at best it would be a nice-to-have-but-don't-have-also-nevermind kind of app.

Cliquefund
Brave plan. The venture capital scene does need some major changes. VCs are mostly viewed as vultures, preying on and trying to rip off the hard work of young entrepreneurs. Not exactly sure how they will do it, but I wish them all the best.