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!