Project Carousel

Dear all,

I will be performing magic for a NUS student-organised charity event titled Project Carousel on the 21st March, Sunday @ Vivocity outdoors at the fountain outside Bakerzin. My time slot will be between 3.15pm to 4pm for the public and 6.15pm to 6.30pm specially for children from Fei Yue and Beyond Social Services. It's going to be my first time performing on a big stage (I think the stage is big), most of my performances are usually close-up. If any of you are free, please do come down to watch.

In addition, even if you can't come down to watch me during the time slots, there will be an ongoing carnival for Project Carousel from 10am to 7pm. All money spent will go directly to the MINDS Towner Garden School as donations. I have previously volunteered with MINDS and I feel that they are an organisation worth giving for. Support a good cause!

Hope to see you guys there! =)

Cheers,
Jonathan

Recap

I'm going to blog about last week's and this week's lectures.

For the Google Wave lecture last week, it's probably the first time I've experienced a live video conferencing lecture like this. I felt that it was quite successfully conducted. Other than the lag that was present, everything else was pretty much smooth-going (no connection breaks, interrupts, etc). I enjoyed Pamela's critique of our apps because it provided a good perspective of what she as an experienced programmer in Google saw. Her enthusiasm and sharing certainly made me re-evaluate about what I thought of Google Wave and its extensions, especially with the new robot API.

Fast forward to this week: Zit Seng's lecture was quite enjoyable. For me, most of the things shared were entirely new to me. While there were some things that I may not have caught, at least I got a good overall picture. I think he did a good job in talking about the problems that people may encounter as well as the techniques we can use to improve performance. I also liked that he provided references of which we could find out more about. It'll definitely be things I'll check out when I have the time. I do however wish that Zit Seng could have been a bit more layman friendly with technical terms such as SCSI. It would have made following a little easier.

Last but not least, there was Prof Ben's little additional lecture. I liked how meritocracy was defined as being equal access rather than equal outcome. Equal access makes more sense and is more accurate in describing the landscape in Singapore. However, I did not feel too comfortable about the pyramid that Prof drew about social mobility. Not that I disagree with the message that he was trying to convey, but I felt that the diagram was somewhat insufficient to describe what was going on; it felt a little too simplified.

Short Notes...

On the Final Project Pitch
I thought it was excellent, exciting and engaging. There were many take-home messages that day. Unfortunately, I doubt I can remember them all. One point that struck me deeply is that it is not necessary to be original or groundbreaking. In addition, it's always difficult for one to lay claim to originality because chances are, people have done it or tried. What matters however is in the execution, making sure that the job done is better than others and being very lucky.

On Case Studies
I enjoyed this sharing session very much. The sharing on interface was very helpful. Some of the points mentioned are things that I would not have discovered independently unless through failure and feedback. The idea of watching friends as they test out an application is a very good one.

Gaining Perspectives

I found Chewy's talk to be very interesting and it provided me with a lot of food for thought.One point that struck me was about looking beyond one's perspective. This is a practice that I have always been working on but not in the way that Chewy mentioned. Can I understand the perspectives of what other people say? Usually, yes. Can I understand the perspectives of a consumer? Not at all, I don't think I have even a clue.

There are loads of money put into understanding consumer perspective. Companies run research and surveys to learn customer preferences and buying habits/behaviour. Even then, there will never be a "one size fit all" golden formula. If one is able to understand consumer perspectives very well, then creating effective marketing and devising products or strategies to generate more revenue will be easier with less reliance on trial and error.

However, not all forms of effective marketing are necessarily good for the consumer. Many times, it could just be plain rubbish; like refridgerators with "whatever" light to improve storage time or washing machines with nano silver particles. There is usually no evidence to show that these additions add anything to the product. Yet, there are many people who buy into these forms of advertising believing that they're getting more.

From now on, I'll start to consider the perspective of different consumers. However, most often, I am able to gain perspectives through interaction and tapping upon the knowledge and views of others. Such a course of action may not be that viable given that there is a limited number of people I can interact with in any particular period of time and this population will not be representative enough. Still, I reckon going around like what Chewy did in Bangkok might be a pretty good idea.

Case Study of GetHelp!

One consideration for designing an interface is by importance. The most important functions of the programme should be clear and easy to execute while those that are less important can be positioned at less prominent places.

For GetHelp, I feel that "Badges" and "Stats" are really the least important parts of the application. In the selection menu at the top, more attention should be drawn to "Overview" and "Recommendations" which are not in a picture tab form. In another page of GetHelp, it appears that the "Overview" and "Recommendations" links get squeezed to become two lines instead of being in one line. This makes it harder for the new user to navigate to these two pages which are the more important parts of the application. In addition, the tabs get overlapped in some of the pages.

In creating a "New Project", the developers have to consider the flow that they desire. Do they intend users to key in information or prefer users to create projects quickly? The positioning of "Call For Help!" next to the textbox indicates that creating a project quickly is more important than the information regarding the project. But if the true intention of the application requires details, then the positioning of the button is in the wrong place.

There are a few things that are missing and I don't know if it's because of a lack of a screen capture of the application or if these components are really missing:

Firstly, there doesn't seem to be a way to remove or edit one's projects.

Secondly, will clicking on a friend's name lead to the overview page of the friend? It seems like there's no way for me to view a friend's overview page.

Thirdly, it would be nice to have a page where I can view all my friends who have this application installed and then "spy" on whoever I want to. =P

Fourth, for some strange reason, I notice clones of the same people helping out in one project and even being able to have different status in the same project. Perhaps the mechanism for users to help is not well built and does not give users the option to pull out or change status?

Fifth, I notice that there is no information on the current projects that a user may be helping out with. Does this overlap with his/her own's projects or it does not exist?

Information management is very important and I think it is a very difficult aspect to implement well. I believe that this is the main problem that the developers are facing. After offering to help with a friend's project, I would like to be able to know the dates of when the help is going to be, have a list that can prioritise my own projects as well as that of others that I'm helping with. This will help me keep track of my own activities instead of helping too many people and then forgetting a few.

In conclusion, I believe that the primary difficulties that the developers have with the application is in having to manage the information well. Trying to conceive a method to integrate information properly with a good interface is very challenging. More information can lead to clutter and confusion but less information means that users can also be confused on what to do or that the application is not that helpful. I think the amount of information is even overwhelming for the developers because they appear to have missed out certain necessary functions.

Managing information effectively is not an easy problem to solve. Sometimes, it means that the user may have to deal with overwhelming information at the start but eventually learn to use the interface. I think Facebook is a good example. Facebook has revamped its interface a few times for better or for worse. With each revamp, things get a bit confusing but the users will ultimately adjust to the interface. Of course though, Facebook can afford to do this because it knows that interface changes, even if they are very drastic, will not drive its users away.

Pitch - 8 Feb 2010

On writing about what I learnt...

I think it can be rather difficult at times to translate specifically what we have learnt into words or even quantify them. I didn't go to the pitch looking to learn three or more things, hence, I'm not going to write exactly what three things I've learnt and how I'll apply them. But I'll still write about things I've learnt.

For me, the session was about gaining insights and perspectives. While I did hope that there may be a particular project that would draw me towards it, I don't think I really saw one that was suitable for me.

Jumping into the social networking bandwagon...

I felt that the session revealed that there was a much needed demand for companies and even the public service to establish themselves through social networking sites. People are only just starting to leverage upon social networking sites for their own business or operations. This represents a huge opportunity for web developers. However, I think the effectiveness and benefits of using social networking site may be sometimes questionable.

For example, for the World Cities Summit, I'm not sure that creating a facebook app for it will help that much. The event appears to be a one-off thing meaning that the game may not be built to be sustainable but will be played only during a period of time. Yes, the app would create more "colour" for the event but I think it will not add anything significant to the true deliverables of the event itself. This is reflected in the fact that there wasn't really a budget allocated to the development of such a medium.

Will creating a facebook app lead directly to more traffic or publicity? I don't think so. Some events or businesses may lend themselves better to the nature of social networking sites but for others, it may be a lot more difficult. Designing a facebook app to work accordingly to what we desire it for may be very much a trial and error process. It will be time consuming. Thus, I think that to try and implement a successful app in a short period of time is a highly improbable thing. If World Cities Summit really wanted a facebook app to help it with the event, this should have started at least last June, a year from the actual event itself.

On 6Waves...

I found 6waves' talk to be very interesting. There was so much information shared in the presentation itself. The presentation gave me insight of a unique business model. I kind of like the way the company works because it's task is essentially to problem solve for social game companies in terms of publicity and revenue. There is a lot of room for creativity. There were certainly many new things I learnt from this talk.

About learning...

One thing from the Redsports.sg presentation struck a rather strange chord in me: that the web developer for Redsports had difficulty connecting facebook with Redsports.sg. I'm not sure what to make out of this. I would think that someone with the experience in handling things with the web would be able to adapt and work with new web technology. I reckon that in the field of computer technology, things are moving at such a rapid pace that unless one keeps learning, one will not be able to stay in the race. This is probably quite a different picture as compared to other industries. However, this may also mean that the better and faster learners will have a much more significant advantage and will prevail in this race. It certainly would take a specific "type" of person to survive in it then.

That's all for now. There are probably some other things about the session bubbling at the back of my head but they refuse to surface. I'll write some more if I get any new thoughts.

Going Viral?

Having read most of the blogs, I notice the same question that keeps coming up: How is it that something so silly as Pillowfight get such a mass number of users? It simply defies logic or perhaps our perspectives are blind to its success mechanism. But one thing we know for sure is that it's extremely viral. I did some reading and decided to work out a framework of the properties that might make a social game go viral on Facebook.

Zero or Low Barriers to Entry

There should be short and minimal loading times. The game has to be easy to learn within a short amount of time. The user should not be overwhelmed by complexity of the game or interface. If the game is complex, then it is necessary that the developers provide an easy and quick step by step guide to give gamers a feel of the game (This can be extremely challenging). Learning of the game can be paced modularly (eg. several games introduce new features as the user levels up).

I think one factor that developers are combating against is the user's attention span. It's alright if the user happens to be patient but for players unwilling to deal with waiting times or learning complicated game mechanics, exit is just a click away.

Making Impressions

First impressions of people are usually established within seconds. I think a similar effect manifests in games. The impression that the user forms about the game is important. It may be something novel or something cheeky (eg. Friends for Sale, Pillow Fight) or something aesthetically pleasant or neat in the interface and graphics, etc. Upon forming an impression, the user should ideally be able to describe the game in one or a few sentences. If the user can't, it might mean the game is not well designed or is rather complicated.

Optimise Users to Bring in More Users

The game should be designed in a manner to encourage players to bring in as many other players as possible. This can include:

- Providing incentives for each user invited and successfully invited or even scaling incentives with increasing number of users the player has invited or are "neighbours" with.

- Designing a competitive game that friends would challenge each other to (Bejeweled). Have competitive wall posts or invites.

- Taking every opportunity to make the user send invites or hidden invites to friends. (Spamming in other words)

- Encourage players to post game achievements or gifts on their own feed. Incentives can be offered to the player to post to the news feed. In addition, more incentives can be given to the player if other users go into the game by clicking upon it.

- Encourage players to publish meaningful news in their feed through the game. For example, if the game is selling "socially conscious goods" or even goods that go directly to charity, have the player publish the news for a meaningful cause.

- Offer non-players incentives to join the game through an invite (eg. extra 10000 gold).

- Offer "lucky draw" prizes for inviting users or new users.

And the lists probably runs on.

A thought about Friends for Sale

Rather than just looking at the perverted notion of "owning" a person, I think that this game instead enhances or encourages interactions between people. Why? When I select a friend to "own", I am dedicating attention to the person. Using people as the focus in the game introduces the possibility of another form of online social interaction: one of cheekiness and fun. This can otherwise enhance both existing and non-existent real life or online interactions, thus adding value.

That's it for now. Have lots of other things that I would like to think and write about but that will have to come later.