#week8reflection

How does evaluating past failures prevent future collapse?

It is the last week of this module and I have to say I am very very very tired to the point that I'm stupid.

If you want to know what I am like in this very moment, this gif is on point.

(Source: originally Photobucket, found on Google)

I think I disconnected my brain with the rest of my anatomy and my grammar is going to be really bad starting from this sentence as a result.

 And I laugh at pretty much everything tonight, like this gif I casually found on google.

(Source: Google)

Alright, time to get serious, I chose the original prompt rather than the alternative one. For me personally the most relevant theme for our NGO and for our project is the 4th theme which was: 

Week 7: Theme 4 – Marketing/User/Customer Support Communities

First of all, the theme implies a marketing strategy and the strategy is about gaining access to potential users. Our project is about having people gathered to share their ideas and stories to each other and in order to do that one needs to be experienced and is actually committed to the website itself. So it is really important to find the right users for this project.

Secondly, it talks about users' feedbacks, feedbacks are really good for every aspect in life (here's why!) and it plays an important role as well in our project, in fact we have to do some experiments with the webpage and select the right approach for our users (this is a long term to do list for our NGO). In this particular case we need feedbacks and comments, whether the approach works or not, is the webpage good enough or needs some improvements.

Lastly, because our NGO has been busy for the past three weeks it's really important for us to research about customer support communities and see if we could implement the ideas we have in our mind to real life.

"Who or what you think will play a key role towards success during the process?"

Us.

(Source: ign)

I think as long as we go together as a group and respect each other and each other's opinions we're going to solve this and go through all of the problems, I learnt so much from this group work and I even improved on certain things especially I learnt to just say my thoughts even if it sounds stupid. Back in my country (at least where I grew up) if we ask "stupid" questions they'd yell "Do you know how to think before you open your mouth?" at us so I'm so used to shut my mouth although my thoughts are screaming around, but because of this experience I realised that every idea, every question, and every thought is relevant to be said out loud.

We came to a conclusion that we are still going to assume things for Maarten because he has been busy but we do know that he is a man with a big vision and we are assuming things about what he would like based mainly on his vision. We talked to him thrice and we actually could grasp what he wants for this project and we finally formed our advises which you all are going to watch it on the video :] <--- that is a smirk, just so you know.

How do you base your community project is up to you, but of course as I mention in all my blogs, the core are the people.

For example if you want to base your community when photography is involved, of course the main topic of your community you will take on images they take or which you want to represent. But when you want to involve your community work they are the best solution although it’s not always the best decision to base your feedback on images only. But you have to choose a core.

Deviantart is a good example of community which is really complicated. It’s based on images and on text as well. In fact it’s a community based on creativity itself. It is a product of a years of work and hard dedication. And not only of staff behind it, but a huge amount of feedback and work as well was done by contribution of community. It would’ve never made without it.

Another good example I have is just to show how quickly you can exploit a market targeting privileged. Is for every one well known Facebook. First they invited students from Oxford only what made their Social network privileged. And then I don’t even need to tell how they followed. Of course it was made functional and functions like tagging in my imho made it very attractive, but marketing made a very huge role in granting first market share for the company. As in Deviantart example we can see that it was made to serve purpose and grew from it.  

Having worked on a design challenge during this module, I have learnt quite a lot about designing in groups. I had done group work before, I had done design work before but not combined both yet. Although designing in a team means you can share out the work, there is a lot more work to be done in general and working together can be difficult. From this, I have gained some design principles;

Firstly, communication with the team is very important! We need to know exactly what needs to be done and who is doing what. This means setting clear goals and communicating these clearly to ensure there is no miscommunication. Miscommunication can lead to disagreements, unbalanced workloads and most importantly, stressed team members. Something that could help communication is doing some team building exercises. This way the team knows each other a bit better and knows what to expect from each other. I have learnt this from the mistakes we made at the start. Our group wasn’t communicating effectively and this led to some major problems. These were resolved once we discussed what was on our minds properly.

Secondly, hierarchy isn’t very important when in a design team. Although there is a team leader, when everyone pulls their weight, there should be no need for one person to have to command others on what to do. We choose what work is best suited for us and what we believe is a fair share of the work and get back to the group with the information we found. We had a clear team leader and this wasn’t that effective as I find it more pleasant to work freely.

Furthermore, good research is key for a design project. We need to know if there is a target market for our product, what their exact needs are, how to make, produce, and deliver the products and much more! Research ensure there is a knowledge base so market needs can be fulfilled most effectively. I learnt this from our camera project as it probably isn't what poor children need most; it isn't the greatest cause to go for.

Lastly, contact with clients is another highly important design principle as they are the people that will need to work with the design outcomes. We are lucky to have had a reply from UNICEF, unlike most other groups. However, I do not believe we used this to its full potential as we only mailed them once for information.

Successful online communities need to be easy to use. No one is going to use a really complicated online community when there are other easy ones to use out there, they also need to be accessible easily. While using an online community someone needs to be able to do whatever he wants, socialize, find interesting things etc. easily and efficiently a point older communities did not really grasp so people stopped using them when something easier to use came out, that being Facebook.

Right now all of the communities that are actually being used are easy to access, use and share so people will chose them over the older ones and possibly new ones coming out without the efficiency the already existing ones provide.

This is the eight weeks, this is the project last a week. We had too much, from the beginning of trouble to the present final sprint. But you need to ask What are your design principles for designing. I think they are divided into two aspects.

1 the market demand direction

Why say market, as a designer, design direction is different, such as popular on the market a product, but it is not the role of consumer acceptance, we are exclusively for its design a better, more convenient products. In our team in order to help NGO to reach their objectives, application of the strong function of online community, for they design products to help them. So online community work way became my main idea and method.

2 innovative design concept

This is a class in the beginning, the tutor will require us to find different online platform, to find their advantage, I think this is very correct. If we use Facebook, might not get we expected effect, so Basecamp appeared, combining the advantages of the two platform we finished the request, but this is not enough, Facecamp, this only belong to our team his new platform.

As mostly everyone knows – “FACEBOOK” is the most popular online community now. I do not know how, but… There is around 1 billion people who use this network and it’s only since 2004! I am pretty amazed how it is possible to bring together so much people within so short time…

Few tips which would pull people to use new online community: (my opinion)

§  Something new and different from other networks.

§  No pop-up adverts. (I hate them!)

§  Easy to use.

§  Everyone is able to create own design.

§  Possibility to communicate in few different ways (chat, video).

§  Easy to share information.

§  Do not need to pay for anything.

§  Forums about different things.

§  And lot of more things which can attract people…

On my experience in this course I understood that online communities are very useful and, also, addicted. Before this course I didn’t use any so much. But now all information is here. You have to check “Facebook” few times per day if you want to know what would be tomorrow or even today if not you are like a white crow. But… when you check this for information your eye will catch some post which can look quite interesting, then other one and so on… like a drug – every time you will need more and more time to spend there.

What fosters people to use online communities?

When people do not know what to do the internet is the biggest attraction. Online communities catch every one of us with their adverts, “new” possibilities or “new” design, which you “must” try (because everyone will talk only about this for few days). Also, people need to communicate with each other, this is the main thing why “Facebook” has huge amount of users.