Manga Group

Implementing and observing a networking community

Ashleigh Banh • Danny D’Cruz Anna Masters • Sangheon Park

Agenda

• Individual Designs• Selection of Design Proposal• Design Roles, Process and Tools• Communication with Designer Optima• Client Design Proposal and Us• Evaluation of Community• Prototype Walkthrough

Individual Designs: Ashleigh Banh – SFF-eCom.net

• Type: Community of Interest (Science Fiction and Fantasy) and Transactions (B2B)

• Aims: A community portal where people and businesses can exchange information, trade and collaborate on projects and activities.

• People: producers/makers (artists, writers, designers, animators etc) and buyers (distributors, publishers, gaming and entertainment companies)

Individual Designs: Danny D’Cruz - ServicePost

• Community Designed for people to advertise their services

• Purpose is to generate business

• Targeted at small service providers

• Revenue model – Paid Advertisements

• Similar to the Trading Post

• Search Engines, Bulletin Boards

Individual Designs: Anna Masters - Choreolab

AIMS

• - Community site focussed on artists interested in creating a professional dance work.

• - opportunity for choreographers to share ideas and research.• - a way for dance artists and non- dance artists who share an interest

in dance to meet.

Key Features

• mailing list• notice boards• forums• file exchange facilities

Individual Designs: Sangheon Park - NELF

• A Non-English language film community for English speaking people

• Differentiated from other movie communities by focusing on the Non-English language films

• Activities– Sharing information/opinions on films, sell/buy/exchange

used videos (could raise some issues), and offline meetings• Facilities

– film review board with rating facility, message board, and chat room

• Technologies– Use free software as much as possible

Selection of Design Proposal - Non-English Language Film Lovers Community

Selection Criteria:

Community (inorder ofpreference)

Strength Weaknesses Opportunity Threats

NELF Balance of complexityand realismInteresting/ unique

Detailedspecificationsrequired

Broad scopefor creativity

Breakdown ofcommunication betweengroups

Choreolab Interesting/ uniqueNiche subject matter

Niche subjectmatter

Broad scopefor creativity

Tacit/assumedknowledgerequired

SFF-eCom.net Detailed specifications High complexityComplex tools andskills required

Challenging todesigners

Lack of timeand resources

ServicePost Professional High complexityComplex tools andskills required

Challenging todesigners

Lack of timeand resources

Design Roles, Process and Tools

Roles and responsibilities• Anna - COCC project coordinator and developer• Sang - NELF project coordinator, developer• Danny - Developer• Ashleigh - Researcher and report coordinatorProcess and Plan – As Client• Select and send design proposal• Refine requirements and provide feedback to designers• Evaluate the community implementationProcess and Plan – As Designer• Understanding and Interpretation of client proposal• Development of prototype proposal and submission to client for feedback• Prototype construction• Evaluation by Clients• Refine prototypeTools• Email and UTSOnline chat

Communication with Designer Optima

• By email – no need to organise meetings• The designer group (Optima) was pro-active and

cooperative• Technical and non technical issues were discussed

– Scope, Classification of films, Role of a community administrator, Commerce, Chat room and some other issues

Communication with Designer Optima

• The initial implementation was generally acceptable except– Classification of films (by geography vs. by language)– Login, more moderation required– Some broken links– No membership or security policies– Small text, too much text and links on the first page

• We praised their effort for– Overall implementation with all the necessary features– Consideration on the netiquette– Open and welcoming community atmosphere– Aesthetics and usability

• Final implementation is very satisfactory

Client Design Proposal - Community Online Chess Club

The client wanted an online community chess club to be created.

Key features they wanted the community to include were:

– A large list of links to chess playing web sites– Options for members to join mailing lists and start discussions– Latest world chess news and key dates– Users able to view member profiles within the community– Allow members to post, note and exchange experience of chess via

a message board

The client group gave information about the Internet Chess Club (a popular online chess playing site)– which was useful as a

starting point on how to build a site for a chess community.

Client Proposal and Us

• MANGA read the brief and submitted a design proposal to the MCG group

- this brief incorporated the features requested

- we asked a few questions to check our direction was what the client wanted.

• The client raised no issues so we built the community based on our design proposal and MCG’s original brief.

Communication with Client MCG - Evaluation of Community

Key Issues: • The technical skills in web design were limited in our group so we had

to rely on the facilities that yahoo groups could provide to build the chess community. This gave us less freedom in our design than would have been ideal. The structure and visual look was decided for us.

• The main area of development therefore was on the content of the site. This had a slow start but now covers a whole range of areas including additional features such as photos and polls which were not part of the original brief.

• Our client did not offer any thoughts on our site, which may have been useful. These may have given us inspiration on how to improve and develop our community. However, we hope that our interpretation of their brief did match their expectations.

Prototype Walkthrough

• Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) Moderated(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CommunityOnlineChessClub)

– Message Board– Chat– Photos / Files– Links– Database– Calendar– Polls– Management

Conclusion

Questions?