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Assignment 3

 

Designers' Perspective

From Our Clients - Sith Lords' Proposal [enter]

Due to the way the Assignment 3 function, our group - Chilli Padi - was assigned as designers for our client's - Sith Lords - proposal. The proposal that was elected for us to implement is a community for the Newcastle Knights (a rugby team), which was rather a shocking reality for a bunch of girls from Malaysia, as we know nothing about rugby, neither have we heard of this team. However, we still take this assignment as a challenge to be concur by us.

Being clueless about the team, our first step was to check out the official website of Newcastle Knights to understand the team better and the affiliation of the supporters towards team. We also examined the technologies that were recommended by our client in order to get more idea about what we should be doing for the community. Moreover, from time-to-time, we checked back the requirements of the Assignment 3 as all our group members do not really have an inkling of what our subjects really want from us.

After getting a vague idea that we should implement a community for our clients' proposal, we started to brainstorm the way to implement the community. Being a pure business students group, we finally agreed on using community package providers to set up our clients' proposal. Hence, we had explored many community package providers, and finally, decided to use FriendsCircle to employ the community as it not just able to provide basic specifications that was required by our clients, but exceeded the requirements. On the other hand, there is a huge major constrain about this community provider, it was not quite customizable resulting us have doubts on our preliminary design of the community. Hence, we consulted our tutor, Peter, on our preliminary design of the community

Realizing the problem of our community, we started to investigate on customizable community package provider, which ended us on MSN Groups. After getting approval from our clients to change the community's design, we began to inspire on the design and layout of the community. As the community is all about rugby, the design has to be more masculine to suit the team and the game, hence, we decided to use 3 colors - white, blue, and yellow - in the design layout of the community as it would be colors that are easy-to-accept by everyone (especially Knights' fanatics), and it suits the theme, team and the game. The value that our group uphold while designing the community is user friendly, hence, the community's hyperlinks are in underlined yellow fonts or underlined blue fonts.

Even though MSN is customizable, and claimed that it has HTML code enable. There are still numerous implementation problems encountered during our design. Thus, this has resulted us to branch out the MSN Groups functions and use Geocities to solve the problems as some HTML copy-and-paste code would not function properly in MSN.

The poll system and chat room service system were the two major problems that we stumbled upon. Many website does provide copy-and-paste HTML code to be personalized for personal websites. However, many of the copy-and-paste code provider could not function properly after being paste in MSN Groups customizable webpage, or even, Microsoft FrontPage. Like the poll system, we had change from the client's recommended Poll Pro to Bravenet. Bravenet are customisable and each vote would be notified to the registered email of the community's manager. As a result, the managers could keep up with latest voting result. However, there are quite a number of pop up advertisements.

On the other hand, chat system for the community were changed from MSN Chat to Bravenet, and to Dialogoo. As there were problem in implementing MSN Chat System for the community, and Bravenet's Chat System was unusually forever under maintenance during the implementation and testing period. Therefore, it resulted us to pull out Bravenet's Chat System and substitute it with Dialogoo, which is customisable and have emoticons functions that are much delighted to many chat users. In addition, it has no limitation in how many users chatting and it does not need low bandwidth connections to load fast. Much to our delight it is ad-free too.

All the functions requested in the clients proposal are fulfilled in the community, which includes poll system, file swapping, notice board, discussion board, asynchronous and synchronous communication functions, and chat system. The other functions besides poll system and chat system, are implemented by using the MSN Groups provided functions.

The functions that are in the community are as below:-

What's New

About the latest photos and discussions posted by the members.

 

Join Now

Register to join the community through MSN Groups.

 

Home

A brief introduction about the community's aim, and the latest happenings and news about the Knights and community. There is also a poll research for everyone to take part in.

 

About the Game

A brief report about the competition and rules of the game.

 

The Club

A brief introduction about the club, retrieve the club song and the players' detail.

 

Player's Birth Date

Some dates of the players' birthday for fans' interest.

 

Important Events

Events that are organized by the Knights for members and public to take notice and join.

 

Groups Events

Some events organized by our Community for members and public to join.

 

Members' Forum (members only)

Discussion board for members only, and news article comments and discussion ground. Non-members could read the discussion topic, but not allow to add any message in the discussion boards.

 

Online Chat

Enable real time communication with all the loyal fans around the world. Disregarding members or non-members.

 

Photo Gallery (members only)

Pictures gallery that allow members only to upload pictures about the team or the members of the community. Non-members are not allow to add picture to the gallery, but are allow to have a look at the albums.

 

File Sharing (members only)

Non-members are totally prohibited to enter this section. Files are only to be uploaded and downloaded by the members only, recommended for sharing mp3, desktop backgrounds, Winamp Skins, and etc.

 

Scored Board

It list how well the Knights have done in the pass, for fans' interest.

 

Links

Some additional important links.

 

 

In conclusion, our group has tried to developed the whole community by our own using Geocities only, and working out from scratch. However, the major problem that we encounter during the implementation is the registration process and the members only areas, as being our members should have the privilege to some additional functions than non-members. Hence, we have implemented the clients' community with the MSN Groups and Geocities. MSN Groups mainly consist of areas for members only, such as Members' Forums, Photo Gallery, and File Sharing. Most importantly, it could provide special tools for managers to send newsletter to its members. On the other hand, MSN Groups HTML coded functions are not fully functionable, thus, the combination of both - MSN Groups and Geocities - could help us solve the pros and cons of each provider.

 

Newcastle Knights Community [enter]

 

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