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Assignment 3
Researchers' Perspective
Task Allocation
There are 5 members in our group - Chilli Padi. Among five of us, 2 members - Wee Leng and Li Ying - are responsible to contact or keep in touch with client and designer.
Communicate with clients to understand their needs in order to further understand their needs to facilitate the creation of the community.
Always available when designer requested to discuss our requirements for the community.
With all the information collected from the virtual communication with client and designer, both members will call for a group virtual discussion to inform each member on those issues. We will always update each of our members regarding the assignment development for both client and designer; make sure everyone has an idea what is happening or what needs to be done. We will meet virtually at least once a week to discuss about the assignment.
Usually, we will use MSN or Yahoo Messenger to communicate with our designer. We always make ourselves available when designer needed to get more information concerning the community implementation.
As for our client, we will use email instead of chat because our client will not be available during working hours. However, our client always tries to reply us promptly and give helpful feedback to our implementation.
On the other hand, another 2 members of Chilli Padi - Yin Wan and Wei Yoke - are responsible to jot down events that have taken place. And, the remainder member - June Ling - will be the one on watching out of important dates to ensure that we do not forget the due dates and always accomplish our work up-to-date.
Average Times Spent on Interpreting Proposal
After we got the proposal from the client, each member is expected to read it and discuss on it in the following meeting. In order to discuss the implementation of the community, we usually use Online UTS group virtual chat room and ICQ. The client’s proposal is about creating a virtual community to accommodate Newcastle Knights Rugby league fans. Basically, its community aims are to continue the fanatical support shown by fans offline in an online fashion which requires discussion (both synchronous and asynchronous), file swapping, notice board, polls and online chat. The proposal given by client clearly outlined the community needs which really helped us to understand the design and implementation of the community.
Besides that, client provided some useful web sites that in fact saved our time in brainstorming the establishment of new community as we can browse to the existing community.
We actually started by searching for:
Web site builder
Web tools - chat room, polls, file sharing, discussion board
After a few days of searching, we have chosen FriendsCircle to implement the community because the software was able to offer a level of integration that fit together the design into one organized package with impressive results. At the same time, our client was satisfied with the design and commented that we selected a superior software which was able to not only meet, but exceed the specifications detailed in the proposal. Most importantly, FriendsCircle provides all these functionality free of charge and completely meet client’s specification of keeping the site and community free of banners and advertising.
Following the discussion of our preliminary implementation with Peter, our tutor, we realized that FriendsCircle is not the best way to implement the community for this assignment. Peter wants something more lively and attractive; possibly we create from scratch and integrate all technologies (chat room, polls, and discussion board) ourselves. In fact, the crucial point is how to magnetize people come to our web site and always revisit it. His comments leaded us to a right track.
The trial and error process took us a few days to finally come out with the final implementation using MSN Group. It is a web site builder which provides the functions we needed and also able to collaborate with self-created HTML. We integrated the Bravenet Poll and Dialogoo Chat into the MSN to further enhance the web site. As for file sharing, discussion board, event calendar and photo albums we use the one provided by MSN.
In order to make the community alive to accommodate Newcastle Knights Rugby League fans all of us work together to post messages and news that draw fans attention, alert them on important dates; and also create the opportunity for them to have a chance to chat with their favorite players online; provide mini poll for them to vote and make their own choice.
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