pitching and VeeSee

--pitching--

i did not have much thoughts about pitching really. and i prefer not to critique another person's idea or presentation. It was interesting though, to read my classmates' blogs about it. one note, it takes charisma for one to convince another of their ideas. I dont think its as easy as selling your idea really well. you have to be likable too. maybe prof should provide a workshop on charisma haha.

I also feel compelled to talk about cliquefund. I think we should re-think ROI. ROI does not necessarily have to come in the form of money. To illustrate this abit better i have to digress abit.

have you felt powerless? like a cog in the system and the grand scheme of things seem to be directed by rich magnates and politicians alone. having no resources, the rest of us get by. certain ideas, will never be endorsed by venture capitalists, simply because they are not profitable enough, even if the idea is of great contribution to society.

Cliquefund returns the community autonomy. and by investing, you get a piece of it. you can help make things happen. you can put resources in the right hands to exact changes as you deem fit. how else can you do this without being rich?

personally, i would back indie films and media productions that give the minority a voice or are just much more intelligent. I feel media today is too driven by profit, sensationalism and political correctness. It acts in the interests of the majority and powerful and reports only viewpoints that are popular. Journalism is a very important job and i think few are worth it. ah. i digressed again.

also, i would think that this model of funding would probably not see the rise of vices such as gambling.

--Veesee--

micro learning: really? define micro. and on another note, i think ideas really worth digesting usually take up alot of time.

emails: courtesy via email is important. didnt know about the 24 hour rule though. noted.

breaking patterns: good suggestion. maybe i'll try it out when i actually do remember.

boredom: agreed much. only works for short periods of time though. problem is, its difficult to set time aside to be bored. and when you are stressed, boredom exacerbates this. for me at least.

the love advice: prof. Ben seems to think he's got a good deal. i'd like to hear what his wife has got to say haha.

p.s. i felt very much like reading after the talk. but im the sort who prefers to complete a book in one sitting. so its going to have to wait :( i prefer real books too. they smell good.

Case study 1

when i first saw the screenshot below, i thought it was a tutorial. because the check boxes are customized, it did not occur to me that it was actually a form. it looked nice but it was not conventional. causing the learning curve of the interface to be steeper. In this particular use case, it can be particularly annoying to the first time user once they find out that they had unwittingly allowed the app to post to all their friends if they neglect to uncheck certain check boxes. By the way, having all 3 check boxes checked for who do you want to ask makes no logical sense. Im assuming that they will post to all friends if left as it is. or is this just an image intended to show off the capabilities of the app and not a form u fill while asking for help?! this i will never know until i try clicking on the checkboxes.

on the other hand, they do give a rather wide variety of options. offering to sms even. although in the context of this application, i think a personalized facebook message might be more appropriate.

secondly, the profile tab is 'highlighted'. this must be some mistake because for a page called profile i am expecting information about myself. scrolling through the other screenshots, none of the navigation tabs are highlighted. so what does the highlighted profile tab mean? i have no idea. and theres this overview page. i wonder how we can navigate to it.

thirdly, im guessing the designer is trying to be creative by aligning the navigation tabs diagonally. it makes it hard to read the words on the tabs. this could work if there are no words, utilizing only the symbol. However, i find these sort of tabs unhelpful as well since it makes the learning curve steeper.

about the buttons. i wonder why they used red for all their buttons, bright red even. i would normally associate danger with this color. this is also why many error messages are in red. even the spelling errors i produce as i type this are underlined in red. IMO, the color scheme induces more feelings of anxiety in the users than necessary. if they really liked red, they should have gone for a deeper shade of red. think roses.

I appreciate the sparing use of graphics though, i find them rather engaging. functions wise i think it is smart to allow users to reccommend others. they achieve their goal of helping users reach beyond their own circle of friends for help.

as for elements of gamification(badges), i feel it is rather appropriate in this context. But i think gamification is only powerful when the rewards and benefits are a little more tangible though. perhaps, exclusive functions for users with the most number of badges?

Design issues aside, i think the team probably were a little too short on time. A problem we can all identify with i believe. which accounts for the little bugs in the UI, such as the navigationn tabs being partially blocked and the Overview headers appearing on the statistics page.

Assignment 1

Phew. assignment 1 done. the past week was so painful.. but i had awesome groupmates so thats okay. :)

some learning points:

Designing a UI is so difficult. It much harder than i thought as i got a little too brain-fried to think about details towards the end. good thing ajay helped me out there. and about the bright blue, my group knew about this problem actually. but i couldn't find just-the-right-color as a replacement. I did find a good shade of blue eventually, but it was so much trial and error. -.- (apologies for burning some eyeballs out there) Im also guessing that the bright design will not be very popular. perhaps that is why they are not very common. If i have the chance, i would like to challenge a bright design again.

I was much too naive about jquery plugins. I had problems making afew different plugins work on the same page. My guess is that they made certain common declarations.

I underestimated james and wayne. haha. towards the end i was quite skeptical that we could implement certain functions in time. but they were really good.

social plugins are a pain in the ass to align :(

On another note, i bought some eye serums for my eye bags. @.@ i hope it works. time for assignment 2