As someone who has accounts on multiple social networking sites, the user interface is the number one factor in whether or not people use it. I feel like usability is the new ergonomics -- instead of adapting our physical tools and objects to fit our hands and bodies, we have to adapt our online web technology to make it as easy to use as possible.
As cliche as it sounds, Facebook has done it right: a nice, simple, illustrative graphic on the left, and the "Sign Up!" feature is nice and prominent. The site isn't too cluttered, and only the pertinent information is featured.
The Twitter homepage is great too because it shows what people are talking about. Imagine that -- a communication site that shows recent communication and encourages people to "Join the Conversation" as a sign-up.
I think getting the homepage right is the most important, because it has to be welcoming and get people in the door before this site becomes useful.
I agree that it is important to have a simple, user friendly home-page since this is what will attract people to the site. However, the entire site, in general should be user-friendly so that people can easily navigate their way around. Although FB is easy to use, I find it annoying sometimes when there are a million FB quizes or invitations from others to join this group or that event. It would be beneficial to this site to avoid all these "gimics" and instead keep it plain and simple.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the interface is of utmost importance in the world of web 2.0. The way that a website appears and functions says a lot to the user about how legitimate the site is. I know personally, if I go on a website that looks amateur in any way, or is difficult to navigate, I will immediately leave the website. With so much clutter on the web people can easily get their information elsewhere, so it's important for sites to differentiate themselves and not give users any reason to go elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI think that all of this discussion about the asthetics of the site and the main page is great but I think that we need to refocus on what the website is going to be all about. To me this website is about the network map. It is how people will connnect and find organizations that interest them and organizations that are connected to the organizations they are intrested in. This really is our killer feature that will potentially make this site better than other volunteering websites. Calendars have been done. Organization pages have been done. These will be added incentives to use our site, but the network map is really at the center of our project.
ReplyDeleteI would really love to see a mock-up of the map. We need to make sure that it looks asthetically pleasing and functions well. Lets focus our attention on how we can make this vital part of our website the best that it can be.
I think that the functionality of the site and how people are going to approach it and use it should be our next step. We've touched upon it in our class discussions, and even more in the conference call but I feel that we should delve further into how the site will actually function. Is it realistic to expect organizations to maintain a page about themselves, or that they would entrust that to students like ourselves? Also, I wonder if those groups that have not been particularly open to our project will respond well to people who find their organization through the site. I would hope that legitimacy for the project will grow once results begin to appear.
ReplyDeleteI think that the conference call made a lot of progress on the different pages and features, but I agree with Daniel that seeing a mock-up of the map is imperative. Once we see what it will look like, we can explore how to make it the most user-friendly and effective as it can be.