I am blogging goodbye

Unfortunately, this will be the last blog post  I write for the course Business Information Technology.  About three months ago I posted my first blog and I didn’t know what to expect at that moment. Would it be easy or difficult? Would it be fun? Am I good at it? I learned that blogging is definitely fun to do. You can share your knowledge about all kinds of subjects with other people, while you also learn some new things yourself. In addition, in my opinion blogging looks more difficult than it is. In my eyes, the most important thing is to clearly define  the topic of the blog and decide which information should be in it, before you start writing. Just write down some keywords and think about the order in which you want to process the different subjects and information. While writing, you can always add some subtopics, but in this way it is less likely that you forget the goal you had in mind.  This approach worked well for me, but it is possible that this differs from person to person.

Are you thinking about blogging yourself? Check out some of the sites below to find tips about writing and promoting your blog.  

http://bit.ly/kJrqq3  ( blogger help)

www.dailyblogtip.com

www.quickblogtips.com

www.jaapstronks.nl

http://bit.ly/3AEwK

Goodbye and good luck with it!  

A new ‘Pig’ in town

According to scientist Palme, there are several motives for people to use CMC (computer  mediated communication, e.g. msn messenger, skype, sociale media) namely:

-          Status and self-esteem, e.g. the possibility to communicate with experts

-          Self-confidence, e.g.  by improving their own expertise

-          Comradeship, e.g. possibility to fight loneliness with interaction with others

-          Inspiration, e.g. exchange ideas with others

-          Generosity, give and receive support from others

      A logical assumption is that the more possibilities a form of CMC offers to meet this needs, the more satisfying the use of the CMC will be. When a social media website meets all these motives, does that mean that this form of social media immediately become really popular? The answer to this question is: no. Namely, there is already a social network site that meets all the motives for use: the social search engine Aardvark.  Despite the fact that it exist for a couple of years already, it still has not grown to a globally known and used website. Of course this needs time and there are still many people who believe that Aardvark will be the new trend in Social media, including Google.  In 2010 Google bought the social search engine, created in 2007 by two former employees of Google, back for 50 million dollar.

So, will Ardvark be the new trend in social media? Read the rest of my post and decide for yourself.

Aardvark, what is it?

Aardvark is a free search engine,  but not one as we already know.  Instead of directly providing information available on the internet, it searches for people in the social network of the users who can give answer on the users’ questions.  It works as follows:

First sign in to the website www.vark.com. After signing in you can ask a question about all kinds of subjects.  Aardvark sends this message to people in  the global aardvark network who probably have the right expertise to give answer to your question. These people answer your question and send it back to Aardvark, then Aardvark sends these answers back to the asker of the question by e-mail. Aardvark selects the answerers for a question, by analyzing their profiles and ask and answer history.  

Why react on a question of others?

The answer to this question is actually quite simple and is fully consistent with 4 of the 5 previously mentioned motives for the use of CMC. People can give their opinion about different subjects and can show that they are the ‘experts’ in that area. They also can help others out and increase their network by meeting new people.  Because the use of Aardvark makes the users ( the questioners, but also the answerers) start thinking about new subjects, it can also contribute to enlarging their field of expertise.

If you want to learn more about Aardvark, just try it out sometime! I had four answers to my question in less than ten minutes. 

OnRoute: A new travel application is born

Do you know the feeling of being lost in a big and crowded station, while you have got only 2 minutes left to catch the train or to find your way to the right bus stop? This is when a travel application can be very useful, but unfortunately the applications currently available usually only show at which platform you have to be, but not how to get there.  In addition, many apps do not combine information about different kinds of public transport properly. These are two of the most important improvements for travel applications, that we ( group 15 of the course User Interface Design) established on the basis of (1)short interviews with users of the public transport and (2) a user test of three different travel applications: NS Xtra, OV992Pro and Trein.  In addition to determining whishes and needs for the use of a travel application, a goal of the user research was also to get insight into the positive and negative experiences people have with using different sources to search for travel information.

The major findings of part 1, the interviews with travels, were as follows: 1) Travelers indicated that a downside of using travel signs on stations is that there is no information available about the duration of the trip. 2) The information on the digital screens is not always correct, especially when there are delays or revised departure tracks. 3) People prefer the use of websites and applications above the use of information provided on the stations. The major findings of part 2, the task assignments, were as follows: 1) Common advantages of  existing travel application are that the meaning of buttons and icons are not clear and that people do not notice they can click on information to get more specifics. 2) The applications do not meet the needs of the users to combine different types of public transport or this option does not work properly. 4) The respondents indicated that they find a simple design most suitable for a travel application.

In addition, both part 1 and 2 of the research showed that according to users of public transport a travel applications must provide at least information about:

·         route planning

·         departure platforms and time

·         delays and alternative routes

·         duration of the route

·         different kind of public transport

·         map of the rail road network and (large) stations

·         surroundings and how to spend time while waiting

On the basis of these outcomes we developed a high- fidelity proto type of OnRoute: a new travel-application.To meet the requirements of the user we identified the following key principles for our design:

1. To design a user-friendly travel application which combines different types of public transport

2. Which allows people to get the necessary information they seek with a quick glance on their mobile phone

3. Which provide them with walking routes on (large) train stations and alternatives on how to spent time while waiting. 

For a better understanding of our product and the steps we walked through, watch this video, starring Eugene, Jan and Etienne, our lovely group members who also implemented the prototype, by clicking on the following link: http://vimeo.com/23954159