Pattern 3: Rich User Experience

Back to 30 years ago, how could we image in these years people need to use complex commend line interface to operate the computer? Think about the black screen, almost of us will feel headache. Hence in that time, it requires high level of professional skills on operating computer. Are they user experience friendly? It is obviously not. However, thanks to the appearances of Graphical User Interface (GUI), Children, Old person, professionals, non-professionals, and anyone who has basic human awareness could operate the computer.   By the expand of web world, human was not satisfied to only active on the windows applications, more and more web applications appeared with excellent GUI design. Whether a web 2.0 application has a user experience friendly interface is become a significant standard for judging the quality of it. In this week, the post will focus on the fourth pattern-rich user experiences, and also will introduce sumo paint as an example.

SumoPaint is an online paint tools, and it looks like the Microsoft Paint, which also has tools including pencil pen erasure and so on. However, as web application, Sumopaint provides more interactions between users and itself. When user edit pictures on the Sumopaint, they will find it was designed exactly following user experiences.  To detailed describe how Sumopaint has rich user experiences; This post will explains step by step with screen shots of Sumopaint

picture 1

As the picture 1 shows above, SumoPaint provides several options for user, they can upload image from their computer, add url, and even choose the provided picture by Sumo. The multi-options are more user-friendly, users could use the online pictures without download them from the internet.

picture 2

Another easy operation provides by the Sumo is shown as Picture 2, Sumo offers hot pictures below the app windows, user just need to double-click the picture, then the Sumo will download this picture and open a work bench for this picture.

picture 3

When users finish draw, they can choose save the picture to their computer or store the picture in their Sumo Account. It is a great function, users could browse, download the picture from any device. They will never mind if they did not bring the one device that save the picture.

Picture 4

This is a web 2.0 era, share pictures to facebook friends, I think most of the users would like to do so. Therefore, Sumo provide the link with facebook, when user finish draw, why no share to their friends?

Any one who intrersterd Sumo click the link: Sumopaint

Social Media Strategies

In last week, I talked about wiki strategies on IGC, in this week I will focus on how social media works on IGC. In this post, social media could work on tree process during the 34^th IGC, and three social media strategies could be introduced to assistant the congress.

Social media works on three processes

Social media could be used for internal management and external promotion during the congress periods in 2012. In addition, as the prediction of the IGC, they hope that the social media could help them to attract young scientist and students to participant. Therefore, social media could work for three processes in IGC, including assistant IGC management group for daily tasks, promote IGC to public and encourage young scientists and students to participant this event. For internal management, wiki is a good selection. As I mentioned in last week, wiki has extraordinary modification functionality, which could help the manage group to post and modify documentations and enhance the collaboration during IGC staffs. What’s more, there are many sessions during the congress period and each session would present orally, so that the speakers could use wiki to share his or her plan among internal group before the presentation. For external promotion, official website, facebook and twitter could be used. The official website provides a board to public to introduce the main propose of IGC, notice the brief content and the holding time for each exhibition. Facebook and twitter will work for public discusses and leave comments about the congress, and those suggestion will be collected for prepare next congress. To encourage the participations among young delegates and students for scientific reaching, wiki, blog, facbook and twitter could be implemented. Wiki may be used for sharing and enhancing collaborations. Blogs could provide opportunities for young delegates and students to give their own opinions in the geography area. They could also choose facebook and twitter as their communication tools, because, both of those two social media tools are flexible and easy to work on multiple platforms such as smart phones, laptops and Ipads.

Three social media strategies

1. establish marketing goals: the main purposes in this case is to encourage delegates to participant the 34^th IGC, so that implementation of social media tools mush obey the main goal of this congress.
2. find out suitable social media tools: social media tools need to be selected to make sure that they could assistant the 34^th IGC and each tool should suite for the current situation. For example, as I mentioned before, facebook is used for communicating between public and IGC. Wiki mainly regard as internal communicating tools.
3. creating events: events that sounded the IGC topic should be held through the social media tools.
4. trigger conversations: social media tools should provide assistances for communication among IGC group,  delegates and publics.

WIKI strategies

In last week’s post, I talked about how micro blogs useful is on holding IGC. In this week, another social media tool-Wiki, would be introduced to assistant the IGC daily works. In this post, wiki would be used for assistant on three processes of the IGC in achieving or tackling relevant issues. A successful wiki strategy that implemented on another organization would act as a useful example and source for using Wiki in IGC. Finally, three wiki strategies for IGC could employ to achieve some of their objectives.

 

what is wiki?

A wiki is a website that allows that the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a MYSIWYG text editor.(wikipedia)

Wiki used in IGC processes

By analyzing the case, Wiki could be used before, during and after the IGC. Before the beginning date of IGC, there will be workshops and associated events before and after the congress. As a result, a good and fast way to share opinions and assistant further discussion and researching is to implement wiki. Due to the attribute of wiki, it allows internal edit, so that latest information would be updated immediately. In addition, wiki could not only before and after the congress, but also could be used in the duration. As the description of 34th IGC, there will be 40 concurrent sessions being held, so that during this period, wiki could used as a tool of broadcasting the information about each sessions and receiving feed backs from delegates.

Wiki used on other organization

An example is The Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership uses a wiki to organize it’s conference. They used wiki to store all information about the upcoming conference, including the confirmed and potential speakers. The Wiki also provided a discussion board so that planner could post and reply message from others. In addition, wiki provided the opportunities for stuffs those who missed the conferences. Through accessing the post about the content of the meeting, they could still understand the content of the conference. What’s more, stuffs would review the content and access it at anytime and anywhere.

Three wiki strategies used in IGC

1. Keep track users: using wiki In IGC, the feedbacks come from each delegate would be the test sources for studying. Keeping tracking the response from users find out what they are interested in.

2. Manage Change: wikis are good notification tools that allow users to keep up with changes and modifications made to wiki documents of interest to them. In IGC, delegates could using wiki to changes the post content. Also, email and RSS could also cooperate with wikis for supporting collaboration.

3. Making wiki highly searchable and easy to discover information: when implement wikis in IGC, topics could be divided into parts to convenient for searching.

 

 

Building Relationship by Using Micro Blogging

International Geological Congress

 the International Geological Congress (IGC) is the leading global forum for the Earth sciences. In 2012, the 34th IGC will be held in Brisbane. On that time, there will be 5000 delegates from over 100 countries and a quarter of the delegates will be a student or Young Earth Scientist (under 35 years of age). Therefore, Micro blogging will be a uesful tool for building relationships among these delegates.

 

What is Micro Blogging

Microblogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content s typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs “allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links” (From Wikepedia)

Why Micro blogging could help to build relationships

Firstly, Micro Blogging is a social media tool, it was realized by using internet. Hence, it provides an oportunity for people from anywhere to communication with each other through the internet but not need to consider about the locations. Then, in this case, the IGC will be held in Brisbane, and delegates will from about 100 countries, the geography distance would affect their normal communication before and after the IGC. However, the social media would provide the change for them to communicate in anytime and anywhere, so that delegates could recognize each other before the conference, also they could keep in touch affer this event. Secondly, the differences between traditional blogs and microblog lead to that Microblogs are convenient, easy, and fast for using. For example, Micro blogging services have emerged as an important source of real-time news updates for recent issues. The short nature of updates allows users to post news items quickly, reaching its audience in seconds. Furthermore, due to the quick update speed and small content size, micro blogging could be posted through smart phones, so that delegates need not just sit from the computer, they are able to send and receive messages by operating their phones. Lastly, the short content of miroblogging are fast to update and easy to read, delegates could quickly know each other’s by reading short post and interact with each other. Therefore, the Micro blogging could overcome the barriers of long distance to build long time relationships. Delegates need not worried about they are could not to keep in touch with each other such as different mobile areas. They just need a computer, an Ipad, and even a Smartphone that connect to the internet, they could contact others immediately.

 What kinds of Micro Bloggings could be used

Twitter

My yearbook

Weibo

Legal Risks Raised by Social Media and Solutions

Legal risks raised by social Medias and solution

Internet raised rapidly in recent year, more and more companies and organizations using social media tools for their internal and external communication. However, different from other real life activities, online communications are not easy to control, and legal risks leaded by the social media tools would be ignored in sometimes.

According to the searching, Dundaslawyers lists 4 classifications of risks associated with participation in Social media Sites

Confidential information- loss and disclosure

Wrongful dismissal

Statutory risks

Occupation and organisation specific risks

Reputation risks

The Queensland Government is committed to embracing the Internet as a channel for service delivery and engagement with the public, and it supports the use of social media as part of an integrated approach to Government activity. While, the using of social media would lead to confidential information loss. Especially as government, which is different from other industries or organizations. The occupation and organization specific risks would be raised by internal operation. For example, some policies would be leaked through the social media tools before publishing. Or some confidential files are stolen by the haters.

 

As possible as reducing those risks, in my point of view, following methods could be taken.

 

1.    Each agency should estimate social media tools before using them.

When an agency chooses the media tools should consider potential risks and selected the safest one to make sure to lower the risks.

2.    Agencies must manage the creation of and access to official social media accounts.

Accurate visitor information would vastly protect the safety of government web environment. Every users must register personal details then be authorized by the related agency to make sure that the police unit could monitor and control every user.

3.    Internal internet should be limited, employees can just access internal website.

Like many governments, Queensland government should create unique internal web 2.0 tools to separate work environment form outside. Employees should not be able to access personal social medias during the work time.

4.    Censorship should be build to control the communication contents (internal).

Either the feedback from the public or the contents during internals should controlled and managed. All the threatened information should be collected and tracked.

 

Enterprise 2.0, Benefits and Risks

Enterprise 2.0 as a new technique are widely used on business in recent years. This new technique could be regarded as an revolution of communication. Many companies use social media tools to share, collaborate, and organize information instead of relaying on traditional styles. Employees exchange and provide their point of view through wiki, blog, instant messaging rather than send or receive emails. Information could be transmitted through an expeditious style. Hence, Enterprise 2.0 rapidly developed into the most popular techniques as the wide used of web 2.0 tools. The appearance of Enterprise 2.0 brings arrange of benefits. In this post, two type of benefits will be mentioned in following.

 

Productivity and Efficiency

Enterprise 2.0 can effectively  help companies to organize their large amount under dealing tasks transmitted through their employees. Such as topics, attachments from the emails are difficult to be collect  and managed by employees. while,with the assistant of Enterprise 2.0, using blogs and wiki to bridge the emails and portal to solve those inefficiency and improve productivity.  Wikis provide an platform for staffs to communicate, change information, share views freely. As well as Wikis, Blogs well bridge the email and portal, and provide a accessible, organized and time ordered platform for communication and collaboration. For example, UK’s National Health Service (NHS) Orkney branch has an success experience on using Enterprise 2.0 for their internal communication. They divided their blog’s front page into Clinical, Organization, Classified and Personals, and Recent news and Information. They post sources to all staffs in different department within NHS, and each department could find out related important notices for them in their own sections. Also, staffs could find some technical information with is posted on the blogs to support them deal with trough tasks. Wikis also be used in NHS, they edit it over time to keep it up to date, so that staffs would share their views and techniques. As consequences, through using enterprise 2.0, staffs extensively save time and improve efficiency, thereby NHS increase their productivity.

Many facts prove that Enterprise 2.0 brings huge amount of benefits to now days business activities. While, from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, old techniques always are take placed by the new one. By the scientific development, any technique would expose their shortcomings. Hence, Enterprise 2.0 is not an exception, and some risks may be raised by it.

Risks

• Security risks-such as cybercrime, and the leak of personal and company information.
• Risk of losing of control-“Internal collaboration through wikis, social networks and other Web 2.0 tools is horizontal by nature, drawing on the expertise of the networked many, rather than on teams of few experts.”(Wattize, 2011, 12). The information would be no long control.
• Risk of reduce staff productivity-Staffs may use social tools deal with things unrelated to works.
• Risk of inaccurate information-socail tools are easily to be used to looking for methods shared by others, so that many staff may follow others methods without searching authoritative sources.

references

Arnaud, Wattize. 2011. “An Evaluation of Critical Success Factors to implement Enterprise 2.0 solutions within Belgain Organization” . Accessed 23 August, 2011.

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/55463984/An-Evaluation-of-the-Critical-Success-Factors-to-Implement-Enterprise-2-0-Solutions-Within-Belgian-Organizations.

Bill, Ives. 2007. “Enterprise Blog and Wiki Success Story from Traction Software-UK’s NAtional Health Service( NHS) Orkney”. Accessed 23 August, 2011.

http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2007/08/14/enterprise-blog-and-wiki-success-story-from-traction-software-uk’s-national-health-service-nhs-orkney/.