- Introduction
- 1.1 Design Brief
- 1.2 Problem Space
- Concept
- 2.1 Idea
- 2.2 Project aims
- 2.3 Audience
- 2.3.1 User Research
- 2.3.2 Target Audience
- 2.3.3 Experience
- 2.3.4 Personas
- 2.4 The difference between ShareTown and other current offerings
- 2.5 Social & mobile theory
- Team
- 3.1 Self Analysis
- 3.2 The Roles and Responsibilities
- Communications
- 4.1 Available Timetable
- 4.2 Social platform and File Storage
- A plan for completion of the project
- 5.1 Project phases
- 5.1.1 Research
- 5.1.2 Requirements
- 5.1.3 Design
- 5.1.4 Construction
- 5.2 Key deliverables for each phase/Milestones
- 5.3 Resources
- 5.1 Project phases
- Tags
- References
- Appendix
Lei Lei Vong | 43733239
Nianqu Sun | 43885062
Yonglin Chen | 44232533
Luke Daniels | 42660150
We have been presented dozens of great ideas within three specific domains and active community is the one that we decide to work on. We are required to develop a social and mobile technology which should be innovative for the purposes of discovering something about the certain problem space. Resources sharing between neighbours is the topic we are interested in so that we decide to develop a unique application - ShareTown.
ShareTown is a social mobile application designed to bridge the communication void that currently exists between 21st century neighbours. ShareTown is specifically for occupants of apartment buildings and similar structures. Our application will not only act as replacement for the out of date cork message board that currently resides in the lobby, but also as a way in which users can send personalised messages directly to specific residents of their building. Examples of ShareTown uses include but are not limited to:
- Resource sharing
- Finding new friends
- Announcement of important dates
The relationship between neighbours changed over the centuries. With the increase of settlements from villages to towns and cities, people became more mobile, and the relationship became alienated. Australian statistics show that just only about 30% people in suburbs consider their neighbours friends and only slightly higher in apartment blocks with around 44% considering their neighbours friends (STEVENS, 2015). According to the result of our online survey, more than half (56%) of the participants do not know any of their neighbours by name. A study of almost 20,000 Australians found that one important component of happiness is knowing the neighbours (Aisha, 2017).
In fact, many people now work over 45 hours a week so that they do not have time to know or even have a conversation with their neighbours. In addition to time, many people claim that they do not want to have further interaction, such as sharing items or information, with their neighbours because they do not know them. It seems like there is an endless loop: no understanding, no interacting, vice versa, unless we can create an opportunity for people to know each other.
As such, our problem space for this project dealt with engaging apartment residents in getting to know neighbours by sharing resources via a social and mobile platform in order to improve the happiness within the community.
ShareTown is a social and mobile platform which could help the people who live in the high population density area, like apartments and units, to share resources with their neighbours in order to boost the neighbourhood relationship. Messages that are posted in ShareTown could only be seen by the authenticated residents within the same building, which would keep them private and safe. ShareTown could also offer the users an opportunity to receive up-to-date community message, make new friends in the neighbourhood, or seek help when needed.
In details, for the elderly or the disabled who may have reduced mobility, ShareTown could ensure them not miss any important community message at home; for the young who are eager to make new friends in the neighbourhood, ShareTown will provide a platform to share their common interests; for the office workers who have to work on every weekday, they can use ShareTown to find a kind neighbour to have a drink after a long day; for the one who may need a favor at home, like changing a bulb, ShareTown will assist them in seeking help from their neighbours.
As the name shows, the primary goal of ShareTown is to help people to share information and items within the community easily in order to make their everyday life more convenient as well as help building a good-neighbourly relationship. Within each apartment, all of the authenticated residents and the building manager will be assigned to one group to post messages into a shared zone. Users could easily see the details of the post they are interested in and then communicate with the author by leaving a message or making a private conversation.
Our team has conducted a survey to examine if ShareTown solves user’s issue and find out the potential requirements (see appendix item 1). There are 18 responses in our survey. From the results, most of them are under 35, so this survey will keep continuing. Still, based on the result of the research, some insights can be found.
The relationship between neighbours in an apartment is icy. The low frequency of coming across each other is one of the reasons for this insight. According to the survey, few of the participate come across their neighbour more than twice a day. Nearly half of them do not come across their neighbour even once a day. In spite of this, the survey shows that 45% of them know at least one neighbour’s name. It implies that if there is a chance, the conversation between neighbours is possible.
People are more willing to share items than information with neighbours. The result shows that there are more than 66.7% people are willing to share items with neighbours, however, only 50% of them are willing to share information. From the feedback of those who say no for either sharing items or sharing information, our team finds the primary reason is that they do not know each other. Knowing each other is an important start for the further communication.
Apartment residents are somewhat miss the announcement of their building. The result of the survey shows that there are only 11% people will never miss any announcement of the apartment. One of the reasons is that they do not check the message board often. Another reason is that they do not check their mail box. Due to the various of reasons, it is highly possible that the apartment resident miss the building announcement.
Those are the insights of the research. The product will be designed around these aspects. The priority of this product is to allow people to know each other first so that other features can be well implemented.
The target user of ShareTown is the apartment-resident who wants / needs to have further communication and interaction with their neighbours. We sort out the typical groups of people based on their requirements.
Apartment manager wants to post an announcement online so that the residents in that apartment can notice it as soon as possible. Compared with a house, an apartment needs more regular maintaining such as daily public area cleaning, facilities repairing and fire alarm testing. Thus, building manager needs to let people know the date of these activities.
The elderly wants to have a product to ask for help to neighbours so that they can solve some small problem. They are one of the typical groups in the apartment. Generally, they are living with their spouse or alone. Because of the age, they may encounter some problems in their daily life such as changing the bulb. Thus, they need a tool to look for help.
A family wants to have an item-shared platform so that they can exchange or share the items with their neighbours. In general, the space of a unit is far less than the space of a house. The limited room does not allow residents to have too many items. Therefore, they need a platform to share something. Besides, they can also use this platform to seek help. For example, if they forget to buy something in the grocery shopping, they can also ask if there is someone willing to help.
Students want to know the events or activities so that they can spend their leisure time. Among the groups of the apartment-resident, student is another typical group, especially the international student. They are new to the city and are curious about everything. They want to get the information in their place and quickly get into the circle. As a result, they need a tool to say hi to the neighbours.
These four kinds of people are the target user of ShareTown. Team Jamjar is going to design a product to facilitate the inclusion in each apartment.
The purpose of ShareTown is to provide apartment residents with a platform to share items and information so that they could have a chance to deeper understand their neighbours. It is also a platform for apartment manager to post announcements.
In order to satisfy and meet users’ requirement, this application must support the following user experiences:
Due to the various of kinds of target users, it is necessary for the product to be simple. First, the layout should be clear and well-organized. Second, the interactivity should be simple. The hierarchy of the functionality cannot more than three. Besides, there should be a clear navigation to tell users where they are and where they could go next. Third, the interface should be metaphorical. Excellent icons can help user understand the functionality.
Because this product focuses on creating an online community in each apartment. The identity of each user should be real and up to date. Each user should be confirmed by the apartment manager. The real user online community can decrease the rise of security and safety.
ShareTown is an ice-breaker application which aims to help apartment residents knowing and understanding their neighbours by resource sharing. Therefore, the experience we want to provide for the users must be friendly. A friendly interface with warm color scheme could create a good mood for the users so that they would be more willing to interact with their neighbours via our product.
Based on the target user, team JamJar develops personas for this project so that the team can always design the product in the right direction. (see appendix item 2)
Using these personas, team JamJar draws the value proposition canvas as shown below (Figure 1).
Figure 1. value proposition cavas
We find some existing websites / applications that also focus on the neighbourhood sharing topic like our project ShareTown does. The difference between ShareTown and these current offerings will be given, as well as the improvement of our concept.
Peerby enables the users to borrow the things they need from people in their neighbourhood. It aims to make sharing easily by saving money, living green and meeting awesome people.
Differences and improvements: after fully exploring the functionalities of Peerby, we find that it does have the strength in item sharing between neighbours. In addition, it allows the user to post the request to invite neighbours to do outdoor exercises together, which is a very effective way to improve neighbourhood relationship. Peerby is one of the best applications in the neighbourhood sharing field, which we could probably learn a lot from. The biggest difference between ShareTown and Peerby is that the users can not only share stuff but also share useful information with their neighbours via ShareTown.
The Streetbank website states "Streetbank is a movement of people who share with their neighbours". The purpose of Streetbank is to boost local communities by encouraging people to get to know their neighbours.
Differences and improvements: Streetbank is similar to Peerby that it allows people to give stuff away or share things with the neighbours. The special feature of Streetbank is skill sharing function that people could share skills like DIY, languages and gardening that neighbours might need help with. The core difference between ShareTown and Streetbank is the target audience: Streetbank focuses on everyone who has a neighbour; while we focus on apartment residents only. Therefore, we could provide more specific functions to meet their needs, like making new friends, receiving community announcements, and seeking help.
Openshed is a website that helps people share with their community to access what they need and help their neighbours.
Differences and improvements: the biggest difference between Openshed and ShareTown is that the users can only exchange items by hiring rather than sharing with their neighbours. Everything has its price on the website. Although the renting fee for the items is quite low, we do not think it is the best way to improve the relationship between neighbours.
Some popular social media designed for communities to communicate, such as Facebook or Twitter, by allowing people share their feelings or opinions about their surroundings. However, these social media have many distractive elements and people’s message has the potential to get lost in the many other notifications. It is not a good platform for people to send or receive the potentially important messages. In addition, these social media allow people to share information in public, no matter to the friends, or stranger (sometimes facebook reveals). It could raise the problems of privacy.
Differences and improvements: ShareTown has potential to solve the problem of important message missing and privacy issues. ShareTown need to authenticate the identities of users when they start using it. People can only share the information to the residents who live in the same apartment. Moreover, the user will only receive the information which is related to their living place. They will not be distracted by other unrelated notifications.
Our concept applied several areas of social & mobile theory which are from social and mobile lectures:
According to the response of our survey, more than 50% of the people rely the bulletin board to receive message in their apartment. In terms of groupware time-space matrix, bulletin board is an asynchronous interaction, which people read the retrieved or posted messages, and provide comments or feedback in the different time and same place. However, from our result, there are 53% of the people always miss or ignore the information in their apartment's message board. It is because that people cannot receive the message timely (different time) and anywhere (same place). Therefore, our concept want to develop a solution which applied asynchronous distributed interaction: receive up-to-date message anytime and anywhere.
Our project aims to improve the communication in neighbourhood community. In other words, we want to improve the way of social interaction between people and their neighbours. Social interaction is an exchange of social actions between two or more individuals or groups in a society. Our project want to improve the social habits in an apartment and develop a new social interaction between people and their neighbours.
The mobility of our concept is not only for people receive and share information more convenient and timely, but also provide different information display based on their location. The message received will be affected by their location, as well as information sharing. It would make people pay more attention on the message which is interested or nearby to them.
Awareness is one of the important areas that we applied in our project. Awareness makes people know who is around, what is happening and who is talking to them. It affects people share knowledge of what they are doing/what information they choose to share. Supporting people’s social awareness can increase people’s motivation on knowing each other. (Naaman, Boase, & La, 2010). Therefore, our project want to increase people’s social awareness through interacting with our application, by sharing, receiving related information in their neighbourhood.
Collaboration is a social relationship that enables people to work with others in order to achieve benefit. According to our survey, when we ask for people: if you encounter a problem, would you like to seek help from your neighbors? some of the results showed that they would find building manager or friends because they feel awkward. Through the use of ShareTown, we want to see how people use our application to connect with their neighbours, and then achieve individual’s or group’s goals.
Shared information space allows people to store massive inter-connected documents and then enables people to search, read and manage the information in shared space (Sharrock & Anderson, 1996). In our application, we provide a similar shared information space to facilitate sharing of information in a group/ an apartment.
Coordination is working as a group to achieve a common goal. There are three coordination mechanisms that people use to coordinate a group of people act or interact together: verbal and non-verbal communication, schedules, rules, and conventions, and shared external representations. The document of bulletin board is one example of the convention. However, people often fail to follow convention that aren’t rigorously enforced and the building manager feel frustrating of it. In our application, we use technologies to support coordination problems with conventions, by using shared information platform.
The strengths and weaknesses of each team member are as follows:
Nianqu: Used to study telecommunication, have basic knowledge on programming (Unity, HTML, CSS, and JS). Now studying Interaction design, good at prototype designing (Sketch, Flinto, Axure), user evaluating, also have limited skills on graphic design (using Adobe Illustrator). Data analysing, video making, and drawing are the main weaknesses of mine. (DECO7350)
Lei Lei: Studied Psychology, good at designing questionnaire, data collecting, data analysing with statistical software such as SPSS and Excel. Studying Interaction Design currently, good at constructing prototype, but not familiar with programming, such as database, Java, hardware and software engineering. (DECO7350)
YongLin: Yonglin’s first degree is industrial design. He is confident in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. While doing the master of interaction design, he learnt the basic computer language such as python and HTML. Besides, he is also good at user testing and human computer interaction.(DECO7350)
Luke: Currently in my 3rd year of a BSc degree. I have experience in Python, php, Java and more recently C/C++. Database knowledge is limited to SQL. When it comes to the front end i have the basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. (DECO3500)
Each of our team members bring valuable knowledge from previous degrees undertaken, however we are all looking to learn during this subject.
Followed by the strengths and weaknesses of each team member in the context of the team project, the organisational chart (Fig. 2). shows the lead and secondary roles of members in the project. We as a team have decided that all decisions can be reached quickly amongst four of us, and whilst we may each be in control of certain aspects, we are all involved in all aspects of the design, build and implementation of our project.
Furthermore, the roles and responsibilities of each team member are arranged clearly with the specific position (Table. 1) . For instance, the responsibilities of integrator are leading the whole project, including to lead the direction of project and to improve the communication between team members; the developer is to lead the design aspects of the project; and the programmer is to lead the programming work of the project. Other aspects of responsibilities that are not mentioned in the table reveal group work, such as building prototype and writing report.
When our team need to make the decision about the process of the project, the team leader will generate and lead the discussion. Each team member will have the opportunities to express his/her opinions in a team and make the decision together. If the decision cannot be determined, we will ask tutors for suggestions and vote for the final result.
The possible poor performance and conflicts that our team might meet is the ability and attitude of team members. If the team member is not familiar with the missions that he/she is required to do, other team members will help him/her to figure out the problem. However, if the team member has bad attitude of the work and communication, our team will talk to course coordinator and find out the solution.
Figure 2. Organisational chart
Table 1. The Role and Responsibility of each team member
Based on the available time from each team member, we generate a available timetable (Table.2) that shows the time distribution of expected workload per team member per week. Apart from our required session (practical, workshop and lecture), we are able to spend more time for extra meeting on Thursday and Friday. Moreover, we will be working on our own responsibilities on Thursday and Friday also, and it might be changed based on the available time from team members.
Table 2. Available Timetable
Communications will take place over google hangouts, facebook, and during both practicals and workshops. This combination allows for a decent amount of face to face communication while still being able to make contact on things that are trivial and can be resolved on facebook. File storage will be held on a Google drive and Github our naming conventions will consist of name of the file which if 2 or more words will be camel humped and finished with a version number.
In order to understand why neighbourhood relationship become alienated, we want to find out more information about neighbour relationship in the literature reviews or research paper:
- neighbours inclusion
- neighbourhood social interaction
- improve neighbours relationship
- neighbour in the apartment community
In addition, our project will investigate the existed and similar application which is designed for the people who live in an apartment, or using social and mobile solution to solve the problem of neighbourhood inclusion.
Research will aim to be completed by the 14th of September.
Requirements Gathering is an essential way to understand the problem and context. In our project, we will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to gather the requirements from the people, including survey, interview and observation.
Our aim of requirements gathering is that we want to know the user’s needs. What information user want to know? What information they interest in? What items they would like to share and what situation they want to seek help from neighbour but are too shy to speak out? In terms of these questions we will use survey and interview to find out what specific functionalities that our application can provide to them.
Requirements will aim to be completed by the 14th of September.
Our project is designing a mobile-based application to help people share information and items within the building / community. During the design process of interface design and interaction design, we shall use Adobe Illustrator to create the basic layouts of each page, and will use prototyping software to create the mock-up of our application, such as Axure, Sketch and Flinto.
Design will aim to be completed by the 11th of October.
Initially we shall use HTML/CSS to create a basic pages layout. This will help us with a base on which to build the code from. After this consideration we will need to use Javascript to create the information announcement as our main functionality. This involves us looking at how to display information up-to-date. The database of user account requires the use of PHP/MySQL, and development of the pattern of data view controller.
Javascript will be required to provide a basic interactive and dynamic user interface, as well as to implement the information display. Additional functionality with JavaScript shall also improve the interactive experience. These functions include the ability to scroll through message boxes, drag photos, edit and comment the post.
For the construction of the application, we will use SourceTree to share our coding (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc) in a group.
Construction will aim to be completed by the 11th of October.
Our project is mainly divided into five major anticipated milestones: (1) Project Proposal; (2) Research, Requirement & Interaction Walkthrough; (3) Design, Construction & User Testing; (4) Final Iteration and (5) Final Design Prototype. For each milestone, the table 3 illustrates the steps which are needed to complete, the assignments of each team member and the resources are needed in the project, including end date and status.
Table 3. milestone 1-5
Our project is designing a mobile-based application to help people share information and items within the building / community. During the design process of interface design and interaction design, we will use prototyping software to create the mock-up of our application, such as Axure, Sketch and Flinto. For the construction of the application, we will use SourceTree to share our coding (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc) in a group.
For the user testing session, our project might need to entry an apartment and get some feedback from the residents with our prototype. We will communicate with the building manager to ensure he/she understands what our project is about, and permit our team entry the building. The participant information sheet and informed consent will be given to the participant. We might need the recording equipment (camera, voice memos) to record the participant’s behaviors and opinion during the user-testing.
Key concepts: Collaboration, Coordination, Awareness, Shared Information Spaces, Groupware Time-Space
Keywords: Active Communities, Information Sharing
Research:
Aisha (2017).The recipe for health and happiness in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 1 September 2017, from http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/the-recipe-for-health-and-happiness-in-australia-20150714-gibwxd
Naaman, M., Boase, J., & Lai, C. H. (2010, February). Is it really about me?: message content in social awareness streams. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 189-192). ACM.
Sharrock, W, and Anderson, B.(1996). ‘Organizational Innovation and the Articulation of the Design Space’, in T.P. Moran and J.M.Carroll (eds.): Design Rationale : Concepts, Techniques, and Use, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 429-451.
Stevens, A. (2015). Why don’t we know our neighbours anymore?. Domain. Retrieved 1 September 2017, from https://www.domain.com.au/news/why-dont-we-know-our-neighbours-anymore-20150727-gijjkx/
Website: Bram, Danny & Joszi. Peerby. Retrieved from: https://www.peerby.com/
Lisa & Duncan. The Open Shed team. Retrieved from: https://www.openshed.com.au/
Sam. (2010). Streetback. Retrieved from: https://www.streetbank.com/
item 1 - User Research Questionnaire
item 2 - persona
