##DECO3500 - Final Document - Social and Mobile Computing

##Team Generic

• 43530429 Scott Gillam
• 43216938 Sah Kilic
• 43543317 Matthew Lord
• 43539150 Cameron McGavin

Due: Sunday, 30th October 2016

#Links

##Promotional Website https://mattyleggy.github.io/index.html

##Prototype NOTE: To use this prototype you should resize your browser to be similar to that of a mobile phone screen or use a mobile phone. This will provide you with a more realistic experience as the prototype has only been designed for mobile devices.

URL: https://mattyleggy.github.io/prototype/index.html

##Promotional Material NACT will be promoted through the use of a kickstarter-style website.

In order to attract users and build a larger community base, the application will also have a great social media presence. Utilising social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will greatly increase our market reach and help target our targeted audience.

##Summary News is often biased, false, misleading or in some cases has malicious intent. It reflects the values of the writer and can be directly influenced by the publishing organisation’s agenda. This creates a landscape for articles that are written with the intention of leading readers to form an opinion, partake in an activity, invest time or money in something completely based on incorrect information. The implications of this range from pushing certain political agendas and spreading misinformation for shock value (higher web traffic), to the misrepresentation/misinterpretation of financial data that could affect an otherwise healthy company/economy. It is these false representations that reduce the credibility of modern journalism, thus providing an opportunity to further explore potential solutions.

Our solution and method for addressing this issue was by prototyping a smartphone based application called Nact. Nact utilises crowd sourced data in the form of a fact based, self moderating, collaborative community. Nact is a platform where this community can come together to modify and moderate news articles, fact check sources and submit evidence to support the truth rather than the story or opinions being pushed by news outlets. This is an effort to remove the spread of misinformation and effectively reduce the negative impact caused by heavily biased articles; regardless of whether they are right or left leaning in nature. Nact provides several options in terms of functionality to distribute these solutions to the community.

Nact’s functionality consists of allowing users to submit news articles, modify articles and vote on changes made. Users vote on whether the changes reflect that of the facts provided and whether the article is neutral. Each iteration of the revised article will be voted on until a green bar showing the neutrality and integrity reaches a certain threshold. This bar changes to green or red depending on what tags the users are marking the article with i.e. clickbait, fact, fear-mongering. It is only when the green bar is at a certain length that the article will be pushed to a verified section. Article verifications are based on the quality and integrity of the modifications. This could be achieved through the emergence of facts with accurate sources, the submission of proof/evidence by users (videos, documents) and more generally, the rewording of articles to remove opinion based evaluations of a topic made by the original author. This modifications can be seen through a version history function that allows the community to accurately see all changes that were made. Through these features, Nact will enable community members to moderate the news to provide factual information that’s free from bias. The images below are screenshots from the Nact application.

###Reliablity Each members of Nact has a score associated with their account. This number represents their reliablity and contribution to the community. The more the member assists in cleaning up the news, the higher their score will be. If the member reaches a high enough score, they will be able to moderate the submissions made by other members. This is both a way of rewarding the user as well as ensuring only highly reliable members are able to approve the modifications to ensure the quality of the news is to a high standard.

Members of the community can comment on each article that is posted however their reliablity rating is not visible and cannot be seen by other users. They can display a name on the comment if they wish however their actual username and profile will be hidden. This is to stop people from assuming highly reliable members are always correct and automatically siding with their opinion. Instead, it attempts to make people read the comments and make their own educated decision.

###Application Screenshots

Screenshot 1 - Home page for Nact, shows all news.

Screenshot 2 - Nact side menu.

Screenshot 3 - Options for a news article.

Screenshot 4 - Specific news article page.

Screenshot 5 - Rating options for a specific article.

Screenshot 6 - Select multiple attributes to rate an article.

Screenshot 7 - Add a comment on an article.

Screenshot 8 - Modify screen, make changes to an article.

Screenshot 9 - Description of changes made.

###Instructions and User Guide for Prototype

1. The home page you are directed to shows all the news articles for the current point in time (visible in screenshot 1)

2. From this home page, you can open the side menu, accessible by clicking the hamburger button in the top left corner. This menu allows you to see your username and user rating, along with links to view all news, or only verified/unverified news (visible in screenshot 2).

3. Clicking the three dots beside any specific news article will open a list of options for the respective article (visible in screenshot 3).

4. Clicking on a news article from the home page will take you to that specific article to read (visible in screenshot 4).

5. You can rate any given news article by clicking the three dots beside the specific article and clicking rate as (visible in screenshot 5).

6. You are able to select multiple ratings at the one time (visible in screenshot 6).

7. Commenting on an article can be accessed by the large green button below the article itself. You will be prompted for your name and comment. Once you have filled in these two fields, click 'Save Comment' (visible in screenshot 7).

8. You can make a modification to any article by selecting Modify in the options list for the respective article. The articles title, image and description will come up in three separate fields. Once you have made your modifications, click 'Save Changes' below (visible in screenshot 8).

9. You are able to view any recent changes made to an article by accessing the articles options list and clicking 'Changes' (visible in screenshot 9).

##The Process

The prototyping process took several steps, in a near agile development process. Throughout the semester the team would all participate in stand-ups which would help with collaboration and discuss what has been completed and what is needed to progress forward with the prototype. Zenhub along with Github were also used throughout the process in order to enhance task allocation and collaboration.

Requirements gathering played an integral part in developing and making changes to the prototypes. Requirements gathering allowed us to identify the needs and desires of those in the market already or looking to enter the market by using Nact. This information and knowledge that was gained allowed Nact to better address the targetted problem and in turn create an application that encourages computer-supported cooperative work which can support multiple groups of people/communities as well as individuals.

The entire process was primarily split up into three stand-ups which were treated as sprints. The sprints followed a practiced development life cycle which included iterative or electronic prototypes along with testing and feedback in order to improve the application. The first of these stand-ups allowed us to conduct research as well as basic wireframe mockups for the prototype. This research was used to understand the problem space, market and user base. Through analysing the existing markets and the users that form the communities within these applications, we were able to understand where NACT could emerge and make an impact on the already existing market. The second stand-up allowed for further progression with the mock-ups into functioning Invision prototypes. User testing was also conducted to receive feedback that was used to guide changes to the functionality, user interface and user experience.

Advertising and promotional material was also a focus throughout this sprint. Advertising was aimed towards a specific audience based on user research which created our target market. Idea generation for the promotional material also took place. The third and final stand-up was treated as the last sprint before the final deadline. Feedback and changes played a major role in this stand-up. A google form was used to retrieve feedback from users that we could use to improve the functionality and design of the website.

An in-depth summary of research, development and testing feedback obtained in each sprint can be found in the following markdown files;

Sprint 1 (week 8 stand-up) : https://github.com/deco3500/generic/blob/master/Week%208%20Standup.md

Sprint 2 (week 10 stand-up) : https://github.com/deco3500/generic/blob/master/Week%2010%20Standup.md

Sprint 3 (week 12 stand-up) : https://github.com/deco3500/generic/blob/master/Week%2012%20Standup.md

##Workload Distribution

The workload was distributed evenly with members of the team taking on tasks each week and working towards each sprint. Main roles for each group member are as follows;

Matthew Lord -- Mockups/Application

Scott Gillam -- Website

Sah Kilic -- Testing/Documentation

Cameron McGavin -- Research/Documentation

A further breakdown of the tasks that each member contributed time to each week can be found below.

Task	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9	Week 10	Week 11	Week 12
General Application Research	Matt, Sah, Scott, Cam		Sah, Cam
Mockups of site/application	Matt, Scott	Matt, Scott	Matt	Matt
Electronic & paper prototyping	Sah, Scott	Sah, Scott	Sah,Matt	Scott, Matt
Content creation / documentation	Scott, Sah		Scott, Sah		Scott, Sah. Cam	Sah, Cam
User testing	Sah, Cam		Sah, Cam		Sah
Market Research	Sah, Cam	Sah, Cam	Cam
Site/app implementation			Matt	Matt, Scott	Matt, Scott	Matt, Scott
Advertising and Promotion Research				Cam	Cam	Scott