
Multimedia STUDIO 4	MMDS2802

Workflow and Social Networking

In order to move forward in this group project, you will require a good process to proceed.

Social Networking

A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. The term was first coined in 1954 by J. A. Barnes (in: Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish, "Human Relations").

Social networking also refers to a category of Internet applications to help connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking ]

Workflow practices

Workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked. As the dimension of time is considered in Workflow, Workflow considers "throughput" as a distinct measure. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow_management ]

A Selection of Tools

Blojsom

The new blog system we are using - all account were migrated during holidays - remaining content to come soon.
Better than MT ( though that is not hard!)

Comes with added features too - moblogging aggregation, google key word highlighting and so on.

An example I prepared earlier.
http://blojsom.infenv.itee.uq.edu.au/blojsom/blog/uqmatsim/

More on Blojsom below:
To log onto the admin section of your blog and add posts click on post link to view yours - http://blojsom.infenv.itee.uq.edu.au/

Del.icio.us

[ from http://del.licio.us/doc/about ]

» del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

» Once you've registered for the service, you add a simple bookmarklet to your browser (see below). When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.

» You can access your list of links from any web browser. By default, your links are shown to you in reverse chronological order, with those you've added most recently at the top. In addition to viewing by date, you can also view all links in a specific category (you define your own categories as you add the links), or search your links for keywords.

» What makes del.icio.us a social system is its ability to let you see the links that others have collected, as well as showing you who else has bookmarked a specific site. You can also view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists you find interesting.

Here is an example how the del.icio.us bookmarking system works.

Ufeed

Personal aggregater - [ http://www.ufeed.semsym.com/ ]
An example of Ufeed content - [ http://ufeed.semsym.com/feeds/viller/ ]

Through this - Stephen has aggregated all of his blog and delicious posts into one location

Workflow options using social tools

This is an overview of ALL the option available. YOU WOULD NOT USE ALL OF THEM, that would be bad workflow! ( and far too complex, merely for the sake of it).

Instead of doing that - here are some workflows models you may like to adapt.

Option 1
email and web upload > Blojsom + optional delicious aggregation daily

Web entries and direct upload also available
This approach is better for majority text with some supporting images.
- You can facilitate multiple people blogging to your account, or,
you can also aggregate RSS feeds to get a group picture of the story

email and web based local blogging local blogging with del.icio.us daily aggregation

In order to do this you need to activate moblogging on the Blojsom server.
( note: incidently, you can now edit you blog name, template and deployed plugins ).
Instructions for moblogging are available here [ moblog instructions ]

You can also do mobile phone based blogging as well

Option 2
email > flickr - blogger >

Online imagery with limited text. Good if you are on the go allot and want to collate large numbers of images.
(though the Blojsom blogs now facilitate this quite well).

Option 3
Collating numerous feeds
If you have lots of content from a variety of sources you wish to bring together.
Del.icio.us for the online social bookmarks which the whole group can utilise, Blojsom for collating all the local data and images, with tag cloud to check the project space and make sure there is nothing more out there you have missed.

Warning: Be careful when using lots of deposit locations, you can easily get your content disjointed. It then becomes harder for you to collate later and also for us to follow what you are doing as a team.

And of course you are able for formulate your own combination

What your workflow needs to do

In order to make an effective workflow for your group, it needs to consider several key elements:

1. it needs to be able to document your process easily through a variety of mediums
2. it needs to facilitate communicate and collaboration between group members
3. it needs to allow for easy tracking and commenting by staff and peers alike

Remember ultimately you want something that makes it easy for you to add the type of content you wish to provide and easy for you/us to see it in one location.

Input options:
- email as input
- web upload as input
- mms as upload

Options you will need:
Ability to select information
Collate detailed historical data on the project
Edit it at a later date ( annotate, extend)
And to gain feedback

It is up to you to decide what system, of series of tools will give you the best approach.

Whichever workflow you decide to use, the most important parts are things:

1. You need to tell us where and how we can access it
2. Show us that you are collectively collating material
3. And please try to use a system which let us use RSS feeds to check your work

RSS Feeds

I have pulled this content out of the lecture and have created a separate page instead. This can be found at: rss.html

Using RSS makes life allot easier for all of us (staff and group members) to track progress and provide feedback.

Case studies from a community perspective

Chervest, Dix, Fitton and Rouncefield - 'Out to Lunch' Sharing personal context through door displays

Computer Science Department - University of Lancaster.

While there is a strong emphasis on technlogy through this paper, the major points of interest include the process undertaken to create the tools and the consideration of the user needs and feedback as the solution is gradually created. These guys are from an HCI background.

The initial ideas surrounded facilitating co-operation and awareness through community members. 10 of these PDA units where hooked up around the doors of the staff members offices, with anther in the front office for the general staff members.

The initial system included the ability to submit messages locally for the staff member, at their office door.
But user feedback changed this - ability to sms in remotely, to add small sketches, to send messages from one PDA unit to another - as a message service and also a web interface for alternate remote interaction.

Through this gradual building process, the system was highly effective.
When they analyzed the messages which we logged trough the system it was found that (30o msgs reviewed):
31% of messages where location related,
37% temporal,
47% where activity related,
the the remaining combinations of the above.

Cheverst 1

An assortment of images from the 'Out to Lunch' (Hermes) project. 1. PDA screen and content, 2. PDA in housing, 3. the System, 4. The web interface.
[ taken from Cheverst, Dix, Fitton, and Rouncefield, (2003) Out to Lunch: exploring the sharing of personal context through office door displays, in proceedings of OZCHI 2003, Brisbane, Australia - http://www.ozchi2003.itee.uq.edu.au ]

Phillips - Noahs Ark - Interaction Design Workshop

Tools for community enhancement - encouraging interaction with the environment by users in the underground (and train stations in general). Through creating an interactive art display that relates to your context through the train tickets.

Philips garden

The idea was the encourage people to interact with each other through the interactive art and hopefully make the daily grind of visiting the train station more interesting.

Multimedia STUDIO 4

MMDS2802