[Freedombox-discuss] Do we need a UI/UX Expert?
On 12 August 2011 10:40, John Walsh <fiftyfour at waldevin.com> wrote:
> Hi Everybody,
> There are a lot of smart people within the project and they have years of
> experience of using software and social networking sites. The thing that
> appealed to me about this project was that a) you get hardware like a
> consumer appliance b) you use existing software. I FreedomBox?should be
> developed to the current best standards, but doing so with a privacy first
> context.
>
> I would imagine the FBX will had a web front-end and?prefer the more
> Facebook/Plaxo Corporate Cool UI. I have seen many social networking sites
> that have added bling which looks cool initially but becomes jagged quite
> quickly, forcing the sites in a never-ending bling upgrade cycle. IMHO, FBX
> should keep?the UI?simple, but offer FBX users the option to upgrade their
> web-front end "theme" through CSS etc.
>
> Overtime in the social networking space, I have seen?the following?best
> practises;
>
> Create an "account" with all your personal identifiable and personal
> information.
> Your account home page contains your activity stream which pulls all your
> communications together. IMHO, I think it should be called MyStream - home
> page is such an abused label.
> Create different "profiles" for your different social "circles" to control
> the release of personal information and messages (Plaxo, Friendika,
> Google+?)
> Upload your address book to store as "contacts" (Plaxo, Friendika), which
> can be invited as "guests" (Tonidoplug, general web) based on relationships
> (Plaxo, inventors of portable contacts)
> At the most have two degrees of separation between you and your personal
> information/messages.
> Your "Wall" offers you the options to share your "Status", "Photos",
> "Videos".
> People outside of your Friend of?Friend?network are *public* regardless of
> whether they are on your current network or the public - Facebook removed
> this distinction.
> When you post a message indicate the message's sensitivity/audience e.g.
> Private,?Public (Tonido), although, personally,?I?would like to?expand this
> idea to include?Secret, i.e. please do not forward,
> and?Confidential?i.e.?forward to one more degree of separation only.?There
> is an option in Friendika's Wall that a posting will only be seen by the
> intended recipients and not their friends too. If all social networking
> sites?did this you wouldn't need the messaging service simplifying the UX.
> All social networking sites allow you create "groups" for people outside
> your usual social circle "members". These groups can be private, like an IRC
> room, moderated or public.
> The social networking home page lists all public posts?as the "public
> stream" (twitter, identi.ca, wordpress.com)
> Each account holder can "follows" public posts and have "followers" of their
> public posts
>
>
> In the bullet points above, the?labels "account", "profiles", "contacts",
> "guests", "wall", "status" "photos" and "videos", "groups", "members",
> "followers" and "follows"??create well known mental models, i.e.?everybody
> knows what UX sits behind those labels. As long as FBX uses these will known
> labels and?when we do absolutely need to introduce our own labels use words
> with well-known concepts behind them, e.g. secret and confidential ;), then
> we should be fine. In the list above, I included Googles "circles" because I
> assume that label offers better privacy than Facebooks "lists" and FBX is
> privacy first.
Sounds like an awesome feature set and I would love to see something like this.
However even to create a Facebook clone is estimated at 500 man years of work.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/fyi-google-facebook%E2%80%99s-former-cto-says-it-would-take-two-years-for-250-people-to-build-a-clone/
Also bear in mind that many people on this project are part time volunteers.
I think the beta of elgg 1.8 comes somewhere near the feature set you mention:
http://elgg.org/
That said there's a hell of a lot you can do with a plain old apache
web server and a set of like minded peers.
>
> One of my pet peeves of the software industry is their need to jargonise
> everything which twitter seems to have turned into a way of life with its
> tweet (websms), RT (forward), follow (subscriptions), followers
> (subscribers) :p
>
> Writing this has led to ideas about the differences between real world
> identities and online identities that FBX needs to consider, but I need to
> think through a few more things before I post those ideas.
>
> What problems still exist in social networking that we need a UX expert?
> What do people think?
>
> -- fiftyfour
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
>
Reply to: