Author Archives: Miroslaw Jaroszak

Project Process

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This portfolio is a result of following certain process methodologies. As with more traditional approach, the team roles were clearly defined and most of the tasks were allocated at the start of the project. A project plan with milestones was also prepared.

The processes of developing the portfolio and designing our social network have had several elements of prototyping, one of the popular prescriptive (traditional) methods:

  • Going through multiple iterations in order to provide finished work
  • Discovering new stakeholder’s requirements with each iteration
  • Response to feedback from our mentor, who acted effectively as our Client
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The Prototyping Paradigm (Pressman, R.S., 2010)

However, we have also incorporated some strong agile components to it, such as:

  • Frequent and regular meetings as a group (on weekly basis) plus extra meetings in subgroups (e.g. graphic designers) as appropriate but also informal Facebook conversations
  • Regular meetings with our mentor
  • Spare meeting times used for brainstorming and free circulation of ideas
  • Balancing workload, requirements and product features in order to meet the deadlines
  • Role flexibility: while everyone had their role assigned, team members were able to support each other in areas outside their core responsibilities

References

  1. Pressman, R.S., 2010. Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach 7th ed., London: McGraw-Hill.

Let’s Get Rid of All That Noise

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bcp-its-gianna-bitch-whats-the-proper-way-to-use-socia-media-during-moments-of-great-upheaval-idek-20141212Everybody using any of the large social network services has probably experienced the following problem on many occasions: browsing tons of posts filled in with “funny” cat memes, short videos of “hilarious” fails and other social media garbage just to read one or two really interesting posts written in your friend’s own words and view that one photo from their last week’s wedding.

Social network noise is becoming a phenomenon that drags many users towards niche services. In fact, there is a strong trend towards filtering the content circulating within social networks.

Here are two articles published this year:

  1. Jynx: A social network that nixes everyone you disagree with written by Anthony Domanico refers to a fictional social network envisioned by comedians. While in the real world no one wants to go as far as to create a network only for those who we totally agree with on everything (we’d probably end up having many 1-member social networks), the issue pointed out is clear: we need more personalised and accurate content.
  2. Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network by Natasha Loams is in turn an article about the real attempt to create a garbage-free social network called Nattch. Its members are encouraged to post only the content that’s directly related to their life. It is more a good practice that Nattch members shall not post any random stuff. However, this is not a form of censorship but rather the community rule to keep the user input high quality and relevant.

Small.World is built with simplicity and relevance in mind from the start so it follows this trend in a way, making it an outstanding experience comparing to major social networks. It allows members to share only content that’s relevant to them, their friends and the places they are, i.e. only the photos taken and videos recorded right on their devices, no more random YouTube videos.

References

  1. Domanico, A., 2015. Jynx: A Social Network that Nixes Everyone You Disagree with. CBS Interactive Inc. Available at: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/jynx-is-a-social-network-that-removes-everyone-you-disagree-with/ [Accessed April 22, 2015].
  2. Lomas, N., 2015. Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network. AOL Inc. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/11/nattch/ [Accessed April 27, 2015].

Location Determining via SMS

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Imagine two still not so unusual situations:

  1. Your friend on Small.World has our mobile app open and wants to contact you but has no Internet access for the time being. You may be in the same position.
  2. Your friend has the app open but no Internet access.  They want to know where you are at the moment. Luckily, you do have web connection and they have offline maps. But again, what about your exact location they need to know right now?

Well, Small.World has a solution for such cases: the good old Short Message Service (SMS) protocol. Sending text messages is built in Small.World (subject to network provider fees) so you don’t have to leave our app, go to your phonebook and find the right person in order to send a text. You just send straight from our app.Below we show how it works from the technical viewpoint:

SMS Scheme

SMS can also be used to share your location with someone who’s offline at the moment. In Small.World you can choose an option to share your location via text. This will send an SMS with geocoordinates to your friend. And those long decimal numbers will be automatically converted by Small.World into a map location.

SMS Map

References

  1. Brown, J., Shipman, B. & Vetter, R., 2007. SMS: The Short Message Service. Computer, 40(12).
  2. Jensen, K., 2011. How to Send Text Messages with PHP. Envato Pty Ltd. Available at: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-send-text-messages-with-php–net-17693 [Accessed April 27, 2015].

It’s more than Facebook – Online Social Networks with Interesting Features

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Over the last few years the online world has been dominated by few large social networks whereas there are many more – some targeted at specific communities or completely niche but with unique features. Here, we picked 8 Online Social Networks, both those commonly known and those less popular, but all with some interesting functionalities that could be incorporated into our Small.World project:

about_me About.me – an online identities platform features:

  • One-page user profiles with short biographies, linked to all other social networks associated with the member.

While About.me works more like a personal website, Small.World takes an advantage of using Facebook & Google+ accounts but it’s a fully operating social network itself.

asmallworld AsmallWorld – an exclusive travel and social club network, based on small worlds concept. A slight coincidence with our project’s name…

  • Personalised travel advice.
  • Members-exclusive events.
  • Membership on recommendation only, capped at 250,000 users.

Our service also uses travel advice but it will always be given by your trustees. And the membership is not exclusive at all.

coachsurfing Couchsurfing – a hospitality exchange social network.

  • Private hosts met travellers.
  • Strongly based on recommendation.
  • More than trust – in the past there was a credit card and address verification.

A question of trust is taken very seriously by Small.World. Our members recommend places but more importantly they recommend people.

diaspora Diaspora – a general purpose, distributed social networking service.

  • Decentralised (data stored on local servers).
  • Members can add different aspects of their lives and share certain posts/events/etc. only with people associated with certain aspect (e.g.. job-related posts/events with colleagues

Just like in Diaspora, in Small.World posts are contextual. The main difference is that the context is always geographical, i.e. related to the particular location. 

fotki Fotki – a large media sharing social networking website.

  • Highly customisable layout (skins and manually changed colours).
  • RSS feeds.

Small.World does use feeds but they are only feeds from your friends or mutual friends of yours. Small.World aims for simplicity and consistency. Users can choose from several colour themes but nothing more as cross-compatibility is the priority.

foursquare Foursquare – a search and discovery service for mobile devices.

  • Short tips on locations.
  • Search locations in surrounding area by tastes. ‘Tastes’ serve as  attributes e.g. for restaurants this would display the ones that are good for karaoke, ice cream, steaks or so. Time of the day would trigger different results, e.g. restaurants serving breakfast in the morning.

Using the similar concept, both tips and “tastes” in Small.World are fuelled by your friends only. We believe that the community can provide you with the best tips, recommendations and other information you need. 

glympse Glympse – a mobile platform for tracking people to meet up with.

  • Real time friends tracking with detailed information.

Glympse is technically not a full-blown social network. Small.World has similar friend tracking built-in as a part of a comprehensive service. Our tracking gives you only the information you need. And it’s more secure – you can track groups of users but they will always be people you really know.

linkedin LinkedIn – popular professional, business-oriented network.

  • Members can see the degree to which they are connected to each other, with common characteristics such as location, skills or school.
  • Members can see who viewed their profile.

LinkedIn shows interrelations in the sidebar panel. Small.World goes beyond that and displays them right in your friend’s profile and points to everything you have in common.

All the web services described above have some great interesting features but it’s only Small.World that combines some of those ideas using fine-tuned solutions and provides a great integrated user experience.

System Requirements

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In order to determine what is needed from our online social network, we conducted requirements gathering and elicitation which are the vital parts of every software analysis process. The requirements usually refer to what software does (functional) and what are its qualities (non-functional). They usually have their unique IDs, are prioritised and in more detailed approach – have appropriate metrics.

Two tables below present some of the functional and non-functional requirements for Small World. Each one is assigned a priority level indicated by colour scheme.

Selected System Requirements

For full and detailed requirements list, refer to the Full Requirements Document.

Background reading

Pressman, R. (2010). Software engineering. Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill.

Sommerville, l. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. London: Pearson Education.