Category Archives: Planning

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.

Task Allocation

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The team worked on Small.World utilised the team different backgrounds and skills. the tasks were broken into:

1- system analysis and design: Miro, Muna, Awezan and Jean
2- Economic aspects: Neil
3-Legal aspects: Neil
4- Social aspects: Muna, Miro and Ed
5-Graphic design: Ed and Muna
6-Blog management: Muna, Miro and Jean

Here are some screenshots of the team discussions through Facebook and document management through Google Drive.

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with these organisational tools and a clear plan the work was smooth and enjoyable.

Project Schedule-Gantt Chart

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We made use of Gantt Chart to manage the requirements of the project. Besides we met weekly to assure the progress of the plan. Also, between the weekly meetings we used facebook group to communicate and support each other. Lastly, Google Drive was used for the tasks that was developed by more than one memeber of the team so that they can work on it in parallel. The reason of using the mentioned tools and techniques was the familiarity of the team with them. So that to work on the tasks immediately without wasting time to learn new tools to communicate.

Gantt Chart 2

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.