Project A Rational
Take an existing website that includes significant user transactions: examples include
online shopping, financial sites, social sites and the like. Diagram the site’s
information flow, with particular attention given to user management - login,
passwords and preferences. Critique the way the site handles that flow: how could it
be improved? Compare the site’s approaches with alternatives used by similar sites
and explore why they might have made the decisions they did.
Above is an information flow diagram for the social networking site Facebook. The diagram displays the way a user interacts with Facebook, concentrating on the main features of the sight and the order the user would go by when they logged into Facebook.
Facebook is designed for users to be able navigate around the site easily. When a user logs in, they are faced with their newsfeed which enables them to see the latest updates about their friends, groups and much more. The site is constantly changing in terms of the layout of the website and this has become a problem for some of the users. Groups and petitions were being made asking for the old Facebook layout back because users were finding the new Facebook layout inconvenient, confusing and some even saying that the site was becoming more like MySpace and losing its originality.
Facebook is successful with its approaches because it has incorporated many aspects of other popular social networking sites into one for example the status/mood updates on Facebook are similar to the layout on Twitter and the friends updates that appear on the Facebook newsfeed are similar to what features on the homepage of MySpace. Facebook has the advantage of being able to connect with people by searching for their school or major in college, and if you find someone you’d like to meet you can request to become their friend. Also, you can stay updated on what’s happening to your friends and what their status is. You can also send out invitations to your friends if you have an event. whereas MySpace and twitter and most other social networking sites don’t have this.
The reason for Facebook being so successful is due to users easily being able to connect with friends from high school and college, email and chat. No other popular social networking sites have the feature of being able to re-connect with high school or college friends and this is one of the main reasons that the site appeals to an older target audience.
Rationale
Whichever project you choose, you will need to accompany your assignment with a rationale:
this is a 500-1000 word blog post that discusses your process and explains your choices. Your
rationale should:
Demonstrate that you understand the technical processes involved in your production,
and explain the processes you used and why
Demonstrate that you understand the cultural context of your production project – for
example by identifying and discussing related work.
Demonstrate that you have responded to this cultural context in your production work
– which design patterns or conventions have you followed, and why? How is your
project different to other works in the field?
I have chosen to create an information flow diagram for the social networking website ‘Facebook’.
In doing so, I examined the site closely, concentrating on the way a user navigates around the site and what aspects of the site they spend most of their time viewing. I then documented the steps that a user would do in order to navigate around the site:
Home
Newsfeed
Friendship contacts
Profile
Photo
Comments
Status updates
Applications
I then made this into a flow diagram using Photoshop and described what each of the steps are used for. I chose to use the colors blue, black and white because these are the main colors that appear on the Facebook site. My reason for presenting the flow diagram in this way was because this best describes the way a user navigates around Facebook from start to finish and gives an overall view of what each step signifies.
The Facebook flow diagram demonstrates the way a typical user would interact on Facebook. This as opposed to using Flickr, twitter, MySpace and many other popular social networking sites is different in the sense that Facebook is centered around connecting with friends and described by the site ‘TwitTip’
“A social networking Portal; beckoning you not to leave but rather to stick around and communicate within the network”. The information flow diagram is simple and aims at portraying Facebook in the same way however it can be argued that Facebook is otherwise in comparison with other social networks such as Twitter. As TwitTip also states:
“Twitter is simple and feels like Google did in 1998, while Facebook offers a portal-like interface somewhat reminiscent of Yahoo”
The diagram displays that one of Facebook’s features is ‘Photos’. Facebook enables a user to share photos with their friends as well as tag them for the cost of nothing. A site that also centers are around photographs is Flickr. The site allows people to socially interact by creating groups for certain types of photos for the cost of $27.75 per year. Facebook users can also control who can and can’t see their albums.
The information flow diagram is very simply laid out. It is straightforward and enables the viewer to understand the functions of Facebook even if they are not a user. This diagram as opposed to the Flickr user mode http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryce/58299511/l is a lot more simplified whereas the flickr model may appear to be confusing as it is a more complex diagram. The aim of the above flow diagram is to show the main aspects of the Facebook site in order of how a user would navigate around the site and accompany each function with a description of what it is used for.
