Mojaic - Web Design (psd file available)

cp.
Since we were done with the phase of planning, we started designing the User Interface of the applications which compose our project. It is true we stuck a bit, until chosing the final design. The templates which were designed, but never used are the following:

* Please click on the pictures to enlarge. *

1. Wooden Game Bar
This is the first attempt a game-like concept. It is customizable as well, since we could provide 2-3 themes, for example, one with a wooden bar (shown) one with an inox bar, one with a paper-like bar. A suitalble background would be contained in the theme with each bar.

2. Papers on the floor
Another attempt later was designing something realistic, some papers and a pen maybe. So we came up with the following design. The disadvantage here, is that if we implemented this template it wouldn't be easily customizable.

3. Papers on Lizards
This is an evolution of the previous attempt, "Papers on the floor", so it inherits its lack of the ability for customization, a mandatory feature according to Mr. Martin. The "post-it"s menu though looks really sweet in my (humble) opinion =)

4. We all love Apple
..don't we? This is a minimalistic design which was later on followed on our final design. The glossy menu bar and the pallete are the same.

5. The design, shown in our final presentation, is available in .psd format here:

final design psd

 Layers are grouped in folders named appropriately, so it shouldn't be hard to find the page you like. Enjoy.

Identity Project aka Mojaic - Definition

Mojaic
Firstly we (Victor and me) managed to find a proper name for both the creature, which is a key entity of the project, and the project itself. The creature is now called Mojo, as its kind of the display of someone's skills or charm to the others, and the project is called Mojaic, since the more artworks the user uploads the more the picture of his/her creative identity, as a mosaic reveals.

Planning
We also considered that the Definition of the project is critical and chose to spend more time at that stage. The better the planning, the easier the user intefrace design and the technical implementation which will follow will be. To visualize all our thoughts on the project we created some mind maps in which we tried to cover every last detail of the it if possible.

The concept
The following mind map visualizes the whole concept of Mojaic by showing its major entities and the features  related to them (click to enlarge):

First time user 
Starting from the user, he/she firstly registers as a new user with his/her personal data, which will be used only for authentication and won't be shown in the community. The user afterwards creates a new Mojo and customizes it according to his or her taste. Once the Mojo is created, the user starts "feeding" it by uploading artworks. The activity in the user's account is at the largest part (explained in detail later) responsible for the Mojo's well-being.

Tribes
By the time the user gets familiar, the Mojo is ready to join either an existing tribe or a brand-new one, that its owner created, by defining the tribe's name and the logo. Once the Mojo becomes the member of a tribe, its user is able to send invitations to friends of his or her suggesting them to bring their Mojos at the same tribe. After a discussion with Mr. Martin today, we thought that a Mojo should be able to belong to multiple tribes, as this reflects all the different dimensions the (creative) identity of a person has; ex. a Mojo that belongs to the "Designers' Tribe" and at the "Pop Artists' Tribe" shows that its owner is a designer who is a fan of the Pop Art movement.

Voting
When the user is an active member of the community, who is constantly uploading artworks, he or she has the choice of exposing some of his or her artworks for voting. If the over vote the artworks recieved is equal or greater than 4 out of 5 stars the user will gain "Bling-Bling"s for his or her Mojo, like capes, hats etc.


Mojo as a member of a tribe

Ranking

The ranking of each Mojo will is calculated by that way:

user's_points = 0.8 * artworks_uploaded + 0.2 * votes_recieved

and it's showed in its profile page. As a member of a tribe, a Mojo contributes firstly by being active as an individual (its user has a freaquently updated portfolio). That's reasonable if we take into consideration that the ranking of a tribe is the sum of its members' rankings. The other way a Mojo contributes to its tribe is by taking part into Missions.

Missions
In Mojaic there will be Missions for the tribes. Each mission will have a level of difficulty ranked from 1 to 5 and each tribe will be able to try accomplishing any mission it likes. The missions will be like "Gain more than 10,000 points in 3 days." or "Gain more than 5,000 points coming from video content." or they could even be competitive between tribes like "Be the first tribe which achieves 10,000 points starting at dd/mm/yyyy at 1030". The tribe which wants to try accomplishing a mission, will have to submit its participation, as well as each Mojo will have to submit in which Missions, its tribe is taking part, it's participating.

Tribe Leader
Each Mojo which is not active as a member of a tribe, will be expelled, while the Mojo with the highest ratio of participation considering the development of the tribe will be the Tribe Leader. The tribe leader is a key Mojo for the tribe, since it makes all the desicions regarding which Mojos will accepted in the tribe, which will be expelled as well as in which missions the tribe is going to participate.

The external device
This will be a stylish gadget, something that we'll be able to wear, as a bracelet for example, or a key ring. We weren't able yet to completely define what it will be. The external device will have a display which will show the logos of the tribes the Mojo of the owner belongs to, along with the Mojos ranking. Also, if the Mojo is a Tribe Leader a special notification will appear.

Applications and their features
In the following mind map we tried to define in bullets the features the applications which consist Mojaic will provide (click to enlarge):

The parts of Mojaic

Most of those features have already been mentioned above so we'll focus at the additions. Firstly, it's clear that Mojaic will be consisted by a web application, an iPhone application and an optional external gadget. Regarding the Community Website which will be the web application, the user has all the options, whatever Mojaic has to offer, the user can have it, while the iPhone application will provide a subgroup of the Community Website's features, subtrackting only options that could damage irreversibly the account of a user. That's because an iPhone, as a mobile device, is exposed to others except its owner much more than any other device.


Additions


Work and Leisure
One of the additions we made while working on the second mind map, was to subcategorize the portfolio of a user to Formal (Work) and Informal (Leisure), so the user will be able to upload fun stuff or some draft sketches which won't be shown at his or her formal portfolio, but are still an expression of his or her creativity.

Contact exchange
The personal details defined at the step of registration could be revealed on demand of the user. Taking into consideration that Mojaic is a place to share our portfolio, it would be reasonable job-offers to take place, so every member of the community has the option to show his or her contact details to another user.

Technologies in use
According to the needs of Mojaic which were clear by the project's design, we thought of the technologies which will be used in the Implementation of the project and will serve its needs better than any other technology (click to enlarge):

The hardware required for Mojaic is just one PC (OS: Windows Server), which will host the Community Website. Both the iPhone and the external device are optional. Regarding the software, the website will be an ASP.NET application, the iPhone application will be an Xcode application, while the external device will probably use a C++ application running on Windows Embeded. The functionality of the external device, is still to be defined.

The storage
Since the concept of Mojaic is "Feed you Mojo as much as possible" the management of the data was an issue. To avoid that, we thought of using already existing services for showing a) video, b) images. Each artwork will belong in one of these 2 formats, so if we find a "place" to store videos and pictures we have found the solution. Thus for the videos, the youTube website will be used, while for images we will use either Flickr of Photobucket. Regarding youTube, we thought of taking into consideration the votes each artwork recieves by youTube users, when calculating the rating of the Mojo, by using youTube's API.

The communication
The way the several applications will be able to exhange data each other is shown in the following diagram:

The ASP.NET application will provide web services of a predifined protocol, which the iPhone application will use properly to get or send data from and to the Community Website. The external device will be able to connect with the iPhone alone, via bluetooth.

To-do list
A sum of the issues we have to solve before moving forward to the design of the User Interface.

1. the functionality  and the physical part of the external device
2. Add a Scribbler to the applications so the user can create an artwork in Mojaic
3. Define which is the Mojaic's user group, to take it into consideration and modify the design of the project.

Identity Project - Thread of thought thus far

The first project was assigned to us a week ago and its main concept was the design of a networked device that promotes and protects its users identity. Victor and me, formed a team and the main concept of our idea is the Tamagotchi game device. In a discussion on our idea, Mr. Martin, mentioned some ways to link the identity of a person with the Tamagotchi game. For example, the pet's well-being will depend on the level the user communicates with his friends (based on his or her Facebook activity).

Promotion of the identity

Today, we discussed with Mr. Jared and he gave us food for thought talking about the creative identity each (creative) person has. From that, we came up with the idea of a device that will promote our creative identity by showing its user's portfolio. Combining this idea, with the Tamagotchi concept, we got as a result a device in which a creature will "live" and its well-being will depend on the porfolio of the user. The portfolio will also be presented by the device.

Networked solution

According to the project brief, the device should be networked, so we chose that the portfolio of every user will be online in a website specialized for the community of our device's users. Moreover, choosing quality over quantity we introduced voting of every user's artwork, so now the creature's well-being will be based on the votes its master's artworks receive.

Protection of the identity

The identity of a potential user is highly protected, as every new user will create a profile for his or her creature not a personal one. Also, the device along with the creature will have to be registered so the owner of the device alone, will be able to alter the creature's profile.

Tribes

Each creature will also have an area of expertise, so for example an animator, will set his or her creature's occupation as Animator, declaring that his or her portfolio will contain mainly animation artworks. The users will also be able to form groups (tribes). In the community website, the highest ranked tribes, as well as the highest ranked creatures will be shown.

Implementation

Device?

Thinking about the implementation, we firstly thought of a small easy-to-carry device, which connects wirelessly with an iPhone. We chose the iPhone because it would be almost unachievable to create a device, which will be able to connect and co-operate satisfyingly with any cell phone or media player device. The main reason for chosing the iPhone though, is that it has a large screen along with a high quality display and a good processor, able to present any possible artwork which is in digital form.

The device would contain our portfolio and would notify us, lighting a LED, or by vibration, in every update of our creature's status in the community (ex. a new vote for an artwork of the user), or an update about the tribe the creature belongs to.

iPhone application

Working and optimizing the concept of our project, we found out that the device was useless, as an iPhone application alone, could do the job too, even more effectively, offering the user the privilege of not carrying an extra device, apart from his or her iPhone. Thus, the first half of the project is the iPhone application with which each user will be able to:

1. Watch his or her creature status, as well as the status and the activity of the tribe it belongs.
2. Watch and browse the artwork submitted by him or her, in an attractive and elegant User Interface.

The features stated above will be the core of the iPhone application and we are currently working on adding more.

Community website

The second half of the project is the community website in which every user of our software will be able to:

1. Add, remove and modify his or her artworks.
2. Watch his or her creature's status.
3. Create a tribe, or join an existing one by contacting other users.
4. Browse the portfolios of others' and vote for the artworks he or she likes.

More features are to be added in the website too.

We are going to work on the storyboard now and in the process we hope to define in better detail the properties of our project.