Concepting; What to keep in mind

This morning we had an extensive lesson about what to keep in mind when drawing up a concept. We got a ton of information from Joke Lunsing, who was kind enough to sacrifice her free day in the week to give us a few pointers. Considering the fact that we have to present our concept to our employer tommorow the timing of this particular class was a good one.

I felt the most important pointers warranted a mention in my blog, so down below you’ll find a selection of important bits of knowledge about what to keep in mind when concepting.

• A concept is a story with meaning that is told in your own unique way;
• Good concepts connects with the visions of the parties involved;
• A clear vision in a concept makes a product recognizable as ‘fitting’ for a employer’s company;
• One should be able to identify themselves with a concept;
• During a concept phase orient yourself in a broad fashion, give ideas a chance before making a final choice. This helps in justifying a choice when asked by your employer;
• When drawing up a concept be sure to look at others, if need be take their strong points, and give it your own touch;
• When presenting a concept to an employer, always ensure to put emphasis on a product’s strong points, nothing is obvious for everyone;
• Give people options, never put things in absolutes when presenting an idea to your employer. Give them a chance to make up their own mind and possibly provide them with alternative solutions;
• Know where you stand, the more certain you are, the stronger an impression your concept will make when presenting it
• Always visualize your concept, everyone sees things differently in their mind;

And finally the eternal rule:

• First impression counts, so make it count.

A very valuable lesson overall, and I’m glad I was able to attend. Feel free to drop other pointers in the comments section, if you feel important ones have been left out.

Freelance #001; Done! (Dutch links ahead)

I was rather surprised when the company where I was active as a trainee contacted me and a fellow student who also had worked there on an educational basis for an freelance assignment there. The people I worked with for over five months were very friendly, and I hold a lot of good memories of the time I spend there. By all accounts it was a good learning experience.

The ISZF is a dutch organization that was created to establish the cooperation between six different government districts, or municipalities. This cooperation, started back in 2004, was one in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The company is using a fiber optic cable network the size of about 65 kilometres to manage all of the data communication between six municipality buildings in one central ICT office.

Six months ago, I spend my time as a trainee there in order to smoothen their communication efforts with the ‘outside world’ and two week ago they contacted me for an freelance assignment. Previous experiences aside, my interest was peeked. It turned out that they’ve been trying to get people for a specific department in their company. However, the solicitors that were attracted by the advert in the provincial newspaper didn’t meet the requirements the needed for the job(s) they offered.

The assignment was to design a simple but effective way to show that their office wasn’t as dull and boring as one might suspect when one hears “Government Cooperation Effort.” There was a little catch, it had to be a done deal within two weeks. A short period of time for the goal that was intended to be reached. Me and my partner, also trainee who had just concluded his time working there, had to throw the initial idea of the company out of the window.

They had wanted to develop a Second Life module to show how their office looked like, and present their open nature about new technologies, the time given made this an impossible venture. Instead, we turned to a more unofficial approach. Evert Mulder and I decided that the best way to show possible solicitors that the people at the ISZF were far from dull was to give people a better insight on who were actually connected with the cooperation effort. Next to this, we would introduce new ways of communication for people who were interested in the company, or the job offer.

This meant the following in short:

• Editing and formating an job offer advert
• Registration at a Network site
• Implement the use of MSN & Skype

The result was that the company received an account at Hyves.nl, a hugely popular networking site much like MySpace.com. Both Skype and MSN were also put to use. The use of instant messaging allowed for an quick way of communicating, providing people with questions a direct answer.

Today we finished the assignment, and both Evert Mulder and I feel that all in all we did a job well done considering the time. Our effort even made it into a news article where my first name got mentioned.

For those interested, you can head to iszf.hyves.nl to take a look at the ‘hyve’ of the company in question.

Introduction; Meet Old Twitch

I like writing, I like it a lot. Unfortunately, writing takes creativity and time. So it often stays with short blurbs about ideas and scenarios that run around in my head. A few weeks ago I had one of those ideas and wrote it down, refined it a little bit and decided it was finished. If there’s one thing I learned about posting things on the web is that you have to decide things are finished at some point, or you won’t finish at all.

The character in question is an old man by the name of “Twitch” which I hope to start roleplaying when the NeverWinter Nights 2 (WARNING: Site has sound, perhaps people are going to learn to turn that off by default in the next ten years…) version of the server I am currently playing at goes life. Truth to be told, he might not be entirely suitable for that purpose, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write a little bit about him. I hope you’ll enjoy reading the short story as much as I did writing.

Easy Catch – Introduction of Old Twitch

Project GP: Concepting

The last two days I and my fellow conspirators have begun working on getting a better picture of the final product that is going to be the result of this project. Sketching possible user interfaces never did quite work for me and seems a skill all by itself to learn. Fortunately I’m not all by myself, and Sjoerd Visser managed to produce a number of ideas on paper while discussions about what to keep in mind were flying all over the place.

The end result was an rough idea of the screens that the user is going to face when he or she decides to register a consult with his or her general practitioner. These screens would roughly be the following:

• Log In
• Calendar
• Messages

Naturally the challenge is to work the basic functions of the webapplication in an interface that results in a neat and simple environment which takes into account the ten or so points that the Heuristic evaluation of Nielsen consists off. We’re not quite there yet, but at least we’re getting something more substantial as the project eases along.

Starting out with Technorati

It seems that Technorati is website that focuses in the claiming of blog domains. After a post by Andreas on his own blog I decided to peak around in it and figured it to be worth a try. After all, why should I worry whether or not people read my entries? It’s not like I’m committing a crime… not to my knowledge anyway.

The principle is rather simple, one cooks up a profile like this one Technorati Profile and then establish that you are indeed the owner of a particular blog. Et voilá, one has claimed and registered a blog at Technorati.

Doubtlessly some people are wondering what the perks are… and truth to be told I got not much of an idea. The general idea is that you are more easily found… and get a better overview from where people are gotten refered to your blog. Besides, as Andreas stated, I got to press the best submit button ever. (RELEASE THE SPIDERS!!)

Project GP: Week Overview

Gaaah! This has been a busy week for me, and it shows in me failing to keep up with posting once a day in this blog. Last week I started my first freelance assignment and it’s been a steady strain on my time. This, combined with the fact that I had to arrange a number of things for a swimming match my swimming club is required to host coming weekend made for a stressful week.

One would almost forget that there is college as well. I think I saw some of my project members cast a wary eye on my person when I announced that I had to go away early… or when I was communicating with my freelance partner in crime Mr. Mulder. Still, I managed to be somewhat productive and at the end of the week I think I can say that we’re finally getting an idea of what the project is going to entail.

In short the following tasks have been performed this week:

• [Mon] Analysis of Competitors
• [Wed] Meeting with employers
• [Thu] Decision made on which module to produce
• [Thu] Drawing up a list of module functions
• [Fri] Informing employers of the decision (approval pending)

One of the major hassles of producing a product that’s actually befitting a client’s wishes is getting a clear idea of what an employer actually wants from you. Three weeks after the general briefing the team finally got a chance to speak with the general practitioners who commissioned the project. It was an enlightening talk in which we were given a very clear idea of what they wanted.

There was a slight complication however, their wishes didn’t exactly meet the “Web 2.0″ criteria our college demands that we produce in the course of this project. We discussed this with our tutor, and came to the conclusion that the best way of approaching this is to find a product that is asked by the employer but which is also meeting the criteria our college asks of us.

The decision was made to start working on a module which allows general practitioners to have their patients digitally make appointments for their consults. Yesterday a list of functions was drawn up and the initial idea was forwarded today towards the general practitioners with whom we’re working.

Pending approval we’ll begin working on the user-interface and show this coming thursday at a presentation that has been scheduled. Plan is to keep my Blog up to date by then, I swear this much reading isn’t good for someone’s brain this late in the week. It is not my intention to make these lengthy entries a common occurance.

Styles of Learning

Each human is unique, or so we’re all told at some point or another when we need to be assured of the fact that we are, in fact, not outcasts of society. Today in class there was mentioning of the difference in ways people learn things. According to a certain person by the name of Kolb mankind has four different personalities when it comes to ways of learning. Them being the following:

• The Dreamer
• The Thinker
• The Decisionmaker
• The Crafter

Me being me, I thought I’d dig up some information about the subject, and lo and behold. I ran into a test where this particular subject was tested. Unfortunately for those individuals who have not mastered the dutch language this particular test can be a challenge since it is in dutch. For those who are able to read dutch, I welcome you all to visit this site.

Those who happen to stumble upon this humble blog entry I would like to encourage to share their views on this particular test and whether or not it was accurate. Personally, I felt that the tag “Thinker” that I received from the test was rather accurate.

Reiterating: Name that Team

Admittedly, I’ve been a bit lax in keeping my blog up to date, as a result I’m stuck reiterating some older news. As some, if not all of you may be know, a group of developers requires a name to work under. “A flag to defend, identify and unite with!” Or so our more patriotic and proud dutch forefathers might say. Unfortunately, a team of college students can be relatively… uh.. uncreative. So in the light of the huge wave of gradient loving 2.0 websites that is heading straight for us we have dubbed our modest developing team:

Both the logo and the hosting are the courtesy of our more graphical talented member of the team Sjoerd Visser. Whose blog you can find here.

It is all connected…

I stumbled across an interesting bit of thought yesterday, it seemed to be a good day of elaborate thinking, and came up with two questions I felt warranted a mention in this blog.

“If the Internet is used as a platform of self expression, is that an indication that the general anonymity which it provides to a user a sign that many people are not feeling comfortable with their living environment?”

and

“Does the increased amount of Web 2.0 applications, Network pages and Social Programs such as Second Life force their users to leave the general anonymity which the Internet provides?”

The idea behind the question is that a lot of people have lives on the Internet under a pseudonym, a life which is entirely disconnected from the “Real World.” With the continued development of Web 2.0 applications who often require personal data and the increased amount of people who use Network sites such as Hyves and MySpace the boundaries between this anonymous Internet life and the life someone leads in the real world grow more entwined with one another.

Anonymity on the Internet is, for the most part, an illusion. Generally it is considered a fact that if someone invests some time and resources to figure out the identity behind an Internet entity they can find out who he or she is. So why do we pull up a smoke screen and adopt a pseudonym rather than use our real name? A false sense of security seems to be the general motivator… which leaves me to wonder.

Why shouldn’t we be proud on who we are, and on the thoughts we have, or the opinions we discuss? Admittedly, I’m a rather politically correct thinker, not prone to breaking any laws and harbouring god knows what kind of ill intentioned plans some might. But with the rise of Blogs, Hyves, Second Life the boundaries are fading away. I’ve been employing the user name “Rogue” for the longest time on the internet, Rogue was a part of me, naturally. But he wasn’t exactly an alter ego that would do much of the same in the real world.

Over the last few months I’ve seen that my alter ego is slowly becoming part of my real life. There seems no real distinction between who I am in the real world and in the internet realm. Though something did change, my way of perceiving both worlds as separate ones turned upside down. I realized that as a person I am one and the same, and probably shouldn’t worry too much under which name I work, because I am not doing anything wrong.

My question to those who care, what do you think of this development in the internet? What are your thoughts to the two questions mentioned above?

Recap: Initial Documentation

Vacation is in full swing, which pleases me although I find that vacation is but a relative term. Therefore I figured I’d do a short recap of what was done last week before proceeding to bore the unfortunate folk who visit this place with other matters.

The last three days of the previous week involved the creation of a number of documents. After a slow start we managed to draw up the schedule with a general outline of the work that has to be done to finish the project. Sadly enough this is just a general schedule, since we haven’t met our employer yet, details are difficult to fill in. The outline enabled us to do a rough risk assessment which involved both the asked product and the project itself.

The fact that we still haven’t spoken to our employer did cause a bit of a problem as we prepared a general description of the actual assignment. Trying to determine what the goals of the actual project are can be complicated when you don’t really know what your employer actually wants. Hopefully this’ll change after the vacation, and will things be cleared up and speed along after the scheduled appointment.