Young Designers 2011

		Young Designers 2011
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Ruchika Sarda | ruchikasarda.nid@gmail.com

Social Networking Services Client for Hand-held Devices

New Media Design | PGDPD
Guide: Rupesh Vyas
Sponsor: Huawei Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru

Keywords
Social Networking Services (SNS)
Hand-held Device Application
Interaction Design, Android OS
User Experience Design

For my diploma project, I had to understand and implement the integration of social networking services (SNS) into hand-held devices. The project aimed to study the development of SNS in hand-held devices and their effectiveness in the market. It involved integrating SNS in a smartphone’s basic features such as contacts, messages and so on and also linking them to an already embedded SNS client on the phone.

The project involved the study of SNS, the platform Android, the different applications related to SNS on the Android Operating System (OS) and their evolution. I also researched on how today's smart phones are integrating SNS and what can be done further in the same domain. A contextual enquiry as well as an online survey was conducted among target users in the age group of 18-35 years.

A few concepts with respect to location-based service, music and their relation with SNS were then deduced and further observations were derived from brainstorming, brain-mapping and evaluating existing systems. The insights obtained from the data thus collected helped build up the concept, task analysis and user interface (UI) framework of the product. The final deliverables were in the form of wireframes and screenshots of the product.

I now realise that every little observation helps in building a product in some way. Screen interactions differ, specific set of OS UI or interactions have to be considered and technical issues are bound by rules, which affect the design and must be incorporated to come up with the best design for a particular brief.