My project was about designing an experience including interaction and interface for the social news networking application on web - www.socialmedian.com; to have discussions with the project manager and development team about the user experience, and make design alternatives based on the same.
Socialmedian is a social news network that connects people with personalized news and information. To solve the problem related to the area of concern, collaborative filtering was done to help people with similar interests and identify/discover what to read/view. The notion was that there are a set of people who can help other people discover what matters, from any number of sources on any topic. On Socialmedian, a group of people who share an interest in a common topic or a set of related topics form a ‘News Network’ and can collectively discover and identify each other’s relevant stories.
In the development of ‘Socialmedian,’ the Dynamic System Development Method was followed till the ‘Beta release’ i.e. actual opening up of the web application to the public. After that ‘Feature Driven Development’ process was followed for adding more features to the application. The web application was launched and set live on the web. About 9000 users use this application. My role as a User Experience Designer was of key importance in the overall development of the application. The news and reviews posted on it by users can be further used to empower users by making them aware of current affairs, give them a chance to meaningfully interpret news, to create and collaborate it, and to communicate with members.
This project lent me the understanding of Web 2.0, possible interactions through Java, and AJAX and adapting to the rapidly changing interaction patterns and User Interface (UI) styles in the web applications overall.
