IS480 Team wiki: 2011T2 Imateam Project Overview
"The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up"
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Description | Motivation | Deliverables | Usability Studies | Scope | X-Factor | Development Environment |
Contents
Project Description
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Our team will be building a web social platform that enables attendees of conferences organized by IMAPAC to interact with each other before, during and after the conference. This social platform will allow them to post and receive conference updates, engage in discussions, network with industry partners and arrange meetings. The platform will be built using a content management system written in PHP such as Drupal. Data analysis can be applied to the information gathered by the system to aid our sponsor in their business decision-making process.
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Motivation
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Attendees of IMAPAC business conferences vary widely, from governments to NGOs, businesses and academics. They currently do not have a platform that allows their attendees to communicate efficiently with each other. Extra time spent on handling pre-conference logistics issues such as scheduling of meetings, searching for contact information, arranging meeting locations etc. could be better spent on trying to create an even bigger impact for the social causes they are advocating. During the conferences, due to the large number of people present at the venues, it is near impossible for all attendees, speakers and organizers to meet, mingle and interact with each other. Exchanging of business cards has to be done manually face-to-face and these cards might be misplaced later. Hence, if there was a better and more convenient way to exchange contacts, it will greatly improve networking at the conferences. Finally, we also believe that if organizations have an improved post-conference communication channel, they will be able to build a closer link to one another that further nurtures the social enterprise spirit within. Hence, our proposed web platform can potentially eradicate the above problems by meeting targeted user needs while being user friendly and interactive. We will achieve this by applying heuristics used in usability studies to the user interface design. The platform will be interactive because we will consider all aspects of each group of users’ needs (Admin, attendee, speaker, organizer) and enable them to engage one another pre, during and post-conferences.
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Project Deliverables
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Overview: User OrientedWeb platform:
Admin OrientedWeb platform:
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Project Usability
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Our team aims to develop a user friendly and intuitive platform for our users. Hence, usability studies play a big part of our development process as they allow us to assess user requirements and find out what works best for them. Usability studies will be conducted in two forms: heuristic evaluations and UAT. Heuristic evaluations will be based on Nielsen's ten usability heuristics, which are ten general principles for user interface design.
1 = Cosmetic problem only: need not be fixed unless extra time is available on project | |
Project Scope
We will utilize an open-source content management system written in PHP, Drupal, to develop our web application on. We chose Drupal because it is highly customizable, scalable and flexible in terms of UI design, functionalities and access control.
Project Functionalities - User (Attendee, Speaker, Sponsor, Organizer) | ||||
Functionality | Description | |||
Web Platform |
Profile of attendees |
Users can sign up for their accounts and set up information such as bio, interests and conference-related history details. | ||
Real time feedback |
Allow attendees to provide real time feedback to speakers and fellow attendees during conferences in the form of live polls and comments. | |||
Friend system |
Anyone with an account on the social platform can add another to his network via the Friend system. | |||
Conference/event details |
Provide attendees and speakers with conference information such as detailed location, time, date, attending list, topics covered etc. | |||
Networking opportunities |
Enable users to connect with potential business partners by exchanging virtual business cards. | |||
Make a Child smile |
Allow conference attendees to read some stories about the sponsored children helped by the efforts of IMAPAC and B1G1 thus far. This page will also have a link so that site members can choose to make a donation if they wish to. | |||
Private messaging system |
Enable users to send private messages to each other. There will be a setting to make it public or friends-only. | |||
Post-conference rating and evaluation |
Enable conference attendees to complete their post-conference evaluation for the conference and its speakers. | |||
Live note-taking function |
Allow attendees to take notes live during a conference which they can choose to save, send to email or share (public/friends only). | |||
Search |
Search for other users according to name, interests and keywords. | |||
Discussion Forum |
Forums for pre and post conference discussion. |
Project Functionalities - Administrator | ||||
Functionality | Description | |||
Web Platform |
User registration |
Import .CSV files of all newly registered users into Drupal by Admin to create the accounts | ||
Profile of attendees |
Admin can create, edit and delete profile information of all users (attendees, speaker, sponsors) | |||
Conference/event details |
Create, edit and delete conference data with uploading of files as conference resources | |||
Live note-taking function |
Manage notes taken by users at conferences | |||
Real time feedback |
Able to create polls and vote on polls during conferences | |||
Post-conference rating and evaluation |
Create rating/evaluation forms for attendees, view and collate responses |
Project X Factor
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Our system will be deployed in March for India Conference
Unique features of IMAPAC Connect include:
Click to see how Connet is different from other similar conference web application | |
Development Environment
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Server The specification of our production server is:
Our sponsors have been informed of possible changes in capacity requirements and the server can be upgraded accordingly as we are on a monthly subscription. Server status:
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