Projects
Neighbourhood: Portal to relevant, cool and useful websites Tuesday, 26 January 2010 @ 22:13Written by JamesH Product Description
• Team Vancouver’s proposed product is an online portal, designed to help our community discover cool and useful websites, relevant to their interests
• The site will be evolutionary in that it will begin and grow organically through the content provided by users
• Users will contribute their favorite and most useful web sites, along with information that helps define both how to categorize the sites and how to define the user’s community
• This information will allow for the development of sorted content (e.g. Business Websites – LinkedIn) that can also be classified by the community who values it
• When the database grows large enough, users will be able to select community attributes and discover web content that the community has voted as relevant to it
• Initially, the communities will be predefined to constrain variation and provide useful information
• Eventually, the portal will also provide a voting mechanism (vote up, vote down) so that content is continually reevaluated by the community
• Additionally, some websites will also have a linked ‘fact sheet’ that provides a quick guide to how it is valued and how it can be effectively used
Benefit Proposition
• The project is designed to help people discover new and useful web content that is relevant to their community, and that they may not have found by themselves
• Further, the ‘fact sheets’ will provide quick insight into how members of your community use and value the content provided on the websites
The presentation went well I believe and hopefully we will get some feedback from the panel.
We need to finalize the survey in the next week and get it sent out for initial data collection.
Andrew and I think we need a meeting at some point in the break (near the end - possibly the last weekend?) to get going on the deliverables due one week after we are back in class. We did our run-through, and the presentation has come together really well. I think we make a convincing case. Final product pitch doc looks good James As we discussed today, my actions for the Olympic break:
Go through market research and create list of customer needs. I will then use this to create a requirements and features document for the product. Chris will be able to use this to architect the system for implementation by Kevin. Development timeline:
Feb 15 - 28: Site setup, ready for content
Mar 1 - 5: Changes based on architect input
Mar 7: Prep site for Mar 10 presentation
Mar 14: Finalize prototype I''ve uploaded an initial logo concept to the Google group. Very good meeting today.
As stated, we will use inov8 to list our high level deliverables and timelines.
Tentative product launch on March 17th. Gord, I did an edit on Moore''s positioning statement:
For:
- current MOT Business 774 MBA students
Who want/need:
- a service that provides awareness and information about web sites and online content
smallwURLd is:
- a revolutionary and evolutionary service that will help members discover new and useful web sites and online resources
That provides:
- listings of websites and online resources, rated and ranked by community specific identifiers, and with associated ''quick-start'' and explanatory information
Unlike:
- current social networking sites and web resource listings
smallwURLd is:
- focused on enabling users to learn and share with their communities and thereby increase everybody''s knowledge
I have refined our mission statement:
To serve our community…
… through the provision of a revolutionary and evolutionary service that will help members discover new and useful web sites and online resources!
This service will:
- Be revolutionary - Users will be able to find useful web content based upon how they define any number of communities that they may belong to
- Be evolutionary - Users will contribute their favorite and most useful web sites, along with information that helps define both how to categorize the sites and how to define the user’s community
- Grow organically - Users will continue to provide new content, rate the useful of existing content, and share how they effectively use content
- Facilitate knowledge sharing - Community members will be able add to `fact sheets` that get new users started quickly and provide insight into how value is obtained when accessing the resources
I have been working on internal research this week. I''ve put together a product comparison matrix with additional notes/graphics and posted to the google group page. I have done an initial prototype (mock-up) and posted in our google group. We will need something for our product pitch to provide visualization to our audience. Take a look and feel free to edit as required. Hi guys, here is my take on a potential positioning statement a la Gordon Moore and Crossing the Chasm. Have a read and post comments on how you see it being better/different.
For MOT-MBA students in BUS774,
Who wants/needs awareness and knowledge of relevant websites and online tools valued by similar classmates,
The SmallwURLd.com site is a socially oriented content-sharing plaform
That provides users with insight into the websites, tools, and processes that other MBA students value, including how-to''s, best practice suggestions, and other knowledge-rich information.
Unlike current social networking sites,
SmallwURLd.com is focused on enabling customers to easily find useful information relative to their needs, and is not not designed for social or business networking. Makes sense to me as well, although as we get further along and zero in our value prop, we may modify this plan depending on where we end up. For example, if we focus on "student needs" for our class as our first segment, then moving outward through the student population makes sense. But, if we focus initially more on "professional needs" then it could look different - maybe growing through different professional groups such as project managers, engineers, etc etc.
Just food for thought - I like this for what we are thinking right now. During our last meeting we spoke about what markets would represent the natural evolution of the SmallWurld product. While this is open to change, based upon future experience and learning, I would think it may be something like:
- Bus 774 Class
- 2008 & 2009 MOT Cohorts
- Other MBA''s
- Other departments (e.g. undergrads, graduate programs, etc.)
- Other academic institutions (e.g. UBC, Kwantlen, etc.)
I''ve uploaded one survey respondent (Jeff Brown) to the Google Group. I''ll do another on tonight. Gord, I really like the questionnaire you have created. It should provide us with some great insight into our customer base. Thanks. I''ve accepted the invitation. Thank you. OK, I''ve invited Lisa to our Google group. Here is my role/responsibility info as discussed today:
Application Architect:
Responsibilities include requirements review, system/component design, data modelling (logical/physical). Works with product manager to translate user requirements into functional specifications. Works with application/web developer to build/deploy/test the system.
If you could send me an invitation (my normal SFU email account) to your Google Groups site, that''d be great. Hey everyone, here is how I see my agreed role as Marketing and Market Research Lead. Let me know if you think I''ve missed anything important:
Role: To lead and execute on all aspects of market research and marketing for the team.
Responsibilities
- Set objectives and approach for market research activities
- Analyze market research data and report to team on key findings
- Help to ensure our product direction aligns strongly with market needs
- Manage all marketing and PR-related activites
- Measure satisfactation with product after launch
I''ve also changed the meeting minutes that Gord posted to the Google group to be an ongoing doc with all the minutes in it. This will be easier to aggregate later and we''ll only need to point Lisa to one location for all of our minutes. Hey guys, I''ve just bought the domain www.smallwurld.com. I''ll setup the DNS, hosting and content management system later. As discussed, we''ve each defined our roles and here is the definition for my role as LEAD DEVELOPER:
• purchase URL
• setup and maintain the product platform (hardware and software)
• design and develop website with input from marketing and system architect
• based on feature requests, research Joomla extensions to meet design specs
• very minimal if any custom development for this alpha product Meeting minutes from January 31st meeting posted to Google Group as they are too long to post effectively here.
http://groups.google.ca/group/bus-774-team-vancouver/web/jan-31-meeting-minutes
(Lisa if you need access let me know and we can give you access to the Google Group site) The following is the list of resources that our team has access to:
• website server and hosting
• open source software (Joomla)
• esurvey, surveymonkey, moodle
• laptops and home offices
• SFU meeting rooms
• Various project management software/programs
• MS Office products
• inov8.ca The following is the list of skills that we have identified within our group:
Andrew Marles
• product development
• product prototyping
• automated QA testing
Chris Macleod
• Web development
• Search portals
• crowd sourcing (aggregating a whole bunch of people to edit and add data)
Gord Elder
• Market research
• product management
• marketing
• customer relationship management
James Herdy
• Project management
• Social media guru
• Data-mining
• QA
Kevin McLeod
• web development
• launching websites for business
• web marketing
• social media and web2.0
• start-up and small business experience
Based on our discussion today, my role is as follows:
Product Manager
My role is to work with the market research and use that information to develop the product specifications and features. Good points Andrew. I don''t think we need to worry about the automated ranking yet, as this feature will be limited for our target market. That said, we must do some customer research to ensure we are filling needs with respect to features and functionality.
Specifically, we may consider:
- A survey to get specific content from our entire class. How this is done will require additional planning of course. For example, do we ask for everybody''s top 5 websites, a single word category for each and a one word explanation? Or do we list the categories to scope the responses?
- Would quick guides to get started with some sites be seen as valuable and if so, what would the audience like to see here?
- Should we create a target audience of core users to help design the site functionality, beyond the content?
I think one potential obstacle we could run into is qualifying user submissions. We could probably deal with this using some sort of voting system, but that would mean that it will take time and lots of user participation to rank the websites.
Manual ratings (by the staff) might work as well, but we wouldn''t be able to scale a system like that to a larger audience, unless we maybe designated certain users as ''admins'' or something like that that would allow them to vet user submissions. I think one potential obstacle we could run into is qualifying user submissions. We could probably deal with this using some sort of voting system, but that would mean that it will take time and lots of user participation to rank the websites.
Manual ratings (by the staff) might work as well, but we wouldn''t be able to scale a system like that to a larger audience, unless we maybe designated certain users as ''admins'' or something like that that would allow them to vet user submissions. |
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