MCRN Proposal

I have taken a lot of the ideas that have been floating around this blog and have decided to take some ACTION:

Using a web site proposal template I started developing a written proposal which we could give to Mary- which really needs to be soon.

The proposal is in the Student Data Drive [S:/3756/Genie's Resources/MCRN Source] and is called Website Proposal for MCRN. There are a bunch of topics that I could not fill in and there needs to be things like a story board and a page design as well as structural information, which I do not have.

Please go to the Proposal, and add the appropriate information. You may add your name as author- which I will note for marking purposes and then delete before we give the proposal to Mary]. Also if you want to participate in this project and work towards a mark in the modules : Writing for the World Wide Web and Build a Website to Specification, add your name to the list on the title page of the proposal.

After you have done this, make a comment on this blog to let me know you have completed some work towards the proposal.

You do NOT have to be enrolled in the above modules to contribute to the proposal. I look forward to your contributions.

Deadline for this proposal is: Wed 18th May 2005.

Happy creating!

An idea for an initial proposal (phase 1)

I've been thinking about the issues highlighted by Mary during the interview, as well as the comments added by Jordi, Sheena, Jardine and Genie on our first post after the meeting, and it's brought two main issues to mind for me and a possible phase 1 proposal. Please let us know what you think, you might find that I've missed an important issue, or that the proposal is flawed!

Issue 1: Interest and Interaction.
Even if the most easy-to-use website on the planet is created for MCRN, getting people interested/interacting with the activities and information will still be dependent on the way that the site is used - does the information invite for/allow interaction and feedback... this is something that I'm still trying to learn: how to invite people to participate by the way I write - it's a massive evolving area of Internet publishing that requires a lot of practice, trial-and-error, reading etc. (Although there's some great tutorials out there too).

Often large email lists are just used for announcements and are not interactive at all (due to the size of the list). It provides an incredible way to 'disseminate' information to large groups of people, but the end result is a loss of community/relevance and hence interest in reading the information (in my limited experience).

One way around this is (as Mary identified) to have more specific groups that are small and specific enough that active involvement and member contibutions can be encouraged. But this runs into the other main issue.

Issue 2: Sending information to multiple groups of people
The MCRN currently disseminates information for a wide range of interest groups. Mary needs the ability to choose which groups of people receive which information. Unless precaution is taken, this may lead to some individuals (who are in multiple groups) recieving information twice, which will be annoying and discourage active involvement.

There are only 2 simple ways around this that I can think of:

1. Make sure the groups are mutually exclusive (an individual can only exist in one group), or,
2. Allow people to be part of multiple groups but make sure that each individual post is only ever sent to one group.

I reckon that option (2) is a better option as it gives more control to the members receiving the information and forces MCRN to be careful to categorise the information and avoid spamming. It is still possible to send a message to more than one group in extremely important cases, but should be done very rarely (if possible). Is this possible Mary?

Proposal for phase 1
Which leads to an initial solution for phase 1, that is free to set up and easy to use/build upon.

Step 1:
If, together with Mary, we can separate all the contacts on the contact list into the relevant categories (allowing contacts to be members of multiple categories), we can then set up individual Google Groups for each category (hopefully around 4 or 5, or am I dreaming? :-).

This will then allow Mary to send each piece of information only to the specific group as she does currently with a few additional benefits.

More importantly, this will open up the possibility for step 2:

Step 2:
Once Mary is comfortable using the google groups, one specific group can be chosen for a 3-6 month trial of phase 1.

We can set up a free Blogger website (like this one) for the one specific group (one of the more active groups), say "Mental Health in the Mountains", that Mary can use for all the Mental Health information postings. Whenever Mary posts to the site, it will automatically email out the information to the normal mental health email group, providing for a smooth transition for users. The only difference will be that the email has a small link at the end that will open up the website (if people want to comment/interact with the Mary's information.)

This'll enable a number of specific improvements:

• People can begin transitioning to an easy web-based system, but are not forced to - they can just stick to the email.
• Mary can involve others very gradually - initially engaging readers to add their own thoughts/experience/comments to each post, then as people become more confident, allowing other individuals to post info/articles to the site.
• Provides an opportunity to experiment with the way info is posted over a period of 3-6 months, aiming to build an active online community.
• All the information and comments are organised neatly on the site (including archives), making it easy to find information.

Using such a trial will enable Mary and ourselves to evaluate whether it is possible to get people involved in such a community based website (This blogger site is 10x easier to use than any custom site/Content Management System that I've ever seen - and it's free). When the trial is complete, we can re-evaluate with Mary the pro's and con's. If it has succeeded, we can continue this method with the other groups and integrate these blogs with the main website (which will be a much simpler website). The great thing is all the tools are free and available (and reliable).

If the trial with one group has not succeeded, then we can re-evaluate together with Mary while Mary continues to use the smaller email groups. Nothing to lose!

Are there flaws I haven't thought of? or other benefits? Please let me know what you think! Or perhaps you've got a different idea of your own!

TRI website address

Please forgive me for being so slack...I meant to put up this address ages ago....here is the Tri website address:

http://www.ngo.net.au/communitynet/

Please have a look and give us an analysis of the useability issues this site might face. Refer to my previous blog entry for details.
Looking forward to your responses.
Genie

MCRN and Useability

It seems that one of the major problems with making a web site for MCRN is useability. When Mary came to see us, she told us about the Tri Community Services site which is not used as much as it could be. She told us that people at the Community Services centre were disheartened because their site is not used by the community it serves. She therefore felt sceptical about a web site for MCRN.

At present Mary sends emails to people to remind them of events that are coming up which are of interest to them. She is worried that people will not go to the web site to view events, and would like us to discuss possible solutions to this useability problem.

What I would like to propose is a problem solving exercise which addresses the useability issues for the MCRN site. If you participate in this problem solving exercise about useability and the MCRN site, you will be potentially achieving a mark for the module Ensure Web Site Useability 3755R.

Below are questions that need to be answered in order to solve this useability problem. If you can think of more questions that will guide us in the right direction, please input in the comments section.

1. What are the basic issues of useability for the Tri Community Services site?
2. How have the Tri people resolved their useability issues?
3. What are the issues for users of the MCRN site?
4. What techniques/web design features could we incorporate into the MCRN site that will address/solve the useability issues [question 3]

Here's a site that might give you some ideas about how to proceed:

http://www.usabilitybydesign.com.au/products_usability.htm

Please submit your questions and suggestions in the comments section of this post by 28th April to indicate that you are participating in the module Ensure Website Useability [3755R]

I look forward to reading your responses.
Genie

Time to start documenting requirements!

There's a great Information Architecture tutorial that might be worth considering as we begin defining goals, audiences and content for this project. See what you think!

Genie might have some ideas for getting the proposal ready for the April 21 deadline.

A site to discuss the design of the website!

OK! I thought we could summarise what we all took away from the meeting with Mary from the Mountains community centre, as comments here below. Just do a brain dump!

Later on we can put them all together and formalise them in a document!

I'll add anyone who wants to be part of this project as a member so you can post too.