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Are we just mice trapped in a digital ‘Skinner Box’?
Yay… many thanks to Ben for mailing this awesome blog post from the O’Reilly Radar blog, by Jim Stodghill. Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, so it’s time I finally tried to finish.
For nigh on two weeks now Jim’s post has freaked me out. I have wondered if I am a bit like this mouse. I certainly recognised some of my own obsessive digital behaviour in his brilliantly written and moving account of life as a “digital stimulusaholic”. He describes being engulfed in a deep personal crisis, an addiction within which he feels utterly trapped. He talks of a cognitive biological barrier to our information processing powers. And the paradox of being infinitely distracted by infinite information. It’s pretty disturbing.
It’s even more worrying that this isn’t your average ’social-networking-and-Twitter-is-bad-for-you” rubbish. You can toss that sort of thing aside in a moment – but Jim is one of us. He a geek. He loves Twitter… a lot (actually that’s a big part of his problem). No, this is someone who’s done his time in the twenches. He’s a super-user, or more accurately a super-abuser. And yet it’s also massively entertaining – a bit like Trainspotting.
But hold on, what the heck is a Skinner Box?
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Protect The Human new homepage
Following up on Tim’s recent post on the new Protect The Human homepages, I’m going to write about the process I went through to create the final homepage designs.
1. Sketching
I started with sketches. Sketching ideas on the paper helped me visualize quickly what we wanted to achieve through the new homepages and how we wanted to address current site’s issues.
It was an easy way to present the initial ideas to people involved in the project (client, creative director, developer, etc.), and made it easy to apply any changes required. It was also much quicker than creating the initial visuals in photoshop!
2. Creating ‘grey boxes’ in photoshop
After the sketching session I had a clear idea how to present both logged in and logged out homepage objectives. I knew the content that should go on the pages and I could start playing with it in photoshop.
I started with laying out grey content boxes on the page, creating the grid, and showing the hierarchy.
Logged in homepage
Logged out homepage
3. Designing
The next step was to start the design. I did several versions of the homepage before achieving the final one. However, the previous two steps saved a lot of my time and made the actual design process less frustrating.
Here are the final designs:
Logged out homepage
Logged in homepage
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On the logged in homepage, for users who have only just registered and are new to Protect The Human, there is a set of 3 automatic, time-based actions suggested for them to take:
Once user starts taking actions this panel changes to suggest personalized actions:
‘Recent highlights’ panel becomes also personalized (Highlights for you) once user has specified interests. It displays the content based on user’s chosen tags and campaigns.
I’ve also created two templates for the feature area so that Amnesty has the flexibility to choose the type of content they want to show. They highlight crucial events, campaigns, etc., and urge the user to take action.
Video template
Image Gallery template
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Overall, I did truly enjoy the whole design process. Simple things like sketching can make the whole design process so much easier.
More improvements to the site will follow as we’re currently working on them.
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News: new release of Amnesty’s ProtectTheHuman.com
We’ve made a new release of ProtectTheHuman.com, the social media campaigning platform and activism community we launched for Amnesty UK in August 2008.
This latest release introduces:
- a new logged-out home page designed to optimise sign-up
- a souped-up logged-in home page that provides more personalised content and better signposting to activity throughout the site
- a new global ‘eyebrows and beard’ navigation set at the top and bottom of the page – designed to make it easier for users to move between Amnesty’s network of sites
- closer integration with the Protect The Human blog, to reflect its growing role as the ‘voice’ at the heart of the community
- Twitter to the home page, as a link at this stage, but reflecting the ever-increasing importance of Amnesty UK’s Twitter network as a campaigning platform woven through just about all activity on and off-site at Protect The Human
The combined effect of these changes is to create a more joined-up experience, and to make it easier for site users to discover and carry out online actions in support of Amnesty’s campaigns.
But that’s not all. Another push in the next couple of weeks will see the deployment of Facebook Connect integration that will make it even easier to sign up, and take campaigning at Protect The Human inside Facebook. And Julia and Paul have started working on some changes to tighten up and optimise the Campaigns and Actions sections of the site and the way these interactions work.
Well done to Julia and Oli for their design and front-end skills, as well as to our dev partners New Bamboo. Big shout to Amnesty’s Web team as well (especially Sara, Fiona, Sam, Aggie, Ben and Vero). We’ve all worked as one team on this project. I know Julia wants to write a post about the process we followed.
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New release of Amnesty’s ProtectTheHuman.com
We’ve made a new release of ProtectTheHuman.com, the social media campaigning platform and activism community we launched for Amnesty UK in August 2008.
This latest release introduces:
- a new logged-out home page designed to optimise sign-up
- a souped-up logged-in home page that provides more personalised content and better signposting to activity throughout the site
- a new global ‘eyebrows and beard’ navigation set at the top and bottom of the page – designed to make it easier for users to move between Amnesty’s network of sites
- closer integration with the Protect The Human blog, to reflect its growing role as the ‘voice’ at the heart of the community
- Twitter to the home page, as a link at this stage, but reflecting the ever-increasing importance of Amnesty UK’s Twitter network as a campaigning platform woven through just about all activity on and off-site at Protect The Human
The combined effect of these changes is to create a more joined-up experience, and to make it easier for site users to discover and carry out online actions in support of Amnesty’s campaigns.
But that’s not all. Another push in the next couple of weeks will see the deployment of Facebook Connect integration that will make it even easier to sign up, and take campaigning at Protect The Human inside Facebook. And Julia and Paul have started working on some changes to tighten up and optimise the Campaigns and Actions sections of the site and the way these interactions work.
Well done to Julia and Oli for their design and front-end skills, as well as to our dev partners New Bamboo. Big shout to Amnesty’s Web team as well (especially Sara, Fiona, Sam, Aggie, Ben and Vero). We’ve all worked as one team on this project. I know Julia wants to write a post about the process we followed.
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Case study: Amnesty UK ‘Campaigning with Social Media’
Made by Many has worked with Amnesty UK since January ‘08, and helped them design and build ProtectTheHuman.com – their digital activism community. ProtectTheHuman.com is a social platform that asks users to carry out a range of online actions in support of Amnesty’s campaigns, and to upload video and photos and bookmark content from all over the Web.
You can read more about it here – in Charlotte’s blog post when the site launched. And you can also read about how Amnesty have used Protect The Human to campaign against the proposed extension of detention without trial to 42 days, and in support of US death row prisoner Troy Davis.
Since just before Christmas we’ve been working with Amnesty UK’s web team on a project to optimise the use of external social media services. This involved an audit, mapping and optimisation exercise of all official (Amnesty-run) and supporter-run groups and pages on Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and blogs. We then followed this with planning for specific campaigns: Obama’s First Hundred Days and End Violence Against Women.
The case study below provides some real data (often missing in social media case studies) that shares what we all did and how well it worked. Please take it, share it, use it, re-tweet it and spread it all over the place. We also have some exciting new releases to make to the main Protect The Human website in the next few weeks, and another case study (Obama’s First 100 Days) to share.
Campaigning with social mediaView more presentations from madebymany. -
Crowd-funded filmaking
Iain Weatherby is a gifted writer. Usually he writes plays – he got through to the last two on Channel 4’s ‘The Play’s The Thing’ and has been writing and holding festivals, as well as doing the odd bit of copywriting for advertisers and writing various financial institutions’ annual reports. When we’re very lucky, Iain does some has work for us – although this is happening less now he’s got his film off the ground and moved to Dorset. Bastard.
Working with a talented team at Anchovy Pictures Iain has almost finished editing Oscar and Jim, a dark romantic comedy about a couple whose relationship may be past its sell-by date, Emma and Gerry, on a romantic city break dirty weekend in Paris. “Last stop on the tourist trail is the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the illustrious dead lie round. He wants to see the grave of Jim Morrison. She wants to find the tomb of Oscar Wilde. Their Eurostar leaves in an hour and a half. It’s the end of their first trip away together. Will there be another one?”
Iain has created a very simple community around his blog (created by Dara, who many of us here used to work with) and set up a PayPal account that allows all of us to become an Executive Producer on the film for just £25. That includes a poster, getting invited to a special screening and most excitingly, your name on the credits! Not only is this a great way to raise money for a project like this, it’s also a brilliant way to generate some buzz around the idea and find an audience.
The deadline is Thursday. If you want to get involved you’ll find the Oscar and Jim site (and links to become a producer) here.
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Metrotwin.com err.. “takes off”
Super-exciting news this morning as we’ve finally take the stabilisers off Metrotwin, British Airways’ new social recommendation service that we’ve been working on since March. The site has been in private beta and today we pressed the button and brought the password/log-in screen down to make the site accessible to everyone.
Metrotwin has been a collaboration between Made by Many, BBH and Agency.com. We led the service and interaction design and worked with BBH to create the network of bloggers and online communities who provide the recommendations. The site is a social utility rather than a social networking site: it’s an online community that treats London and New York as a continuum and it’s aimed at anyone living in or travelling between the two cities who’s struggling to navigate the vast volume of web content about these cities. If you’ve ever tried to use the Web to plan a trip to either city you’ll understand – so many web pages, so little time. These must be two of the most written about, blogged about, photographed and videoed pairs of cities anywhere online.
That idea of pairing the two cities has been developed into something that we got really excited about: social twinning. When you listen to people explaining the other city to each other you hear it: “What’s the Harvey Nicks of New York?”, “Shoreditch is kinda like Williamsburg…”. There is a fuzzy, collective understanding about how each city maps on to the other. These are sibling cities – very similar and yet very different. Within this weird love:hate rivalry (always respectful, it has to be said) there is real social currency. The fact is that I have more in common with people in New York City than with the good folks of Dagenham (no offence).
The site you’ll see today at Metrotwin.com is just the beginning. It’s the core. We’re in a good place to push the site in new directions – more social features, like a ‘People’ page and the ability to follow other people; or more playful ways to bring the idea of twinning to the fore; or new ways to visualise the city and to take Metrotwin with you inside an iPhone or printed out on paper; or perhaps a souped-up ‘Neighbourhoods’ view of the site. There are already some very cool features, including ‘Metrotwin Recommends’ – a collaborative filtering tool that looks at what you like and recommends places you haven’t been to yet; and the ‘Metrotwin Index’ – which provides a people-powered view of the best of the long tail of both cities. Who knows? The plan is to watch real people play with it first – we’re going to see what sticks, look at what happens and make changes and new releases based on all of that.
Many, many thanks to all involved – especially everyone at Made by Many and BBH who have worked on it. We’ll be following this post up with some more about the technology used for Metrotwin and the way we’ve all worked together on the project. Tally ho!
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A community for foodies: The Foodist Colony
Another of the cool people I met last week in New York was David Ziegler, founder of Foodist Colony – a community website that allows food lovers to share restaurant recommendations. The community has been growing rapidly since David launched the site two years ago. There are lots of cool features to save people time: content is aggregated from the best food bloggers/websites and presented as a map mash-up.
Community members can rate and comment on restaurants and this creates an attention index of the top and buzziest restaurants. There are restaurant charts. Users can create a personal restaurant guide and share this with others. They can follow other people whose recommendations they find useful. And they can even book restaurants. Foodist Colony also launched a highly successful iPhone web app a few months ago, and this was featured at Apple.com as Apple’s ‘Staff Pick’. As a measure of the site’s success, it’s impressive that a whopping 73% of all registered users have bothered to build a personal restaurant guide. This is a vibrant, living community.
The site currently serves the good folk of New York, but it’s obviously an idea that would work well in other cities both in the US and beyond. There are widgets – see a couple of example here and here. And of course there’s a Twitter page, which I am now following
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P2P gardening community site swapping seeds: copyright theft?
MyFolia.com, an innovative new online gardening community and organiser that lets you list the plants you want to grow and matches you to gardeners who want to swap seeds. As you’d expect, MyFolia.com is packed with tools to allow gardeners to swap ideas and tips as well, but it’s the seed swapping that drew the attention of a commenter at Lifehacker and has cast a dark cloud over conversations in the groups area of MyFolia:
The seed stash lets you list your cuttings and seeds. Seed saving is a huge movement in the UK and parts of the Pacific Northwest. It’s a grassroots effort on behalf of our vanishing biodiversity and a protest against corporate control of local and global food supplies.
Unfortunately, even without genetically modified plants in the picture, now hybrid plants often also have copyright protections on them.
Canadian Gardening Magazine called it the “Facebook for Gardeners” but the copyright debate makes it sound more like illegal file-sharing. Is this a job for the Creative Commons’ Biological Materials Transfer Project (Science Commons) or is this the start of seed piracy?
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