Sunday, September 18, 2011

Case Study 1: Get Help

Oops I'm lagging behind. Time to catch up.

First of all, I thought the entire idea behind this application is quite good. Sometimes I myself need help with something but don't know who to turn to, or who in my friend list are subject matter experts in whatever I need.

Of course, one can easily solve this problem by posting a shout-out on his/her status. That's where the application comes in with the additional features that normal status posts don't offer:

1) An overview page to see all of one's friends requests for help. Many times when we look at our News Feed at the end of the day, we look at all sorts of updates from our friends, like photos, videos, links etc, and any friends requesting for help using statuses might get buried under this pile of less important stuff.

2) Celebrating the act of helping. While genuine friends typically don't ask for anything in return, I think its nice to get little rewards for help rendered, even if they are in the form of virtual badges or mere "Mr Good Samaritan" titles. Praises work wonders me thinks.

Usability vs Aesthetics

Not quite comfortable with writing this actually, because I'm no expert in UI and my team's Facebook assignment was whacked left right centre for the UI/UX. Never mind I shall just give some opinions.

I think the Home Page is probably the most important page in an application, since it is the first page that a user sees when he first comes in, and have the power to make a user happy, or piss him off rightaway. Therefore alot of consideration have to be put in when planning a Home Page (my Facebook team members tore our hair out, figuratively, planning the FrenFactory home page).

Get Help's Home Page is fine, but I find it only caters to people requesting for help. Sure they get things done right at the Home Page, but the other half of the target audience, ie the nice friends offering to help get left out. They have to click one more time to reach the Overview Page (using Prof Ben's 'number of clicks' theory), which isn't that bad actually, but the nice friends don't need the 'need quick help?' and 'Who do you want to ask?' sections.

A suggestion can be to copy reference Facebook's current Home Page. The top section 'I need help with..' can stay at the top, with a 'More details' button linking to another page with the 'add more details' and 'Who do you want to ask?' sections. Thereafter, replace the huge body section with the Overview Page, ala Facebook News Feed. With this, those requesting for help can still get the bare minimum done, while the nice friends can see the feeds right after they entered the app. A little compromise for both parties.

The Overview Page looks fine to me, although I wonder how one can get to the Project Page from the Overview Page. Comparing both pages, I notice there are the 'Help him!' and the 'Refer a friend!' buttons on the Overview Page, but there is no 'Wish him luck!' button. I'm guessing that 'Wish him luck' will be a quick task of posting a good luck feed on that friend's wall, so perhaps it will be more appropriate to put that on the Overview Page rather than the 'Refer a friend'. Afterall, if you want to refer a friend A to your friend, you might first refer to the Project Page to see if that friend A is already helping him or not, right?

Freedom given to user when posting a need

I think the team has put in adequate effort in this area; users are given plenty of freedom in posting needs, like the ability to post needs via feeds, Twitter and even SMS. The 'Who do you want to ask?' section is quite complete too, and it even comes with the option to hide from specific friends! Details are comprehensive too, allowing users to insert deadlines, tags and locations. Overall it covers all the ground that I can think of. Haha.

Cycle of interaction and incentives

I'm not sure how the entire cycle works. What happens after a nice friend clicks 'Help her!'? Does a separate chat box comes up linking up both the friend and the poor soul, or are contact details exchanged?

Also, how are incentives given out? Are karma points added the moment a nice friend clicks 'Help her!'? If that is so, 'nice' friends can just go around clicking every single 'Help her!' button they see, no? Or can the person requesting for help give a rating of how much help the friends have rendered, which in turn affects the incentives the friends can get?

Not to mention, if a particular request for help is fulfilled, can the owner delete the request, to complete the entire 'cycle of interaction'? Can the owner post 'thank you' feeds on the walls of friends who have helped?

I like the whole casual take on the Statistics page, with the use of words like fire, hottest, networking gurus etc, and the giving out of virtual badges. As I mentioned earlier, genuine friends typically don't ask for anything in return, but these little incentives and rewards celebrate this whole act of helping and sit nicely in between "showing appreciation" and "don't mention it".

Other problems

I guess the main problem is already hinted in the preceding section, which is exactly how to help. Different kinds of requests require different kinds of help. Sometimes they are as simple as typing a few step-by-step instructions; other times various parties have to meet face-to-face for guidance and teaching. I guess not all help can be rendered through the app, but at least it offers a starting point.

Back during my National Service, there were those days we had to pack large numbers of stores into shipping containers as we prepared for Exercise Wallaby in Australia. I still recall the regulars who screamed at us telling us not to stand around but go and help. The problem is, there were already so many people crowding around at the opening of the container, what else can we do besides joining them and standing with them?

Sometimes, it is easy to open one's mouth and say, 'Go and help!' Its difficult to find the sweet spot between '帮不上忙' and '越帮越忙'.

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