DesignAday

My name is Jack Moffett. I am an Interaction Designer with over ten years of experience. According to Herb Simon, that makes me an expert, so I must have something worth sharing. I have started this venture as an exercise to spur critical thinking about my chosen profession. I hope that others may find it thought provoking as well.

DesignAday will present a brief thought about Design every weekday.
Feb 01
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CrowdVine

Interaction 08 is only a week away, and I’m getting pretty excited about it. This is due in part to CrowdVine, a web service that allows groups to set up their own social networking site. Now, I’ve never had any particular interest in the likes of Facebook and MySpace. I do have a LinkedIn account, and while I don’t actively pursue it, I can certainly see its merits. I am really impressed with CrowdVine.

They specifically target conferences, and it is a perfect fit for Interaction 08. IxDA already has a relatively tight community based on its quite active, global, discussion mailing list, as well as its local groups. This being the first conference, it’s going to be the first opportunity many of us have had to meet face-to-face after years of online discussions. CrowdVine provides a number of features that, I believe, are helping attendees get the most out of the conference by allowing them to synch up and plan ahead.

Pictures
The UI relies heavily on participant’s photographs, and the vast majority of people have uploaded one. I’m now going to be able to recognize quite a few people I’ve never seen before, which will make meeting them at the conference a lot easier.

Networking
Of course, being a social networking site, there is networking. While I at first thought it a bit awkward (What are they going to think if I declare myself a “fan”?), I do believe it is working quite well. The “want to meet” is seeing heavy use, and is actually helping facilitate introductions.

Tag Clouds
As part of my profile, I was asked to fill in some relevant information and answer a few questions. The site takes everyone’s responses, including interests, organizations, favorite speakers, etc., and generates tag clouds. It was quite easy for me to see who was attending from CMU.

There are many other features that make CrowdVine useful (I love the ability to pick out the sessions I want to attend and then see who else is going to attend them), but the key here is the context. The fact that it is designed with conferences in mind, along with the existing community orientation of the attendees, resulted in the perfect marriage.