Eightyseven

De afgelopen maanden ben ik druk bezig geweest aan mijn afstudeerproject om mijn Master te halen aan de HKU. Vandaar ook dat ik niet erg aan het schrijven van blogs toegekomen ben. Maar nu vind ik het tijd om je een voorproefje te geven van wat het project zal zijn. Bij dit project moet ik een begeleidend verhaal schrijven, wat ik in het Engels doe. Daaruit hieronder het stuk dat beschrijft wat de hele site gaat doen.

Een test versie van de site zal binnenkort online zijn, maar mocht je er nu al meer van willen zien, neem dan een kijkje op Usabilla.com en laat me gelijk weten wat je ervan vindt.

When I go to paluable.com I am presented with the front page of this new social network concept. It displays an example profile and encourages me to make my own. A little bit down below is a simple visual representation of making friends through conversation, explaining why I won’t find an “add friend” button on the site.

I click on the button to start creating a profile and am presented with a more then screen filling list of about a hundred photos (image above). Photos based around sports, hobbies, interest, jobs, and important things in life such as friends, family, religion, science. I get to pick twelve of them, creating a green border around them when clicking. Continuing to the next page I see the photos I’ve selected and can now fill out a username, password and email address.

When everything is filled out correctly I’m taken to the home page where I can now log in at the top of the page. I now arrive at the page where all my latest messages are shown, the people I have a connection with are shown (people who have visited my profile, who I have visited and who I’ve had a conversation with, my friends, acquaintances, and so on).

At the top is an area with blue and pink circles. These are random other people on the site. The bigger the dot, the more of the same photos I have selected. When clicking on a dot it shows a simple view of that persons profile and I can choose to see the complete profile or just close.

If I continue to that persons profile at the top of the page I will see the photos he or she selected to describe him or herself with. Next to them are the photos I myself selected. Some of these photos have a green border around them, showing the matches.0 Right beneath my pictures is a large area to write a message to this person.

I can also hide this bit of my own profile on this persons page, reveling a maximum of nine photos this person could have uploaded. Beneath the chosen pictures is a description of this person he or she is completely free to write. And there are the users this person is connected to and all the messages are shown, to which I can react as well.

On my own profile I still need to add my personal description. By simply clicking the ‘edit my description’ link I can edit and save right within my profile page. I can upload nine of my own images and can see who has visited my profile recently.

At the page named ‘people’ I will find a large page with dots similar to the top of the first page, just bigger where I can meet people based on matching photos.

After a message is send back and forth with a person, he or she can be found in my connections area, marked as ‘just met’. With more messaging this status will change to acquaintance and eventually to friend. At the statistics page I can see how many messages I’ve send to who, how many words they where in total and how long it took to get to which status of friendship.

Time to start writing and make more friends. Real friends, who I’ve gotten to know over the internet.