• The ability to promote your group or network across the globe and encourage people from beyond your physical community to become involved
• To create interactive experiences where members can login and share information such as video, images and relevant articles
• To use online calendars and planning tools to organise events and meetings with the ability to present media from the events
• To allow online payment via Paypal or other web technologies for products and services related to your network
• To allow members to post information about themselves, their motives and interests, enabling others to establish effective links or connections with people and their projects or activities
• Deliver news and information to your group immediately
• Provide an internal communication system separate from the users own personal email system should it be beneficial to keep more personal details private or distinct from professional details

Success or Failure

Should you choose to start your own community you will need to consider a variety of issues from your available time to the quality of information flowing through the online space for your users. The success of a community or network is significantly influenced by the following factors:

• Your reach to the relevant groups or people who may wish to become involved. Do you have access to people on the web such as bulletin boards, forums or even a large and keen Twitter following, or in the physical world such as printed adverts, noticeboards where your information can be posted and taken notice of? If the answer is no, how will your message be read or even found? Word of mouth? Email? Getting enthusiastic responses via blog posts, responses, retweets or recommendations is the key to kickstarting your community.
• Do you have a reputation that encourages people to act upon your recommendation? Or do you know someone who has a good reputation in your activity area who would be willing to put their name to your endeavours? If you want people to join a community, this can be a significant pull towards establishing the group. A reputation is not vital but does provide support in your message to the world.
• Once you have overcome the first hurdle of establishing the interest of a few, or even many interested parties, have you or other contributors the time, inspiration and resources to consistently create quality interesting content for your network? Do you have a policy related to the regularity and style of your contributions whether it is through video, written blog items or even audio?
• Are you, or others in your community able to monitor the quality of the information put onto the site. How will you deal with the inevitable abuse of the system and spamming?
• Can your website sustain a reliable, effective service should there be a sudden explosion in readers or contributions? Consult your ISP or your IT service to work out the capacity of your webserver and assess how much data and bandwidth you have available.

 Example – Drawing Research Network

As part of my work for the Open University, in 2003 I set up a website for the drawing community – The Drawing Research Network otherwise known as the DRN. The most recent version of the site was upgraded from static HTML to WordPress back in 2009 with social network plugins such as Mingle as with the traditional blogging features allowing users to create their own visible profiles and Twitter style timelines as well as upload articles with images to the site for viewing by other members. During July 2011 management responsibility of the website was given Loughborough School of the Arts who have funded an administrator [Pete Simcoe] to ensure the quality of the articles is high both in content and formatting and the content is as useful as possible to a worldwide community of academics, artists, designers and other people with a passion and interest in this subject.

As of August 2011 there are around 210 listed members with many others reading and referring to the site. Below is a summary of some of the functionality of the site in video format, designed to demonstrate some of the capability to new users. Some of the functionality has been slightly altered, in that you now need an invite similar to Google Plus to become part of the group with reasons given below the video:

Benefits of WordPress

The main benefits of using the WordPress system on the Drawing Research Network are the fact that WordPress is designed for this sort of group activity – a series of bloggers can contribute to a continual stream of online discussion. It is also an online software system that is free and has a worldwide support network as well as many custom designed templates. The template for the DRN can be seen at Themeforest.net where for $35 much of the programming and layout is complete – it is down to the administrator or IT support unit to customise and style the blog as required.

As previously mentioned, a variety of plugins provide additional functionality for the blog including the ability to pull photos from the Drawing Research’s Flickr account.

Spamming Hazards

The main problem with most blogs is that unless steps are taken to prevent abuse, they are open to spamming, abusive comments and other unpleasantness. The Drawing Research Network is no exception. However, an effort has been made to reduce the number of spam comments and timewasters by using the following:

• Askimet  Anti-Spam system available to WordPress users which reduces comment spam
• SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugin creating a barrier to spam-bots by using keyboard input
• Secure Invites plugin meaning registration can only occur via an invite from another user

It has been an uphill struggle to resolve the spamming issue on this and other sites and whilst Invite Only websites have their limitations, the individual users of the DRN now have the ability to invite up to 10 other users which does create a kind of vetting process with shared responsibility in only allowing people with a genuine interest in drawing and drawing research onto the site.

Real Names and Photos

Recently there was outrage at Google’s decision to remove users on their new Google+ account that had not used their real names and one thing the DRN team have tried to encourage is the creation of realistic profiles. By this I am referring to the input of full names and legitimate email addresses along with a photo or example of artwork – the theory being that this firstly enables the detection of spam-bots or fake users more easily and secondly encourages responsibility and accountability on the site. If people are not happy putting their details online then they still have access to the main articles, the gallery and any downloads associated with these. It is also useful to note that the members list cannot be accessed by anyone other than the registered members themselves which provides additional security for users.

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…..a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality  in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.  – Wikipedia

I have recently been asked to look into creating an example of Augmented Reality to promote the Design School at Loughborough University. Specifically the Industrial Design and Product Design courses. The promotional item brief was that a marker would be sent out to potential students on a sheet of A5 card and when the user clicks the link on the website and places the card in front of a web camera, elements will appear to rise from the card and give the impression of appearing in the real world. Here are a couple of excellent examples of AR that have inspired the research undertaken:

The advantage that Augmented Reality has is that it is new and novel enough to get people interested in viewing promotional material that features the technology but is accessible enough through the use of Adobe’s Flash Player, which is loaded onto around 95% of computers, for many people to view it. So in a way, now is the time to explore and take advantage of the buzz surrounding this novel concept.

There are a variety of companies involved in the production of Augmented Reality products and they do vary in cost. For example, FLAR Toolkit is freely available for programming your own creations – it does a reasonable job of optimising your PC or Mac to support Augmented Reality through the use of Adobe Flash Player.

However, if you are looking for a more bespoke solution with dedicated programming and development and do not want to use basic Flash open source programming, I recently got a quote from AR specialists Total Immersion for an academic promotional item that would have cost £17,000.

So there are some differences in terms of expenditure….but ensuring that the majority have the correct player to allow your creation to work may simply come down to a cost / distribution calculation that can quickly be made!

Gaming Experience

Particularly relevant is the release of Playstation’s Move and Microsoft Xbox’s Kinect technologies. These will, in their own way, promote the AR cause through examples such as EyePet, where the user can interact with a 3D animal that appears in the same room as you or Sports Champions where the user can hold and manipulate sports equipments with great accuracy [ie it maps the movement of the user perfectly] and Start the Party is the closest example of Augmented Reality gaming with the user appearing on the screen with the other interactive elements [similar to EyePet].

Lets take Sony’s Sports Champions as an example. Whilst it does lack the polish and style of other Sony releases and plays like a series of minigames that were used as a demo for the Move…. so does the price tag. At £25.00 on release, this title provides the user with an interesting immersive experience in Frisbee, Table Tennis, Archery, Bocce, Beach Volleyball and Melee. The most flexible and natural experience is the table tennis where I would estimate 70% accuracy to real life. There are some glitches that detract from gameplay but overall its an enjoyable experience way, way superior to any Wii game due to the complex data transmitted from the Move controllers to the software. It really does allow you to get involved with the action.

Mobile Experience

Augmented Reality Apps on mobile phones use similar technologies to the PS3 Move in that the hardware must detect the orientation and direction of the user and then apply appropriate data [usually graphics] to the viewport. Mashable.com have provided a series of examples of mobile phone apps that provide the user with additional information in their viewport [often on Android or iPhone based hardware] ranging from viewing the nearest tube station in London to understanding the approximate location and direction of people tweeting nearby.

Mobile phones do lack the hardware power that larger desktop PCs and Macs have but are able to handle some basic AR features that provide information or entertainment to their users.

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I recently created a short news item for the Drawing Research Network called 6 Digital Drawing Experiments. This was essentially a collection of some of the research I had done into drawing and online experiments. When I say research, I mean the kind of informal searching for new and interesting design related websites I find by subscribing to design related RSS feeds through Google Reader and other paths and other related sites this may lead me to – I regularly scour the web for new and inspiring methods of digital drawing to learn from.

Why give free advice?

Why did I volunteer to freely spend this time providing others with content? Well, its simple and can be explained in 3 points that apply to blogs, forums or simply commenting upon someone elses work:

Reference. There is nothing like getting your head around a topic and clarifying your thoughts by writing them down – especially when there is potentially a large readership should the web community decide it is of value. The article is written both for my own benefit and the benefit of others interested in this area too.

Status. Do people rate what I have written? Well, maybe they want to see more of the same quality and may click on my own sites to see what else I do in the field of design – therefore this is an investment in potential future clients as well as impressing current clients who want to see that you are actively keeping up with what is going on in the world.

Community. Are there others out there who want to form collaborations, swap ideas or share similar information? By contributing to relevant blogs you can help connect with others.

What guidelines should I apply to my contributions?

Quality. Only create articles that you know are accurate, informative and contain a reasonable level of detail on the subject you are describing – ask yourself “What do I expect my readers to gain from this article? What insight or new information am I bringing to them? Could I assist presentation by using video or images or should the text be the only medium to convey the message. This sounds like common sense but there are many blogs out there full of very bland uninformative articles. Simplicity is good – over simplifying the content is not good.

Quantity. Establish an approximate and suitable typical interval between your articles. I typically leave around 2-3 weeks between each article on this blog as I feel it is healthy to stop and think about design objectively at these intervals. I learn and I hopefully help people to gain insight from my experiences and knowledge.

Objectivity. Having a personal agenda, opinion and direction is good but watch what you say online as this can be misinterpreted or simply not understood – at worst you could gain a bad reputation or simply be ignored altogether. I always assume I am talking to one of my clients meaning that my focus is upon helping them to understand a design related concept, acting professionally and ultimately gaining their respect.

Where to start?

The best way to START contributing is to STOP. Stop and look around at the way others are contributing and the types of contributions they are making to online conversation. This is useful for gaining an idea of what readers find valuable, the conventions for writing for different audiences and for forums or Twitter rather than blogs [or other typical web technologies] and the typical style of content. Once you feel comfortable and passionate about contributing then go ahead. If you don t feel like writing a whole article you may feel inspired to write a short response in a comments box on the site.

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In Simple Terms

Google Wave is in simplistic terms a development of email and messaging systems – a stream of information that can be interacted with in ways that make the information more ‘live’ and efficient. This is oversimplifying what is a development that could improve our online productivity considerably. Below are a few of the key features of Google Wave:

The system uses familiar interfaces and ideas when using email, messaging and word processing systems and therefore there is no need to relearn some of the basic techniques when interacting with Wave. When a participant edits or adds comments to a single Wave [or stream of information], the Wave will be moved to the top of the inbox ready for review. Wave becomes a tree structure of interactivity where certain participants in a stream of discussion can break off into another discussion.

Live Interactivity

A key feature of Wave is that as information is typed into the browser, unlike Skype, Instant Messenger and other IM systems, the individual keystrokes are shown as they happen with minimal delay over broadband connections. To avoid embarrassment or if a sentence needs to be more carefully crafted there is the option to bypass the live typing feature where necessary.

When a Wave discussion is occurring and live conversations between several participants is being recorded it is possible for all involved to be able to edit on the fly. If a series of comments are being written these can be changed as they are being written by other participants.

Embedding In Blog Style

It is possible to embed entire Waves into web pages. Put in oversimplified terms – if Google Wave allows more efficient interactivity between groups of people wanting to communicate ideas instantly then embedding a Wave is simply a case of allowing a standard web page to show this interactivity as it happens. This is in a similar way to the way Google Maps can be embedded into a standard web page easily.

Mobile Friendly

Google Wave will be available for mobile phones including Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone allowing mobile participation and interactivity. You can see a demonstration of how this will work [though its not fully working] at 25m 25sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window]

Finding, Filtering and Translating

Another useful feature of Wave is that the user can essentially filter out the factual elements of a discussion and sent to a Wiki or other document so as knowledge is built up around a subject it can be stored and retrieved easily. Eventually Google expects that Spreadsheets and Presentation Tools will be built around the Wave system to reduce time needed to transfer information across to other systems.

Google Wave can support the use of different languages [and presumably the translation of these on the fly]. Hebrew and Chinese characters are demonstrated in the YouTube video below.

Uploading Images

Wave can handle uploading of images to the server and as these images are uploaded to the Wave conversation thumbnails are quickly generated to show other participants on the network what images are being processed. The image labels can easily be edited by the group / participants. A demo of this is shown at 35min 20sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window]

Tagging Waves

Tags are used to organise Waves and allow users / participants to search for different Waves on the system as they build up. This is similar to searching for emails in an email archive. A demo of this is seen at 40min 26sec. Waves can also be cross linked – a link to another wave can be inserted into a wave and therefore cross linking is possible. See this at 40min 39sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window].

Advanced Spelling and Other Toolkit Modules

Advanced spelling systems from Google Web Toolkit are integrated and there is an excellent example of how advanced this has become at 44min 15sec. Google have cute names for their various toolkit modules including Bloggy [for inserting Wave as a blog], Linky [intelligent method for inserting links] and Spelly. These all happen server side which means that information is all processed quickly on the server then the results transmitted over the web to the client computer [where the user sees the result].

Polling Systems and Collaboration

At 48min 56sec an interesting poll system is demonstrated where users / participants can vote or indicate YES / NO / MAYBE interest live on the site. As people change their mind or vote the results are displayed in lists and graphs for analysis.

Games and Progress

At 51mins 42sec Google staff demonstrate Wave being used for interactive games and demonstrate the progress bar that highlights how the entire Wave progresses from its origins of a single stream of information and at 52mins 42sec a demonstration of how Google Maps can be used to demonstrate interest in a holiday location is shown. Google hopes and anticipates that their examples are only a basic venture into the endless possibilities of what could be achieved with the system.

There are several other systems demonstrated toward the end of the presentation but essentially the features listed above would provide most effective for business and social development. Google Wave is currently in the final phases of development and a demo version of the system will be made available to a limited group of users in the near future. For the moment we just need to be patient before this exciting new technology creeps into mainstream workflow and daily activity.

Other discussion and links

Not everyone is so delighted about the arrival of Google Wave or, at least, they are skeptical of the benefits it may bring to the web community as a whole. Some interested articles are listed below:

TechCrunch: Google Wave – There Will Be Backlash
Lifehacker.com takes a first look at Google Wave

Google Wave: A Brief Overview [8min]

This is for the less programmer orientated viewer who may want an overview of what Google Wave can do for their business, academic project or social interaction!

Full Google Wave Demo [1h20min]

Here is the full Google Wave demo before a live audience. Most of it goes according to plan. Recommended for those with both a programming interest, patience and a reasonable understanding of technical terms for the 1.5 hour demo [and general Google banter]. If this doesn’t sound like you then go with the overview above!

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