Development of OnRoute, an application for public transport

Increasingly, most of us find ourselves using a smart phone for everyday events. One could file their sports efforts, check their bank account and look up directions. Another daily event which could be considered a bit of a hassle is public transport. Several applications for smart phone use have been developed to solve this issue, but according to us none of those succeeds to actually do so. When using public transport, one needs to take in a lot of information. Looking at signs, asking staff, or consulting an application which takes forever to load might result in missing a bus or train. Existing applications lack in covering all types of public transport, reporting delays or having a clear interface. Literature has elaborately reviewed the absolute musts for effective interface design, but the existing applications failed to incorporate this. 

So we made it our objective to design a user-friendly travel application which combines different types of public transport. Secondly, it should allow people to get the necessary information they seek in a quick glance on their mobile phone. Lastly, it should provide walking routes on (large) train stations and alternatives on how to spent time while waiting. The design will be clean and functional for public transport scheduling. So, how should we accomplish this? 

Throughout the past few months we put ourselves to developing a prototype (www.eyetractive.nl/tap).. and it turned out to be quite the success. Thanks to Eugene, Jan and Etienne for implementing the prototype!

If you wanna know more about the design and research, just contact me and I'll provide you with our article on the topic :D

Why Facebook is so popular

I love Facebook! The social network site has everything such web site needs... but what do others think? Why is facebook so popular and how come it is still expanding like crazy? Below I gathered some pieces of mind of others to get my answer. I guess I caught some interesting thoughts!

 

It plays to people's vanity. People like to talk about themselves, especially when they think they have an audience. Many people post many updates every day on how their day is going. If they have 100 or more friends they may feel that all of their friends are keeping up to date with them, when in fact chances are they've all hidden that person from their News Feed.

Everyone's on it. Facebook reached a critical tipping point where it became wildly popular. It reached that point when it the number of people with a Facebook account, outnumbered the number of people without one. Nowadays, if you don't have a Facebook account you are pretty much a social pariah. The ability of Facebook to merge businesses and entrepreneurs in with individuals is something that other social networks like MySpace didn't do well. On Facebook there's tons of commercial potential, and users don't seem to mind it.

Upload photo’s unlimited. Facebook enables people to upload all of their pictures. You can show your creativity, beauty, strange things you did, beautiful journeys you made and whatever more you want. It could enhance your status and you can tell people through image what keeps you busy. 

Instant feedback. The structure of the social network site provides the possibility to give instant feedback on posts and photo’s. You can pick someone’s brain on some topic and share your views.

Those are some thoughts of random Facebook users and analytics, but this blog wouldn’t be complete without your opinion. If you’re willing, I’d be more than interested to know why you think Facebook is so popular. Personally I like Facebook for it being so complete. Sure thing that Facebook provides every means (pictures, text, video etc.) to express yourself. The option to get and give feedback on your thoughts, to connect with friends at any time, and to see what they are doing are key factors of success if you’d ask me!

Materialism and Happiness

Last year, a Doctor at Tilburg University decided to dedicate his time and efforts to doing research about materialism and happiness among Dutch students. As most of the students in his course were asked to answer the questionnaire related to this research, we wanted to know more about the purpose, the methods and mostly about the reason behind the research. We asked Dr. Harold Miesen, the researcher, to explain what definitions of materialism he used in his research.

In order to get more insight in the research, we interviewed Dr. Miesen and asked him several questions which illustrate the road from beginning to ‘end’. Below you can see the interview. His research is in progress, so we still have to wait for the actual results. In the interview he gives his views on the first results, and about the related paradigms.
Harold Miesen is an Assistant Professor related to Tilburg University. Besides doing research, he teaches several courses. Among other topics, he specializes in consumer behaviour, marketing communication, psychology and well-being. Previously, he publicised about happiness and relational goods, corporate reputation, and reading.
We found his research very interesting, and we’re looking forward to the final results. We would like to know your opinion… Are students materialistic? Are YOU materialistic?

Create or maintain? Online friendships

More research than you might suspect is done on online friendships. Communicating with others via applications on the Internet has never been such a great part of our lives as it is right now. The question now arises if real friendships can develop from this type of communication.

If you'd ask me, I would say that starting tight online friendships is possible. Though, it seems to be the exception when I look at my own friends and relatives. In deciding whether developing friendships is possible or not, we should know what 'friendship' actually is. For the one person it is of a different intensity than for the other. Personally I have high standards for calling someone a friend, and in this sense, I think it is hardly possible to develop friendships online.

In face-to-face communication there is a certain degree of commitment. It has been proved that about 90 percent of a message is transmitted non-verbal. Physical presence has so many cues and few (internet) applications are able to transfer these cues. There is a theory called the Social Presence Theory (Short, Williams & Christie, 1976), which proves this assumption to be right. "When there are less visual cues, this means less social presence."

Then again, according to me the use of computer mediated communication is good for strengthening and maintaining friendships instead of developing them. So why would the Internet be such a good medium to strenghten friendships? Here the aspect of hyper personal communication (Walther, 1996) does play a role; self disclosure will be way higher on the internet than in real life. Being connected via the internet gives many opportunities to strengthen friendships and to learn more about one another outside the offline environment.

So... what do you think?

April Fools

It's April, international occasion for joking. If you'd ask me, all of us could use a day like this after all the drama taking place recently. The more people you can pull one on, the better. Of course the internet, and especially social networks are great media to get the biggest possible audience to spread your best joke ever!

In the past, quite a few have used the above possibility. I went searching for some jokes, and came up with these!

1. 1957, UK: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

2. 2007, The Netherlands: A regional news paper headed that the skeleton of a dinasour had been found during construction work. The name of the species of the dinosaur must have been the Parglirpa. It was the first skeleton that had been found in the area, and it was supposed to be a great finding. Many archeologists and other interested people came to see the site, which had been opened for visitors on the first of April. The day after, the news paper revealed it to be a joke, and Parglirpa is the word Aprilgrap reversed, which is Dutch for April fools.

3. 2010, The Netherlands: Free travelling with concrete glue. Dutch people were messaged that you could travel for free! The only thing you had to do was to put some glue on your public transport card, and you could check in and out without any credit being deducted. The message was widely spread in all possible media.

These examples illustrate the development of jokes in media. TV used to be a powerful medium, news papers generate a big public, but the last joke reached the majority of the target public because it was able to spread via all sorts of new media which made it go national!

So next time you try to pull one on your friends (or the country), be sure to use your social media ;)


Used sources:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
http://hoax.blog.nl/nieuws/2010/03/30/1-april-gratis-reizen-met-betonlijm

Oscars, The Social Network and angry bosses

It has been a while already since 'The Social Network' appeared in cinemas. This weekend it got some attention during the Oscars. Even though it wasn't the biggest winner, it appeared to be one of the top movies presented in the past year.

All the (media) attention for this movie made me wonder how it influenced Facebook as a company. Some research lead me to an article published in September 2010 by the Wall Street Journal, named For Facebook, Movie Damage Control.

Hmm.. just what I expected, the movie doesn't exactly describe the easiest road to success for the creator of Facebook and therefore Facebook bosses didn't seem to be too happy. The thing I was a little surprised by though was that "The company didn't formally cooperate, either, but at least one executive engaged in detailed negotiations with the filmmakers over the script, an attempt to mitigate the damage the film could do." Does this mean that the film makers didn't bother to find out about the real story, the real Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe he wasn't even that interesting. On the other hand, it assures us the producer wasn't censured or influenced by Facebook trying to control the possible damage and promote a different corporate history. I guess we'll never really find out because 'the real' Mark Zuckerberg doesn't really feel like telling his story either. He declined interviews with American news papers.

So what the Facebook company really feared was that "the movie could hurt an initial public offering the company is considering." The 'counter attack' of Facebook is a book called 'The Facebook Effect'. It gives a more sympathetic view of Mr. Zuckerberg, and the author had exessive access to the information provided by Facebook management.

So.. The Social Network is fiction, but that doesn't answer what the impact on Facebook was. When we compare the growth in terms of active users with other years, Facebook kept growing constantly. The growth didn't decline directly after the introduction of the Social Network. One could state that the interest of people for Facebook grew after the movie. Recently, many articles report about the tremendous growth of Facebook. Social media, with Facebook on the front line, is likely to start a new era, and...

...Facebook didn't seem to get any worse, but simply more interesting!


To read more, go to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704593604576141350618351030.html?mod=WSJ_article_related

Twitter, blogging and the revolution

Wednesday the 2nd of February it became all clear again. Blogging, twitter, and other social media are hot and happening. It contributes in providing the hottest news. In 'De Wereld Draait Door', a Dutch actuality programme, the influence of the new media on the provision of info about the demonstrations in Egypt was discussed. New information is not provided by the news papers or TV anymore, hell no... that takes way too long! Novelties are provided by 'live blogs'. To know what is happening on the streets at that very time journalists keep track of the Egyptians' stories online.

The hunger for fresh news isn't new of course. During the Gulf War, CNN was reporting back to the people every hour. This was unknown for the time. Critics though one channel would give a biased view of the situation. The possibility nowadays to keep track of all possible channels, even Ali's one, gives us a complete view of what is really happening. Still, Ali can write whatever he wants so channels, like online news papers, do acknowledge they need to filter out the true stories.

Besides, many journalists are in Egypt. They can directly respond to questions asked on twitter. Twitter can now be used as a public notebook and provide interessees with instant information. People can also put little (amateur) movies on, for example, youtube.com. Everyone can see with their own eyes what's happening!

Then another question arises: 'Does all this media instigate the revolution?' The answer reflects the bigger problem; lack of freedom. Few people have internet, and the ones who do are monitored closely to make sure they don't send the 'wrong' (in the eyes of the Egyptian government) information to the rest of the world. Still the government can't control the foreign TV stations, which enforces the people and gives them strength.

Lastly, news experts advise to keep track of AL JAZEERA and to follow the right people on twitter to get good information. This is new media, new journalism... a new world!

Here you can see the broadcast of 'De Wereld Draait Door' on 02-02-2011