Designing The System

So it's time to start the coding process - what do we do and where do we go? Well recently I have been playing with Ruby on Rails on a few home projects (Why? Who knows really - I read about and happy it's meant to make the coding process so I thought, "why not?") and thought it would be cool to try it on a full scale app. So it's a rails app working with RESTful routes (my first REST app).

We're gonna need a few tables within a database (mySQL sounds about as good as many for what we want) - one to look after the users information, one to look after business information and a couple for tagging and rating.

I suppose that I could also throw in some "site map-py / relationship diagrams" in here to show the flow of the web site... But they're in a sketch pad at the moment - so will scan them in later.

For now this is it - next post will be a progress update!

Bought http://mynewfavourite.biz

As the title suggests - we've just bought http://mynewfavourite.biz.

Production Phases

Phase One

Phase one consists of developing a barebones application which allows users to;

• Users have to be able to signup / login / logout
• Users have to be able to search for a business
• Users have to be able to rate and review a business

Phase Two

Phase two consists of creating all the administration features of the app.

• Administration of Users
• Administration of Businesses

More phases will come as we develop.

Presentation

Presentation day was yesterday :) and I seriously thought that we were going to be there for HOURS!!! Every 'group' were allocated 3 minutes but most went for at least 10.... Brendan and I were presenting at number 9, class started at 10 and I think we ended up presenting at around 12.30.

Our presentation went well - we made sure that we only went for the allocated 3 minutes and I'm sure that the the tutors and lecturer appreciated it.

Lorna got back to us with her feedback earlier today. She raised some good questions which are listed below.

• Have you figured out yet how to get past the critical mass issue?
• Are there any large social/commercial/community sites that you can use to plug your idea to get a good number of reviews happening?
• Perhaps the Brisbane group on Facebook?

We have thought of a couple of questions raised but we will have a bit more of a think about it before we announce.

Time Frame

Below is our proposed working schedule.

Weeks 6 - 8

Full blown production - trying to get a working model.

Weeks 8-10

Limited testing (anyone want in?). Working out bugs, adding new features et cetera.

Weeks 10 - 12

Add in finishing touches. Start developing a community. Start writing up all our documentation.

Obviously this plan is very ambitious - we've given ourselves 4 solid weeks of development (including user testing) so it is going to be full on to get it underway.

Just a note - for assignment we can't possibly make a fully fledged / working site. We are hoping to draw up a few 'phases' and decide on a phase to achieve by week 8.

Proposed Project Plan

Users

Who will be using the system?

• Anyone that uses any types of businesses and has an active interest in online social communities
• Ages from about 20 plus

Outcomes

What outcomes do we want to achieve?

• Develop a web app from start to finish
• Develop an understanding of online social communities
• Networking / Collaborating with real world people (creators of WeLoveLocal)

Output

The main output of the assignment is going to be: A business review website driven by a social community. The assignment can be broken down into the following...

Quality

Fun, Professional social network with commercial objectives

Expectation

Easy to use, fun, relevant / dynamic, dynamic community

External

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Work

Time

As of week 6, we have 6 weeks until the assignment is due.

Money / Resources

All we see ourselves needing is a domain name and some server space.

mynewfavourite.biz

yes, I know.. i should have given up by now, but I am doing something else on the project as well, as tim soon to follow post will prove. 

I thought of another possible domain name contender today:

mynewfavourite.biz

If you care about my internal struggle to choose a name; i will soon be posting a new poll (taking away the "what is the name of today" one.) allowing to vote for tim and i's favourite few...

See.. our studio project is already interactive before it even begins...

Tim to follow...