Final Post Before Submission

Well this is just a quick post before the final submission of the THICK I.C.E android application tomorrow in our tutorial. I am not exactly sure what I am going to put in this post but i am kind of making it up as i go. Through the majority of the semester working with this team, who happen to be some of my closest friends at uni i have definitely enjoyed myself. I like being able to rock up to class to a relaxed atmosphere with a great group of people and it really helps when you get along with everyone (including staff). At the beginning of the semester I only knew my close circle of friends within the class, we had even pre arranged for us all to take this class so we could stay together. However towards the end of the semester and now I have gotten to know the majority of my class mates and really enjoy my time in the tutes. I had my opinions of some of my class mates at the start of the semester from past experience (primarily in INB385) but this semester i really got to know them a little better. My opinions have honestly changed greatly, some people in the class who I thought I would never get along with I now find extremely interesting to be around. Although the work load has been a struggle and none of my other units have really given me any slack I still wouldn’t change a single thing about my last semester at QUT. I have enjoyed the ups and downs of the Advanced Multimedia unit and I really do believe that I will take something away from the unit. That something is more maturity and openness.

Thank you to everyone involved in the unit for the second semester in 2012, I have enjoyed your company and I hope to see some of you again.

– Nick

Multimedia – Final advice before submission

Hey welcome back to my multimedia blog/little personal reflection, i hope my blog posts have been adequate so far. for my final blog submission before we actually present the final THICK ICE application infront of our multimedia class I would like to mention some things that we discussed in one of our final tutorials. In the weeks leading up to the final submission of our android application the app itself was progressing well, new components were being completed regularly (some late some early). We had a planned informal critique and Had some valuable feedback from both Jen and our fellow class mates that we all took on board. As much as everyone really hates seeing something they put time and effort into being deconstructed and picked apart I think it is a necessity. I am definitely no exception and some times I cant stand seeing work I have done or contributed to have negative reactions or feedback. But the whole idea of having our prototype completed for the informal critique tutorial was to have exactly this happen. The group collectively summed up the primary points where improvements could be made to the project at the end of the class. These were

– Improve the internal application navigation
– Develop the prototype for its presentation
– Add more content

These are summarised categories in which all of the feedback we received fall into.

Improve the internal application navigation
In its current state the application was by no means complete, however there were some aspects that we needed to address. One of the consistant problems we had was users not being able to navigate to and from (mainly back from) menus within the application. For users who were not familiar with the hardware we were using the demo on they found it difficult to make their way back through pages. This was an obvious gap in our design however i am torn between the decision to agree and disagree. I personally find it pointless having redundancy within any software, what many users did not realise is that the phone hardware was being used to navigate back through menus. I can however see how it is a problem as it conflicts with consistency when the user has to switch from using the application to then using the hardware as a form of navigation. Another feature that came under the internal navigation category was the application buttons themselves. After watching multiple users and even myself while demonstrating fat finger (overlap buttons and press the wrong one) the wrong button it was clear that we had some slight adjustments to make. After speaking with Jacob our project leader and one of our primary developers we decided on the implementing of an “auto fit” feature that will enable the application to perform consistently across multiple devices. This was our solution to the user feedback regarding some of the internal navigation issues. Personally I am happy with the results and really happy about the feedback we were receiving on the day. It put a smile on my face to see one group in particular being extremely impressed with how far we had come with an android application.

Prototype development for presentation
This was a category that had feedback and I had never even thought of which was great. Given that this is a prototype of what could be the final application 100% functionality is not expected. However we did see some students becoming confused as we had a lot of potential routes for them to follow but we had only planned the two primary scenarios. This raised the issue of developing the application for its prototype presentation. How we planned to solve the issue was to keep all of the content that we had added in the application but make it clear to the user on which routes were implemented. Making the available content stand out from the rest was the least time consuming and more viable method of designing for the presentation. It was frustrating to see some students using our application and when they could not activate a button they almost became disappointed with our work however this was an easy fix for the final presentation of our prototype. I am glad that we got this feedback as now it will make the prototype substantially easier to use during our demonstration and for marking purposes.

Adding more content
This category was probably the simplest, this feedback was mainly from Jen which is understandable as she wants us to have as much as we possibly can to showcase our efforts. Some of the content we had implemented for the prototype informal critique was purposely left not completed. Features like the expert system had only been partially completed because the group wanted to gauge exactly how well we were satisfying users needs. There was no point in having a system implemented 100% only to find that it was not correct and required hours of adjustments. This feedback was probably the most important for me as i took it in a way that meant, yes we are on the right track and all we need to do implement some changes to other aspects of the app and then continue on how we have been for the last few weeks.

I would like to thank both Jen and the class for helping us with the THICK ICE project and contributing their ideas and opinions that have helped us make a better product.

Thank you so much for reading

– Nick

Multimedia – Thick ICE

Hey guys welcome back to my blog again for some more multimedia goodness. Since i last spoke about my multimedia project on my blog we have come a considerable distance towards completion of the project. There are a few things I would like to mention in this blog post about the project that we have been working towards since my last post.

Firstly I would like to touch a little on expert systems and how they relate to our project. By definition an expert system within the field of artificial intelligence is a computer system that emulates the decision making of a human expert. Now if you remember just what our application is about then you will agree with me that the implementation of an expert system is critical. An expert system would be perfect for our application given that is essentially regurgitating the knowledge of an expert which we have obtained and verified. Upon some research we did find a system called Jboss which was an already implemented expert system. This system however did not really match what we were looking for because it involved the integration of an external java archive format which none of us had ever worked with before. Given that we were on a tight schedule for our project and the final due date was only weeks away we decided to push the idea of heavy programming loads away from the project as much as possible. I am by no means a programmer in any way so I couldn’t begin to fathom just how much was really involved in actually implementing other expert systems. At times I do wish I had more of a development role within the group with regards to the app itself, however our group composition and other constraints hardly allowed for it. It is rather difficult to organise a project and team and then it becomes irritating trying to baby some one through content they know nothing about. I decided I would stick more to my research and documentation role even though one of my aims from my last reflective portfolio was to become more attuned with the development aspects of this project.

It was decided that the implementation of the “expert” system was a job best suited to the development team. Jacob and Caitlin are far more adept android SDK users than Nicole, Ben and I, it would only delay the project if the three of us attempted to implement it. I am some what disappointed that I could not assist the development team as much as i would have liked without slowing the project down however the three members left found that researching, analysing and compiling the information for the scenarios was a task in itself. Nicole Ben and I were left with this task, that was to compile as much relevant information as we could find and make it easy to implement into the project for the final submission demonstration.

Over the course of the project so far I have found myself wondering that if I just had a little more experience in programming and scripting I might be of substantially more use to this group. I am more than happy to dedicate my time into research and documentation however I think if I were the type that took coding in my stride I would enjoy this project more as I would have a better feeling of satisfaction knowing I have had my finger in every piece of the metaphorical THICK ICE pie.

Thats all for this week, thank you for reading

– Nick

BNE + Social Networks

Hey there guys, as usual welcome back to my blog for Enterprise 2.0. This will be the very last of my blog posts for the Enterprise 2.0 unit for my individual assessment, I know its a sad day but we shall move on with our lives. This week in our groups we discussed the implementation of social networks for the Brisbane Airport case study that we are currently completing. During our discussion I was really searching for a form of social networking that was a little out of the box and perhaps not been thought about as much as say facebook and twitter. After thinking about it a little I realised that there really is no point in talking about anything other than facebook and twitter. I am sure you all realise that the strength of social network really does come from a vast array of people knowing about it and using it. As much as I would love to have had each group member come to our meeting with something other than Facebook and Twitter it simply didn’t happen. without further nonsense I shall move onto my preferred and chosen social network.

Facebook
My self and my group believe there is a real gap in the Brisbane Airports marketing infrastructure that Facebook could help to close. Facebook could be used to aid the Brisbane Airport in a number of ways all of which are extremely easy to implement. Facebook can essentially be used like a live wiki for thousands of Facebookers who can stay updated by simply clicking one button and liking the Brisbane Airport page. The type of information that the Airport can share on Facebook can be extremely broad, ranging from quick facts about the airport and say its bagage procedures and limitations to Updates on the Traffic and congestion troubling the primary routes in and out of the facility. As I mentioned in my last few posts I believe there is great room for improvement within the relationship and closeness that the consumers feels towards the airport. Its not surprising that the Brisbane Airport can improve here, after all it is a rather large business. I think bringing Facebook into the Brisbane Airports marketing strategy could aid in helping establish a better relationship with the thousands of travellers who use social networks. Social networks are all about the feeling of connection, thats what keeps users logging in every day or even multiple times per day. The Brisbane Airport has a great opportunity to utilise Social networks, we all know Facebook is the king of social networks so why not take advantage of it. The strategy for implementing Facebook is simple, it takes only a single person to manage the page and information can be shared to a phenomenal number of people in just a few keystrokes and clicks. I know this post was extremely vague but if you have read any of me recent posts I think you will understand where exactly it is I am coming from and just how much the Brisbane Airport has to gain with a Facebook implementation strategy. Thanks you all for following my series of posts.

– Nick

Reference List:
Watson, J. 2012. Social Networking including coporate considerations From INB 347 Lecture

Whats that? Wikis help enterprise 20 you say?

Sorry for being late with my blog post once again, but hey at least i am consistent with being late and i guess that counts for something. I do apologize but this week over the break I celebrated my 21st birthday, however it is time to get back to reality. This week we are going to be talking about Wiki implementation in enterprise, im sure you can all remember how much i support the use of wikis so prepare. If anyone has ever used a wiki before they would know just how powerful it can be in more ways than one, take the best buy case study from a few weeks ago for example. Considering im going to be talking about wikis all through out this weeks post i will give you a quick run down. A wiki is essentially a tool that is used for mass collaboration and sharing the wisdom of crows/harnessing collective intelligence. Users who are allowed to by administration can create their own pages, add to existing pages and chat on discussion boards, a lot of us overlook how useful this can be for a business especially one with a substantial base of employees. The more users (trust worthy ones :P) you have the more knowledge you can share, that is a key ingredient in making a wiki a viable enterprise 2.0 strategy.

Connecting Employees via Wikis
This week in our groups for Enterprise 2.0 our task was to discuss a few different wiki implementation strategies for our case study on the Brisbane Airport. While in our discussion as a group I really wanted to push the idea of Brisbane Airport implementing a wiki to be used by employees. As i mentioned Wikis are a great tool that allows the aggregation of information/data, this can be extremely useful in the right scenario. I mentioned an example last week of an employee giving out incorrect information due to not being informed about flight changes and due to IT infrastructure malfunctions a message was delivered manually however it was too late. As i mentioned this entire scenario could have been avoided if a wiki that allowed the rapid sharing of knowledge across a broad range of employees had been implemented. So how would we implement this kind of employee based wiki into Brisbane Airport you say? well it is rather simple really. A wiki can be easily setup online by using a hosting service like Wiki Farm (i even linked the wiki for you) however it will be up to Brisbane Airport IT management to place administration rights and restrictions on the pages. I think this is a very viable strategy to implement in order to increase organisation effectiveness across the board at the Brisbane Airport. A wiki used by employees can contain a wealth of information, all of which is contributed by knowledgeable employees and other authorised contributors with the aim of sharing and then harnessing the collective intelligence of the entire airport employee base. The wiki can include information ranging from personal employee profile pages, employment sector private pages, management pages, important updates pages, company wide announcement pages and even a suggestions page that could be made anonymous. From what i have just mentioned you can probably already see the benefits of implementing a wiki like this into the internal structure and workings of the Brisbane Aiport. I hope that i demonstrated just how powerful a wiki can be to everyone who read this, thank you so much for reading.

– Nick

Reference List:
Watson, J. 2012. Micro Blogging and Wikis in the Enterprises From INB 347 Lecture

Airports and Social Media

Welcome back guys, im sure you get sick of me saying that every week but i do appreciate all who read my blog each week. Sorry again for the late post on last weeks content but im still dealing with far more things than i can handle at the moment. This week though I will be talking a little about airports and the implementation of social media in order to promote healthy business growth and efficiency. This week the main goal was for my group and I for our second assessment to discuss the finer points of Brisbane Airport and discuss social media implementation. Now Brisbane airport is essentially a business providing a product and in turn making a profit, some people definitely forget this. Brisbane airports goal is to provide a serve that transports goods and passengers all from a central location. It does all of this while providing its services with a level of quality in order to keep customers, thus making whoever requires the airport and its services its stake holders. stake holders are definitely not limited to business, corporate or private passengers but also the employees and other institutions or organisations that require airport serves. During our discussion within the group this week the general mindset when we talked about social media implementation was the utilization of tools like twitter and the like. However i on the other hand would like to mention something many overlook when we think about the adoption of social media.

Micro-Blogging & Wiki implementation
The topic i would like to touch briefly is the implementation of tools like Wiki’s into the workplace. As you might have noticed by reading a few of my other posts i feel Wiki’s are a very under rated tool and they should be implemented more. As we have seen in the Best-Buy case study from the weeks past they can really give a business an advantage and help them keep ahead of the competition. The amount of information that passes through an Airport on a daily basis is incredible, there are hundreds of flight time, thousands of passengers and a multitude of staff to manage. I honestly believe that with the implementation of a wiki the Brisbane airport could really streamline its information logistics processes. Imagine you are an employee at an airport and a customer asks which gate their flight will taxi to on arrival. Keep in mind that this customer might not have seen the other notifications that the airport displays about flight changes and there is a member of management on the way to your desk to inform you of a change to said customers flight. upon arrival the customer asks which gate they should be at and you to the best of your knowledge reply with what you think is the correct answer as you have received this data from your PC. after the customer leaves your manager arrives only to inform you that the computer is displaying the wrong information and as a result you have told a customer the wrong gate and they have missed a flight. You are now technically not responsible for this however this could have been avoided if only you had been up to date with current information. I think the utilization of Wiki’s could solve issues like this, which are the the issues created by lack of knowledge and communication. A wiki can be used to streamline information logistics within any organisation. Keeping every employee up to date can be done without a wiki however i believe that implementation of Wiki’s and other blogging tools into everyday work at the Brisbane airport can help increase organisational effectiveness and encourage a standard of employee engagement within this business.

Thank you so much for reading my Enterprise 2.0 strategy input for the Brisbane Airport for this week and once again i apologize for the extreme delay, I hope you understand.

– Nick

Reference List:
Dreiling, A. 2012. Airportss – What’s Next From INB 347 Lecture

Last blog before Assignment 2

Well hello again for the second time today blog readers, i hope you are enjoying my blog for multimedia. Given that this post is in the same day as my last i believe it warrants some form of explanation. Well I usually leave my blog posts until a few days or so after the week that the post is meant to be detailing, however considering that assignment two is due tomorrow i thought it might be a good idea to get this blog post out of the way. Writing something tonight for my blog might help inspire me to add something further to my one page journal summery and contribution statement. What are these two tasks that are due tomorrow you might ask? well tomorrow is the final due date for

– The poster i have mentioned recently
– My contribution statement for said poster
– My reflective entry about these blog/journal posts

Now I have been keeping up to date with my blog entries most weeks, having them done a few days into the week after giving me some time to think about what i have done and perhaps what i could have done more of or better. This week I am getting this one out of the way a few days early, I think having something a little extra to talk about will help me conclude the final touches on my journal summery and contribution reflection. This week was mostly dedicated to finishing off the final touches on the poster for the THICK I.C.E android application. As you might remember from my post previous to this i mentioned that we had our poster completed a week early as we thought it was due last friday instead of this friday. I think this has helped me in a way because i have had a lot of other assessment due, including a 20 minute oral presentation based on the psychology of team diversity within a workplace environment. During this week I also dedicated time into revising the project plan one last time to make sure it was suitable for submission with the poster and reflection documentation. For the poster I think the feedback that was given last week regarding the section in the bottom left (who its for) was fair, there was too much white space and the images took up far too much room. When constructing this portion of the poster our goal was to demonstrate that the THICK I.C.E product would be suitable for a diverse range of consumers. The rest of the poster had very little negative/constructive feedback given, meaning we had less changes to make for tomorrow, which the group was very happy about. The rest of the poster i thought after the presentation could have less text and more visual aids implemented. We talked about this within our group and even mentioned it within the informal critique last friday. This is one change to the poster that we hope will make it more visually appealing and eye catching but also make it less of a task to read but instead more interesting to follow. This is one of the changes that is in my opinion critical to getting the highest grade possible as it is a visual aid/prototype for our product that in a real world scenario we would want to sell to our best ability.

Overall I think it has been a productive week for our multimedia group in general, the poster looks great and has some really solid content. Also the prototype of the actual android application is in the works although slightly behind I think we are making good progress considering this is our first attempt at actually coding a working application in the Android SDK. Things i could have done better this week personally would be communication with the group, I think everyone has been a little busier than they would like to be at the moment (including myself). I have sort of let it go and not worried a great deal about it however looking back i think we could have managed our communication better in order to make completing the poster and dividing up group work a little easier. As a personal goal I also want to contribute more towards the programming side of the project even though it isnt part of my duties within the group i am still interested in Android application development and it would take a little pressure of our two primary programmers. Other than the few things that i mentioned above i think we are going swimmingly with the project, I am happy with the poster and all thats left to do now if print out the final version of the project plan and touch up my one page reflection for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading
– Nick

Multimedia Blog 4 =]

I know i say this all the time, but welcome back to my blog again, im glad everyone could come back and have a quick read on what ive been doing in my multimedia project. In the last week of my INB386 Multimedia unit I was under the impression that I had a critique due for a poster design for our groups THICK I.C.E project that i have mentioned a few times before. Now this kind of made me stress and get my butt into gear to get the entire poster done by last friday. the three non technical members of the team which are Nicole, Ben and I were primarily focused on getting this part done while leaving the other two members (Caitlin and Jacob) free to work on the programming aspect of the assignment. We were presented with a list in the lecture previous to this being due that contained all the information that an exemplary poster should contain. We Had Michael for a tutor this week instead of Jen which was good and bad, good because we had a fresh outlook from some one different to comment on our projects and bad because he was slightly not up to speed on due dates. To complete the poster we researched some designs and chose a layout that we were all happy with, then we proceeded to go through the list i mentioned above and select the best options because we knew it was more important to choose 4 or so really good points and focus on those. Upon arrival to the lecture we were informed that the poster was in fact due the following friday, this was very frustrating. In reflection i now realise that it would have been wise to go through the lecture content again as Michael had accidentally missed the second due dates table and informed us of the wrong date. Although it was really nice having pretty much all of the work done a week early, crazy what a little bit of panic can make you do right!. During the design and construction of the poster i think the team members along with myself worked really well together, two of us had a face to face meeting for a few hours where we just discussed the layout and began adding content in that the third member was contributing via the skype call we had set up. Overall it was a good week and i feel the team was rather productive however we could have done a little more reading and maybe we would have avoided the stress and panic of trying to get the poster done in a shorter amount of time than we needed to.

thanks for reading
– Nick

ROI and Enterprise 2.0

Welcome back once again bloggers, sorry for the late post but i have been dealing with a little bit of unfortunate family business over the last week and i have struggled to find time for my blog post. The topic i want to discuss in this weeks post is ROI or Return on Investment and its relationship with Enterprise 2.0. For those of you who are not all that familiar with the term ROI it is essentially based around what you are receiving in relation to what you are putting in. In the context of Enterprise 2.0 for example, a business might put 10 man hours into implementing a facebook advertising and fan page which they paid 1 individual say $500 to do. If they make over $500 off the advertising capabilities of this page then that is a positive Return on Investment, if they dont then they are left with a negative Return on Investment.

Many debate that discovering just how much of a return an organisation makes on any sort of investment maid for an enterprise/social media strategy is a waste of time given that there are an insane amount of factors involved with any business and it is far too hard to isolate the investment by itself in terms of returns. I would like to disagree mainly because i am a big fan of social media strategies and just how much of a return can be made off them is an interesting topic for me. It is an obvious fact that people especially those people who run a business really do enjoy money, i can understand this point of view rather well as im sure most can. There is a problem though, how do we measure how much money is being made in regards to social media/enterprise 2.0 strategies? Yes it is a tricky question to answer but here is an example.

For this example I want to take a slightly different approach and look at the side of things many neglect. The measurement method i want to talk about is all about analyzing Intra-Business functionality and employee participation. Now if you remember back a few weeks you will notice i do talk a lot about wikis, this is because I very much think this is a substantial enterprise 2.0 implementation technique. Now im sure some of you reading this will think oh this isnt a good measure of the Return on an Investment because your employees don’t give you money for being happier doing their job. This is true BUT an employee who is provided with all of the tools required to be informed and productive will be a far better asset to an organisation. Helping get employees motivated and enthusiastic is the hard part of this equation, however i am a firm believer that wikis and other tools that can aid in connecting a business on the inside is the first step in increasing organisational effectiveness, look at the concept of crowd sourcing and the wisdom of crowds for many examples of this. the second half of implementing these tools is making it easier for the employees as i mentioned briefly before. If an employer provides employees with a rich and fulfilling environment to complete their work in they are much more likely to in the end produce a better final product, whatever it may be. I have seen first hand how changes in a work environment can effect the attitude and enthusiasm of individuals within an organisation.

I know some of you might be thinking that the returns of having happy employees and better organisation effectiveness might not be that relevant to ROI because they arent direct forms of currency in your pocket. However I believe that the combination of increased organisational effectiveness and an enthusiastic bunch of employees is a far better return than a few dollars and over the long run it provides other benefits like employee retention which can be critical in times of need. Thank you so much for reading my blog this week, feel free to drop a comment

Reference List:
Watson, J. 2012. ROI, Adoption Wider Issues From INB 347 Lecture

Another Multimedia Blog

Hey there guys, welcome back to my blog again for Advanced multimedia this week. I know i am a little behind and im posting now for last week but due to some personal time consuming events i have not had a chance to post yet. Last week pretty much consisted of me doing my part for the team in order to have something to hand in. For this week our deliverable was the project plan, at least that was the plan until the due date was changed to the next week which will be this friday instead. Either way the due date didnt make much of a difference as my self and Nicole Gardner worked out between ourselves who would be completing which section of the updated project plan. Nicole and I are the dedicated documentation members for the Thick I.C.E project so none of the other group members were involved and we kept it between ourselves as its not fair to have other group members worry about tasks that we are working on. We did consult our group leader Jacob once for some key dates that we needed to complete for the milestone section however we did not need to stress any other group members out which was great. Honestly thats all I really did for multimedia this week, the group assigned other tasks to other members which they worked on without trying to push any workload to Nicole or I so it was only fair that we do the same. Anyway, thanks for checking back into my blog again.

– Nick