Digital Media Project – Sqeakr

Since the poster presentation given last term building has commenced and is over half way through. Using ‘PHP6 and MySQL5′ by Larry Ullman I have managed to get most of the structure implemented. Right now the index page shows the five most recent posts, and is styled so that I can use those divs for any other table and it will grow with the number of threads displayed. The sizes of the divs and text is done with a mixture of pixels and ems to maximise accessibility when enlarging text.

Users can sign up with their password being encrypted using SHA1, so even in the database their actual password cannot be seen. A confirmation email is sent to help make sure the users are human. They can also post threads, although this functionality is not finished. The code to upload music is almost finished and, since it was built outside of Sqeakr, I need to implement it which shouldn’t take too long. Commenting has not been built yet, but the code will be very similar to that of posting threads, so I will finish that code completely before starting on comments.

Users can log in and log out with the session changing the index page to the user’s five most recent posts. This functionality has still not been fully styled.

I have looked into music players and have found several flash based players which are open source. Such as the one found here. I am looking to have the logo redesigned along a similar theme by one or more graphic designers to give the site a more professional feel. The video that will go on the home page also needs creating, I have never made anything similar but think I will probably use Adobe After Effects, but it’s a hard application to learn.

I am looking to have the system finished for the end of February so testing can commence.

The application can be seen here.

Social Networks started with the coining of the buzzword Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005), which is built on the idea of user generated content and interaction. It is important to look at aspects of the social web to see if integration into Sqeakr could enhance the user experience. The social web can be broken down into two major groups: people focused and activity focused.
People focused social websites emphasize social interaction through user-driven personal content. This content is centred around the profile or user’s home page. Each member within the community has a profile page that contains personal information. The amount of information provided is the decision of the user. Facebook and MySpace are the most popular people focused social websites, with Facebook recently becoming the most visited social networking site (AFP, 2008).

Activity focused social websites emphasize social interaction through site-specific content. This site-specific content is usually a thematic focus for a website with users providing their own contributions to that specific theme. There are a large number of activity focused social websites, ranging from film making to dating. Users post their content that contributes to the community. These sites can also contain a more user-centred focus and incorporate elements from the people focused social websites, but the common distinction is the site-specific theme or content. We classify Flickr(photos), del.icio.us (bookmarks) and Youtube (video)  as activity focused examples of social websites (Shiri 2009).

Sqeakr falls squarely into the activity focussed group of social websites where content is posted by users for other users to comment and expand upon. Sqeakr will not be centred around the users’ home pages but the problems they post, more like in the forums or on youtube where the videos are the focus rather than the users profile page. So does Sqeakr need to use the primarily people focussed website attribute of affiliating other users to themselves by adding them as friends? If Sqeakr was a site designed for musicians to post up their finished music to showcase it then having a friends function would be useful in that it would allow users to be updated on new material when their favourite artists publish it, like subscribing to another user on Youtube or Vimeo. But, more like a forum, Sqeakr is to help people solve their problems when it comes to recording their music and help users develop. Adding users as friends would only mean that some people’s posts would become more popular than others according to how many friends or subscribers they have, and would discourage the social collaboration being open to all users, especially the newest.

The difference between Sqeakr and typical forum sites is that it is based on media. So not only can users post up problems, but they can post up ideas that can give other users inspiration which can then be built upon, which is where it becomes similar to a social based site. A site that is media based but offers no interaction between members is Bandcamp.

Bandcamp offers artists a place to showcase their music giving them a URL to a page where their songs can be downloaded from. It also has the option of embedding songs and albums into external websites which can also allow people to pay and download the tracks.

References

O’Reilly, T. (2005), ‘‘What is Web 2.0’’, O’Reilly Media, available at: www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/ oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Ali Shiri (2009), “Sociability and social interaction on social networking websites”, www.emeraldinsight.com/0024-2535.htm
Associated Free Press (2008), Facebook is Online Social Networking King, Canada Free Press, available at: <http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g9sJhz8iqeROKrSn0TP2-oaMnkFQ>

This is the first post of a three part report titled: An In-depth Look at Social Websites, Forums and Other Collaborative Websites within the Context of Sqeakr.

Introduction

It is essential that Sqeakr takes what it needs from these three genres of website and leaves what it doesn’t. My idea of what I would like Sqeakr to be from a usability perspective is it should be as simple as possible. The interface should be clean, the options available should only be those that help the goal of the website: to help musicians collaborate so they can develop technically, and to help users get inspired. This research is to detail what should be incorporated and why, what could be incorporated and whether it will be, and what will not be incorporated.

What does Sqeakr need?

Sqeakr needs to have members who can sign up and navigate through other users work. They need to be able to comment on that user’s work and be able to add other users to their favourites so they can follow their new posts. They need to be able to post up their own ideas and write about how they did it, what inspired them and what they would like to improve on so other users can post on it. That is the core functionality that Sqeakr needs to be based on, everything else is secondary.

Forum

The posting of problems/ideas with the idea of getting help from other users has been around the internet for almost as long as it has been the world wide web. Now there are thousands of different communities that vary in topics from fishing to medical advice. Community support is integral to the idea of Sqeakr so it should take on many characteristics of the modern online forum. I will take two popular forums and discuss their similar characteristics and where they vary from the standard model.

Forums developed from online bulletin boards and usenet systems that were common from the late 1970’s to the 1990’s. Bulletin boards have all but been replace by forums, but usenet sites have been taken over on the whole by illegal file distribution newsgroups. Not all of the files distributed are illegal, but like torrent file sharing technology, it is used mainly to distribute copyrighted material. An example site is www.binsearch.info.

Google Community and OverclockersUK Forums

As forums have been developing for many years and therefore have evolved a standard pattern in their design and architecture. Even these two forums which span from the biggest google community forum to a small computer tech website have features that are very similar to each other. Both sites have a banner across the top with the title of the forum in it. There are log in boxes to the top right of the screen, suggesting that that is the common pattern in the design and that is where users would look to log in. The recent topics/threads are shown in the main content window in the centre of the page for everyone to view. These would be looked at by the individuals in the community who give a large amount of their time to support, looking at the problems posted and giving their advice. My experiences of forums have been from using a search engine to look up a problem and searching through the different forums for the solution. If each forum did not have a community behind it working on the problems that other users have posted, these resources would not be available to search engines, so it is the community behind it that keeps a forum working. This means that in the early stages of Sqeakr I would have to do a lot of the support myself along with a few other people with experience of this sort of thing that I can get to help me.

Both forums have a search option allowing users to search through content on the site. You can only brows the forum rather than post if you do not have an account. As Sqeakr is aimed at technical progression in terms of musical ability, I think the thread should be closed to anyone but the users of the site who are signed up, this means that the users are more likely to contribute to the collaborative efforts in the site which will contribute to the community as a whole.

Sqeakr can take a lot from the forum pattern. The newest posts will link directly to the front page so users can brows through them and give support to posts that are awaiting a reply. The sign in area will be at the top right of the screen with the option to sign up. Signing in will take you to a list of posts you have created as well as giving the option to create a new one, it should also have functionality to tell you when a thread you have worked on has been added to. However, Sqeakr is not going to be a forum, just adopt the properties that will help it in collaboration and development. This analysis also raises issues when it comes to navigation. Different artists are going to want to look at different genres according to their tastes, so how will they navigate these genres? Even if they do want to work in specific genres, it will also be important to get people who are proficient in different styles to work outside of their comfort zone in other genres where they may find some inspiration to bring in to their music.

Introduction

There are plenty of places on the internet to post your recorded music as a showcase and have people buy it and/or comment on it. There are also some scattered forums on the web where musicians can join and discuss the best hardware to use, the best software to use and to get help on problems they are having. But there is currently no online site where musicians can visit to post up their ideas as music files and have it criticised constructively, receive support from other musicians for issues with hardware, software and techniques, or a place to visit where other musician’s posts can give you inspiration and ideas.

Description

Sqeakr will be a social network for musicians that will give them a place to put their ideas, like a blog, a place to ask questions and seek advice, like a forum, and a place to meet similar minded people with the same tastes in music.

Sqeakr will be like a social network, blog and forum all in one, but it will be a mix of the parts of each that are best for musical collaboration, keeping the scope as focussed as possible to keep the site usable and the deadlines reachable. The final application should help fledgling musicians find the right tools and techniques to start recording their songs and develop their own style, while helping experienced musicians experiment with different sounds and keep their music fresh with a pool of inspiration.

It will incorporate a very clean, uncluttered navigation, keeping ease of use as the priority of the design. Complicated functionality will be kept to a minimum.

Objectives

While the scope of the site is potentially very large, with clear objectives set out to narrow the scope, it can limit the use of unneeded functionality that could bloat the application, make it harder to use and increase the build time.

Project objectives:

• Create a place where musicians can come and get ideas, help and inspiration from each other.

• The scope of this site could be huge, such as incorporating functionality for gig listings or having an area for a showcase of completed music, so it is essential to keep a narrow scope of the original idea of the site so it is possible for it to be completed.

• Keep the site very easy to use, keeping navigation to a minimum. A good example site is www.bandcamp.com.

Research objectives:

• Learning about Creative Commons Copyright. “Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain. From all rights reserved to no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while allowing certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright”. Using this form of copyright has the potential to let users define their own terms of how they want their music to be used.

• How users will interact with each other, and designing the interface around making that as easy as possible. Looking into social interaction design which involves web design principles such as: information architecture, user interface design and experience design around a user centered design model.

• Research into why some social networks fail while others thrive. For example why Myspace is getting less popular while Facebook is still expanding. Whether the problems lie in usability or too much complicated functionality.

Learning Objectives:

• Become very well versed in PHP and MySQL, as well as learning to use the chosen PHP framework effectively making the final design very usable using technologies like XHTML, CSS and AJAX.

• Develop my project management skills including time management, good use of development cycles and correct application of recourses. It is important with a project that has the potencial of having a very large scope to manage my time effectively between writing the report and building the system. Poor use of time could result in one of the parts having too much spent on it and finding there isn’t enough to complete the other.

Methods, Techniques and Processes

• User Centred Design is an evolutionary process placing the users needs and wants in the central focus of the design process. I am using this process as it has the best chance of creating an environment that the user feels comfortable using with successful results.

• Lo-fi and/or Hi-fi prototypes are a very useful way of finding faults with a system before it has even been built. This can save hours of coding time when trying to fix problems in the build of the application. I will use either a hi-fi or a lo-fi prototype or both depending on how the project is developing.

• Competitive and Comparative analysis are useful tools to implement to see how similar successful sites have used web design principles to get their users to keep coming back.

• It may also be necessary to use methods such as cognitive walkthroughs and/or cooperative evaluations so I can see the system in use and where the problems lie.

Resources and support required

• Tutor support will be very helpful when writing the report for feedback, and if I get stuck on any particularly difficult pieces of code.

• The Library has a wealth of books and journals available for all of the research aspects of the project.

• Online recourses and tutorials e.g.: W3S. Similar to the library, the internet has a veritable font of tutorials and articles to do with the project.

Sources and references

The material I will use for this project will include coding textbooks, online coding libraries and books on interface design.

Welling and Thomson (2008) PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition). Pearson Education Inc.

Harrisson (2009) WordPress MU 2.7: Beginner’s Guide, Packt Publishing.

W3Schools website http://www.w3schools.com/ [2009]

Bates (2006) Web Programming – Building Internet Applications. J. Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Online PHP Library (SPL) http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.spl.php [2009]

Spool, Scanlon, Snyder, DeAngelo (2007) Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide (Interactive Technologies) Morgan Kaufmann

This could also be a possibility as a logo. I have moved the sound wave illustration from behind the type to make the logo clearer, it also serves as an underline in this position.

I’ve had another crack at the logo and this is the outcome:

I have taken off the border outline and replaced it with a more subtle outer glow. I have also replaced the Q with a quaver to sybolise the musical aspect of the site further inhanced by the sound wave illustration used in a lot of sound recording software.

My final year project for my Web Design degree is called Sqeakr. Sqeakr will be a Social Networking site for musicians, where they will be able to post ideas or parts of projects they are working on as audio files for other users to help develop and hone them. It will also be a valuable resource to help improve recording and instrumental technique through other musicians’ posts as well as a place to get ideas and inspiration.

Recording music is hard. Especially when we set our sights on producing the sort of sounds that professional artists offer today. Considering the equipment and technical expertise available to artists from recording studios, it is not a surprise that the sound they produce is so good. But these standards are not unattainable for those of us who have inexpensive home studios, it is just a question of using the correct equipment in the right way.

Sqeakr will be the place where experienced and inexperienced musicians come to develop their technique in recording music. With a whole community of ideas, everyone can get something new and useful to add to their sound.

It's a start...