• Great idea using paper prototypes (3)

Bookmarklet

• Create a bookmarklet/ browser plugin (3)

Photoshop vs Browser

• Bringing videos into photoshop might be overload.
• Would want the links to display in a browser instead of bringing them into Photoshop
• Whatever we decide to do with text based tutorials should be the same for videos.  They should be treated the same way.
• Can users view bookmarks in a browser or can they only access them in Photoshop?

Other Considerations

• Make the search results reflect the prior activity of the user
• Is there a privacy checkbox for users?  Users might not want to share or only want to share for a limited amount of time.
• Keep users logged in
• Add recommendations based on what you just searched for (Eytan)
• Use the integration w/photoshop to suggest stuff that’s relevant – like using windows, using cs5, etc. (Eytan)

Here are some pictures of our work so far:

Because our users reported sometimes having a hard time finding the information/tutorials they are looking for, we are also looking into options (apps on ning, at the moment) that might allow people to aggregate their favorite resources and publish them to the community site.  There is a ning app called ‘Flink’ that lets people add/save/tag links in a del.icio.us-like way, and then the community can ‘favorite’ or ‘rate’ the links.  This might be a great way to collect and display these resources.  A robust enough repository might be a reason to keep coming back to the site again and again.

We are also looking into an app called ‘Sharendipity’ that lets people comment on images that have been uploaded.  This might be a great way to crowdsource tutorials – if a tutorial creator uploads a series of annotated images, perhaps that tutorial can be open and editable by any other member.  Tutorials could be ongoing ’social objects’  that are never quite finished.

We talked a bit about the purpose of our site.  We agreed that the site should be for learning and fun, not for financial gain.  We currently have two central concepts: contests and tutorials. The contests would be regular photoshop design competitions where participants would begin with the same template (.psd).  The contests would differ in topic and scope – one might be an avatar, one might involve creating a webpage header, one might be a sample advertisement. We imagine a community voting platform would allow people to weigh in on what type of contests they would like to see next.  Submissions would be rated by community members on quality of design and quality of design documentation – documenting the process that you went through to get to this final design.

This is where the tutorials might come in.  One way to integrate the desktop photoshop application into this process would be a plugin that would let users ‘capture’ a moment in their creative process.  Either as they work, or perhaps by looking back through their history file, they could ‘capture’ certain important moments, saving the project image and commands (the commands might be ’since last capture’ but this is still undetermined).  They then might be able to upload the images and commands directly to the ning site, and annotate/fix the process as needed.  Later, as others use the tutorial, they might find some portion of it confusing – they could either fix it themselves, or mark it as ‘needs to be fixed’ or ‘confusing.’

Tutorials and contest submissions should be tagged with keywords (cs3, cs4, drop shadow, etc) to support findability.  If there is a forum, it should also be organized to support different levels of expertise, different types of questions, etc.

Finally, one of the most important things for our site is determining how to adequately motivate contribution to the site.  The wikipedia ‘barnstar’ badges that we read about may be a good model.  We need some kind of recognition tool to acknowledge the work that people are doing on the site; we will keep thinking about this.

Until our next meeting, we are exploring ning’s capabilities in more depth and testing out many of its applications.

• People are not opposed to creating their own tutorials, but they were not very excited about it.
• There are so many online resources already available (youtube, “how to” via google search, specific sites), people worry that they wouldn’t have a unique contribution or wouldn’t be as helpful. (Option to upload anonymously may help with this lack of confidence.)
• There was not a big concern about copyright issues with uploading content (1 person of 9 expressed some concern).
• Tutorials need to have enough detail – we would need to determine what the right level of detail is, though.  How many screenshots to include?  How much description?

Search/help patterns

• Once people have found a successful website/”tutor” they keep going back
• Some people search for helpful tutorials or tips by user (within a help site) – they trust people who have submitted helpful content in the past.
• The expertise level of posters and responders is important – help responses and tutorial contributions shouldn’t be over people’s head.
• We need to be conscious of findability – helping people find what they are looking for, and offering many ways to get to information.  This was a concern for novices – people don’t know how to find what they need, and they also had trouble ‘re-finding’ information they had found in the past.

Gauging User Proficiency

1. What is your occupation?

U01: Student
U02: Electrical engineer
U03: College Student
U04: University of Arkansas undergrad student, Gallery Artist
U05: product specialist 
U06: student
U07: student
U08: freelance commercial artist
U09: Teacher

2. Do you use Adobe Photoshop?

3. How long have you used Photoshop?

4. Do you use it professionally? (v.s. hobby, class)

5. What do you use it for?

6. How often do you use Photoshop?

U01:about 1x/week
U02: 1x every 2 weeks
U03: Once a week or two, weekly
U04: It depends. I can spend around 6 hours in photoshop in a day or not use it for a few days. It mostly depends on what projects I have going on or if I am just doodling.
U05: once a week
U06: every day 
U07: every day
U08: almost every time I turn on my computer, almost daily
U09: not often, depends on soclal functions

7. How would you rate your proficiency level in using Adobe Photoshop? (Would you say you are a…Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert?)

8. How confident are you using Photoshop? 0 to 10, 10 is most confident

9. Do you use other Adobe products?  Which ones?

U01: Illustrator, Bridge, Acrobat reader
U02: n/a
U03: nope
U04: I have used dreamweaver, illustrator, bridge, and a few drawing programs.
U05: CS4 All
U06: Illustrator, flash, dreamweaver
U07: illustrator, indesign, acrobat
U08: I do. Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Image Ready, Director, trying to use Flash
U09: Illustrator, acrobat

Games

10. Do you participate in online games or contest? (Farmville, WoW)  If so which ones? why?

Learning

11. How did you learn? (classes, books, tutorials, friends?)

12. If you wanted to learn how to do something in Adobe Photoshop what would you do?

13. Were you successful?

14. What sites did you reference?  Why?

U01: Don’t prefer any site in particular
U02: gimp.org, other than that might just google
U03: I don’t remember their names Laments: the sites didn’t have very good searching features.  It seemed like just 50 tutorials thrown in there. If I couldn’t find stuff I’d just move on to the next site.
U04: conceptart.org, cgtalk.org, good-tutorials.com They have taught me everything I know about digital art, and more fine art as well. I have learned more from conceptart.org than any other schooling I have had.
U05: not that i can think of, “photoshop disasters” , don’t have one site in particular
U06: google, adobe     
U07: google, tuts has good tutorials, lynda is good but costs a lot.
U08: I have a whole set of bookmarks of tutorials that I run accross. receive links from one guy I follow on twitter.  Vectips.com is a good one that I know by name and go back to enough.

15. How did you learn about the site? What features do you like or dislike about them?

U02: gimp.org – tutorials and documentation are most useful.
U03: 
U04: I found out about them simply by just looking for art websites years back when I started getting interested into digital art. Each website does and provides what it is supposed to be. The career I want to pursue may not be in the same subject matter of what is mostly on these websites but as far as the technical stuff and understand the art world I just soak it up.

What features are you expecting to find?

U05:  What not to do, funny links
U08: think it was unsolicitedly spat at me through twitter, or though a search

16. What features do you expect to find? (or like/dislike?)

Contributors

Sharing:

17. How do you feel about sharing your work publicly online? What are your main concerns?

18. Would you be willing to upload your work to a community site?

19. If you wanted to do that right now what sites would you use to accomplish that?

Tutorials:

20. Have you ever created/shared a tutorial online?  (Any kind)

U03: nope
U04: Yes I have made simple walk-throughs but nothing too in depth.
U05: Yes, layer masks, 3D effects, posted on his own blog
U06: No
U07: No
U08: not with pictures, but i have created a tutorial about how to create a clickable url link. mostly because he was annoyed with people’s plain text links.
U09: no, don’t know enough

21. If so, talk about the process you went through to create the tutorial.  How did you gather images?  How did you decide how to structure the tutorial?

21. Would you create a completely new project in order to assemble a tutorial, or would you create the tutorial only if you had already done all the work for another reason?

U01: n/a
U03: I would probably decide after the fact, “hey, that would make a cool tutorial”
U04: If I had multiple layers used in my project it would be easy to make a tutorial, but if I worked straight onto one canvas layer, then it would be more difficult. If I worked on one layer I would probably start a new and more focused tutorial on what I am trying to explain.
U05: no, considering how there is so much stuff out there
U06: don’t want to spend a lot of time on tutorials…
U07: ” ” “
U08:it depends on how infatuated I am with this community, but chances are I would not make something new unless it was really simple.

Community

22. What social networks are you a member of?

24. Have you gotten help from user forums in the past?  Talk about a time when you got help from a forum…what was good and what was bad about the experience?

• Great ideas 3
• Good definition of scope 2
• Loved automation snapshot of history feature
• Good platform plan
• Could see myself using this
• Nice name 2
• Road-block idea is cool

Negative

• What are user incentives? 3
• Marketing and promotion will be a challenge
• You’ll have to fight copyright
• how are videos different from YouTube?
• Source files can often be huge 2
• Concern for people uploading maliciously
• Recommender sounds more like reputation system

Suggestions

• Adobe Workshop could be competitor
• Check out Aviary site
• Implement searchable tage
• Guessing Steps idea is brilliant
• translation might be an issue
• You may not want to automatically share or upload

The purpose of the communication covenant is to establish team roles, determine the best means of communication between members, and to define group expectations.

Team

• Adrienne Klum
• Annie Fang
• Katie McCurdy
• Eric Mrak

Communication Agreements

• Weekly group meetings will be held every Wednesday at 10:00am at ERC on State. Additional meeting times will be determined on a weekly basis based on the due dates of project deliverables.  Tentative additional meetings are Fridays or before class on Thursday.
• Meeting attendance is mandatory.  If a person is running late to a meeting they must contact a group member to notify the team.  If a person cannot attend a meeting for various reasons, the group must be informed in advanced.
• A person must notify the entire team if an assignment cannot be completed by a date and time determined by the group.
• If a teammate fails to contribute to the group assignments he/she will be confronted in a group meeting.  Under extreme measures, the issue will be brought to the instructor if his/her contribution level does not improve.

Information Sharing

• Gmail/GoogleDocs/Dropbox will be used as a repository for all emails, files, and notes relating to the group
• Emails must be sent to all members
• Team members are responsible for checking their email at least twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening.
• If group members must respond immediately to an email, a request for response must be indicated in the subject line of the email (example: [Please Respond], [Respond Joe]), and the email should be responded to within 24 hours.

Code of Conduct

• Each team number will actively participate and contribute toward data collection, analysis and evaluation for the group project.
• Members should anticipate equal workload distribution.
• Members must treat one another with respect.
• Disputes among team member must be addressed and reconciled immediately.
• Decisions will be made in best interest of the group.
• Each team member is accountable to uphold the academic integrity of his or her contribution to the group.  The team member will be held responsible for any unoriginal work submitted on his/her/the group’s behalf.