Testing an experimental Facebook Application with CISVfriends' functionality.
I'm the kind of person, who doesn't spend hours of thinking and drafting, but loves putting on a jumpsuit and turning any idea straight into reality- even if it may cause trouble once in a while. So, I challenged myself last night, to see how long it would take me to set up a Facebook application that has the basic functionality of CISV friends - register camps, find friends, etc.
So, after three hours, here it is: CISV & Me, the new application for Facebook.
Disclaimer: I don't want to start a rival project to CISV friends - nevertheless I have criticized it in the past for not developing into a social network. CISV friends has been around ages before Facebook became popular, but never had any of the great functionality. So today, I think CISV friends should become an administration tool, and leave the social networking to the professionals. However, I have no intention to develop this app until it is perfect, I just want to experiment to see if it works (I may add some tweaks and a few more features, for the un of it, though). Also, I'm ready to take it down anytime, if people have valid privacy concerns.
I'm curious to hear your comments and suggestions!
I'm the kind of person, who doesn't spend hours of thinking and drafting, but loves putting on a jumpsuit and turning any idea straight into reality- even if it may cause trouble once in a while. So, I challenged myself last night, to see how long it would take me to set up a Facebook application that has the basic functionality of CISV friends - register camps, find friends, etc.
So, after three hours, here it is: CISV & Me, the new application for Facebook.
Disclaimer: I don't want to start a rival project to CISV friends - nevertheless I have criticized it in the past for not developing into a social network. CISV friends has been around ages before Facebook became popular, but never had any of the great functionality. So today, I think CISV friends should become an administration tool, and leave the social networking to the professionals. However, I have no intention to develop this app until it is perfect, I just want to experiment to see if it works (I may add some tweaks and a few more features, for the un of it, though). Also, I'm ready to take it down anytime, if people have valid privacy concerns.
I'm curious to hear your comments and suggestions!
Hey Nick — great job on the application! So far it looks good. A few suggestions (though you DON'T need to act upon them!):
- Make an "add programme & myself" button so that people to create one input, populate the DB and their track record
- Have an option for multiple inclusions so if people know their activities by heart (very likely) they are able to include them all at once
I would like to see an application (and I don't mean this should be the space, but who knows) that as you populate the database, it automatically (or not) creates a group or fan page and gives you the chance to subscribe to it, add the camp t-shirt, photos, videos, etc for that specific activity.
From the user experience perspective, I know CISV Friends catalogues a 2000-2001 camp as it happened in 2000. I wonder if because of the possibility of including whatever date you want, people will start to create duplicate camps. Also, should people include the "Camp" word in the name of the camp? Like "Three Cookies Village" or is the name "Three Cookies" and it should be catalogued under Village programmes? What if someone made a mistake with the name or date of a camp, can they go back and erase it?
Yeah, so besides these perhaps useless comments, I like the idea, but I think that unless there's a "Create a Page" button somewhere, it's just CISV Friends under the Facebook roof (which, granted, makes connecting with people easy) and not create the sense of community between people participating in the same activity.
I wonder if CISV Friends should have a "Create a Facebook Page" button for each activity. Maybe it could even use the Friends' e-mail database (with permission, obviously) to invite the people in Friends to a "social" space.
Good times...
Nice idea, here are my ideas for improvements.
- It would be nice if you could specify which country you were representing and what was your role at the camp. Just like in Friends.
- It seems that there's a max size for the name of the programs, two of mine were cut short.
- Instead of listing all programs by their names, it would be easier to find yours (and decrease the creation of duplicate camps) if they were filtered by country.
- Two hosting countries for Interchanges.
- The possibility to create/link to the page of the camp, as Nano said.
- An option to avoid the creation of duplicate camps would be using the official reference numbers. However, I do not like the idea, as nearly 100% of kids don't even know there's such thing, I guess.
how about tab support...or a box you can add to your profile
Ok, I've made a few improvements:
- I added tab support
- camp names can now be 40 characters long
- When chosing a camp, you see the country as well
I'm curious if the app takes off...
I've made a few small additions today, that improve the experience of adding new camps from a usability perspective, removed some bugs and you can now also add RTFs and JBMeetings. I know, nothing revolutionary, but CISV & Me never meant to be a killer app - just some friendly competition for CISV friends.