- Attractiveness of interaction
Aesthetics is very subjective. I have to admit that it is not appealing to me. There are too many colors in the home page and they are not in the same theme, such as light blue, dark blue, brown, yellow, light yellow and bright red. The developers may have problem in choosing a certain color theme they want to use. If the color should be chosen in order to make it more appealing to users and look comfortable within Facebook page.
The buttons are very big, that is very convenient for users to click. But the red color of the buttons actually does not fit into the Facebook frame and they are too catchy until users lost focus. ( refer to screen shot 2). They shall choose blue button is they only focus on function and want to make it look better within Facebook frame.
Space wise, as a user, it appears too crowded and lost focus, especially in home page. There are too many information flood out at one time, which do not give user instruction what he/she shall do. That may scare off many potential users.
- Number of options given to user when posting a need
There are 5 blanks in this page plus 6 check boxes in the home page, that gives user too much freedom. Once user see so many options, they will feel reluctant to call for help as they even need to get help to know how to use this application before they can call for any help.
Developers can try to cut down these blanks into one text box to allow a quick post or categorize the problems by providing tags.
- Cycle of interaction & incentives
This apps basically aims to get help for users through posting problems. User who is seeking for help is able to see the incentive immediately, as they know this application allows more people to know their problem and hence get a higher chance of receiving help. However, it is hard to for helpers to see incentive to help out even though users are friends on Facebook. Helpers want to feel good about themselves when they do good things. The virtual badge itself does not fulfill this need of the helpers only if it is awarded by the president of Singapore. Hence it is not enough to motivate users to help others or it doesn't make much difference. What Su Yuen showed us on Tuesday is an awesome way to solve this problem, which is using using virtual hugs and kisses to make users feel good. I am sure if they are given more time, the icons can be made cuter and more appealing.
Alternative way can be "certification", the helper will get a digital certificate with his photo and what he did after helping out, and this photo must be posted on the helper's Facebook wall. This will add value to the helper's reputation and most importantly can make the helper feel good. This can associate with Singapore Kindness Move to promote kind community as well.
- Other problems
It is easy to observe that the developers are really very thoughtful, they provide all the detailed function, such as "refer a friend", statistics, and etc. Some are needed like " refer a friend", while some may only wanted but not very necessary. So they may need to trim their application to make it clean and simple to use. Less, the better.
Another important challenge developers may face would be creating strong differentiating factor as user can simply post their problem on Facebook page. Hence this application must be very simple to use. Easy to say, hard to execute. This is something we all need to explore and focus on.
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