Following on from this post
A site search tool needs relevant meta data from users, so this intail profile age becomes crucial. What needs to be thought about is the information that is being captured at this initial stage, how and where will it be used later on I what to link students work together, by common themes. By styles, interests, ideas, colours and so on. So at a later stage this can be pooled and used to link work together. What I want to try and avoid is narrowing people down to typographers, animators, graphic designers or web designers. This isn't the course philosophy, from the course website
"The course has an unusual profile recognising that once discrete disciplines with graphic arts and design have now converged.....
The diverse range of practice and process you can engage with are animation, broadcast graphics, illustration, design for print, web design, photography, art direction, advertising, traditional print and digital imaging and editing, typography, letter press and bookwork."
OK so maybe this isn't just a sign up page, it's a profile page as well. You can update your status likes dislikes ala Facebook
What needs to be done those is make people update their profile on semi-regular basis. In the case of CAGD site could this be done at the beginning of every term, after tutorials, seminars. Do you auto log people out and force them to sign in or give them the option say every six weeks?
The extreme of this would be to automatically add books you've loaned from the library and feed them onto your page so you don't have to add them. Could you auto add RSS Feeds and contacts. See MA research tool, how to eliminate that extra navigation step.
So what to collect and how to do it? One thing is to make it visual, can you upload thumbnails of your like/dislikes? Could your lists of favourite be visualised- do you take these from Google or do you start to cannibalise the site- my profile says I like Willem De Kooning paintings, do I get an image that is has been tagged De Kooning, abstract, Pollock- do you get a random image from one of these.
Or could you do what Wikipedia does and start to link to general information. For example the first sentence of the De Koonings biography on Wikipedia mentions abstract expressionism, Rotterdam and the Netherlands. Could I start to be linked and fed images relating to these terms? Hmmm....
This feeds back into the search tool. For example if I use the graph layout, my most relevant images are 1950's American Abstract expressionist but at the other end you could have Rem Koolhaas and Dutch architecture.
Edit:18/5/2008
Develop a mock up page and/or series of interactive tests that could be incorporated into a website sign up page to help profile users likes and dislikes.
Find out what tests exist at the moment (abstract, impressionists, cubist)
Developing templates form this
Options for skins
10 questions. What do you like, why do you like it?
How to tag without words
Animations, visual. Remember art and design a visual language
Testing to see what people like
Find out what tests exist at the moment (abstract, impressionists, cubist)
Set up a simple interactive test
Fine art versus design
What do you do with this information, how and why you are profiling people
Art personality
Pick a Palette
Colour Quiz Print this post
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