User Design Expert Will Evans was elected to the Information Architecture Institute today. His term will last three years, and he’ll be responsible for developing and leading initiatives that provide networking opportunities for information architects, education and mentoring, and driving awareness around the evolution of user experience and design.
Will has been a member of the Information Architecture Institute for years, but this is the first time he’s been elected to the board. He’s a frequent guest and popular speaker at IA conferences. Will serves as Twin Technologies’ Director of User Experience, providing visionary creativity and guidance for clients that are interested in redefining how users experience their brand online. Will’s designs explore how people engage on and off-line, which tools act as the right catalysts for online engagement, and what factors contribute to social traction.
The IA Institute is a professional organization dedicated to advancing the state of information architecture through research, education, advocacy and community service. IA Institute sponsors the IDEA conference each year, that explores the convergence of experience design with social and user experiences, and the growing importance of aligning expectations.
Principal, Experience Design Will Evans spoke on Emergent Social Search Experience during a panel discussion at the Enterprise Search Summit in NYC on May 12
The social web is all the rage, but does “social” work for the enterprise? Like water cooler wisdom, social search can help surface information workers might not know exists. Search inside and outside the enterprise is becoming social. Will discussed the evolution of social search, how crowd wisdom is evolving search interfaces, and what the enterprise can learn from these developments.
Will’s expertise helps Twin Technologies clients learn strategies, explore solutions, and build the skill sets you need to make your content not only searchable but findable and actionable. Enterprise search is not just about locating masses of information, it is about enabling employees to more effectively perform their jobs.
Building The Next Generation of Online Learning Platforms
A distance learning system is possible that is fundamentally different from other e-learning platforms available today. While most e-learning sites cater to corporate professionals and learning institutions, this platform can provide a means for the general internet user to create and participate in learning activities in a meaningful way. By providing flexible tools such as interactive video streaming and charting, workflow creation for lab exercises and guided self-study, a quiz creation and proctoring module and interactive presentations, instructors can create diverse courseware geared at fellow hobbyists, crafters, home schoolers and study groups. An easy to use online management system can allow quick and easy creation of content, while an online marketplace provides revenue for courseware creators.
A Conduit of Knowledge
In most self-study and homeschooling environments, the chief barrier to success is lack of meaningful instruction. Most available courseware is limited in scope or expensive. Even when appropriate materials can be found, often a lack of mentoring prevents students from getting past difficulties in the learning process. Those who have the ability to provide this mentoring often cannot afford to invest the time or money required, or a channel may not exist for their mentoring to reach those that need it. A conduit of knowledge is needed to bridge the gap and bring mentors and students together.
The new e-learning platform provides this conduit. For a yearly fee and a percentage of revenue, mentors have access to an online toolset that allows the creation of locations, classes and courses. Courses are the overall content unit offered to students as part of a searchable and categorized marketplace where they can shop for mentoring and instruction. Students will be able to reserve space or immediately purchase access to a course depending on whether a course is offered only during certain times, as limited enrollment or on an ongoing basis, . Courses may have prerequisites that can consist of any other course offered in the marketplace as determined by the instructor.
Courses are taught on one or more locations, which are online areas containing a set of tools. Locations are the settings for classes, which are an individual unit of work that a student is led through. Classes may occur only at certain times if live instruction is given or on an ongoing basis if guided self-study is provided. Instructors and students may communicate in forums or privately between classes to provide feedback and preparation for other classes. Instructors may choose which students are aware of or may attend each class according to course level or individual selection.
Students attending a class access a location, a page consisting of a set of tools. A tool may be a presentation or lecture, a video or live video conference, a project workflow, a live chart, chat, or live or recorded audio. Tools in a location connect with each other and interact. Tools also provide an interactive interface according to the settings the instructor chooses.
A Yoga instructor might choose to add a project workflow, live audio, video, live video and chat to a location. Students participating in a class may hear music, general instruction and question/answer sessions via live audio while being led through a series of videos showing correct form using the project workflow. Students that have questions use the chat interface to communicate with the instructor. The instructor can view the student in real-time and provide feedback via audio or chat. This allows each student to work on their form using the instruction provided in the videos while receiving instant interactive feedback.
Students can save the live chat, audio or video if allowed by the instructor, or can take notes that are preserved in the lesson. Instructors can create template web pages, articles, links and downloadable files to be available in the reference library linked to a course, allowing easy access to recommended resources.
Courses or individual classes may be private, group instruction or guided self-study. Guided self-study uses project workflows and self-auditing quizzes to guide students through study of a subject. A programming instructor may design a course that consists of several guided self-study classes interspersed with group instruction. Private instruction could be made available by the instructor as part of a course or on a premium basis.
Students pay for fee-based courses by credit card and can use the card to reserve a place in the class if set by the instructor. Free classes may be reserved by students on a first-come or instructor-chosen basis depending on the settings for a class or course. Courses can be open or closed, so students may or may not be able to take individual classes without taking the complete course. This flexibility creates a conduit through which diverse groups of instructors and students may exchange knowledge.
A Self-enhancing Strategy
Content on the platform will also be aimed at improving instructors’ skills and use of the tools provided. Instructors will receive one hundred percent of revenue for courses offered on courseware creation and site usage, creating an additional source of mentoring and revenue for instructors. The modular design of the tools allows instructors to create customized tools and locations that can be offered free or at a premium to other instructors.
Courses may be offered by one or more instructors and are rated by students on completion. Instructors can use this rating to offer guest instructor services for courses, as well as attract other instructors to offer classes in a course. By choosing a highly rated course as a prerequisite, students taking the high-rated course will see information about other courses they may wish to participate in. Students may also make their course lists public and receive credits for each referral that may be used toward other courses. The marketplace becomes a collaborative space that helps new students navigate the selection of courses while helping instructors find students and revenue sources.
Adobe released its Solution Accelerators today. These Accelerators speed the development of certain key application types on their LiveCycle ES platform. The three key areas are Account Enrollment, Corespondance Management and ‘Benefits and Services Delivery’. Twin had the unique responsibility of building a key component to the Account Enrollment and ‘Benefits and Services Delivery’ solutions called the Dynamic Data Capture (DDC) component.
The Development Team at Twin will post more on the inner workings over the next two weeks.
New Twin Technologies client Paragon Lake is a company looking to redefine the way that the end consumer goes about designing and purchasing custom jewelry. Paragon Lake is engaging Twin Technologies to assist them in launching a first of its kind new marketplace tool.
Twin Technologies innovative client Vertous LLC has launched a more feature rich Beta of their site izzitgreen.com. If you have not checked it out you definitely should. Here is the text of their recent announcement listing some of the new features at izzitgreen.com.
“If you haven’t visited IzzitGreen in a while, here’s a quick update. Izzit a work in progress? You bet. We are in early open beta, which means things don’t always work perfectly. We apologize in advance for any problems you stub your toe on, but we assure you we’re fixing them as fast as we find them. Our goal in opening up our site early is to work with our community to identify the best ways to refine and improve IzzitGreen. So keep that feedback coming, and help IzzitGreen transition from its “awkward, hormonal, zit-covered stage” to its roaring 20s.
Here are some features to check out:
Reviews, Reviews, Reviews We have a ton of excellent reviews being written every day by smart and talented people like yourselves asking the question “IzzitGreen?” and sharing the answers they find. Write a review today!
People: Our Community is growing every day, and now you can search for your friends or see people from your neighborhood. The fun doesn’t stop there. You can also see what they are all about by viewing their profile and giving them a compliment.
How much time do you spend every day wondering what the impact is, on the environment, of various goods and services you consume? If you’re like many people you feel the need to make informed choices but where do you turn?While many companies and products declare their ‘greenness’ their pitch is often suspect, articles in magazines or the web are often ill informed or biased, and everyone seems to have a different idea of what green really means.
Well Twin Technologies is helping Boston based client Vertous launch a new site to help you, me, and everyone else understand exactly how ‘green’ a product or service is. Their new site, izzitgreen.com, embraces the collective intelligence of concerned citizens to understand, educate, and communicate exactly how green our choices are.
So if you ask yourself ‘is it green’ when making choices everyday that you should checkout izzitgreen.com.
