Assignment10HauckOrinPitts

Assignment10HauckOrinPitts

To Do

Be prepared to give a 5-10 minute presentation about your project in class so the other students and the instructors understand your ideas and can see the progress you have made

Please post in the Wiki the following things about your project:

• title
• abstract
• team members and their responsibilities (e.g: how have you split up your work?)
• why is the project of interest to you?
• description of what you have done so far
• plan what you will do in the remaining time till the final projects reports are due
• relationship of your work to the major themes presented and discussed in the class
• references identified

Group response

1. Members of the Group

Mason Hauck, Amanda Orin, Stephanie Pitts

2. Question 1

Rate Your Landlord

A project exploring the research required for an upstart website to rate landlords in the city of Boulder, CO. The site's main aim is to aide University of Colorado at Boulder students in having a better renting experience during their time in Boulder. The other aims are to give responsibility and power to tenants as well as hold landlords accountable for how they treat their tenants.

Mason Hauck: Primary Responsibility: Implementation mock-up Secondary Responsibility: Implementation detailing Tertiary responsibility: Research

Amanda Orin: Primary Responsibility: UI mock-up Secondary Responsibility: UI implementation Tertiary responsibility: Research

Stephanie Pitts: Primary Responsibility: Organization/Research Components Secondary Responsibility: Questionnaire Tertiary responsibility: Implementation

3. Question 2

Research: After coming up with our project idea, the first thing our group did was look around to see if anything like it already existed. We initially found that there were many sites with landlord ratings, but very few that had any landlords from Boulder, and often very few from the Colorado area. Since then we've looked at a few more sites. We believe that looking at these other sites allows us to understand what sort of features they offer. Seeing many sites allows us to see what features seem to be used widely, and which are extraneous. We believe that by combining some features we've seen on other sites and adding some of our own we can strike a balance that will be useful as well as used. The following details some of the sites we've found and some of the features we think are extensible to our own design.

http://www.apartmentfinder.com/ : This site has quite a few listings in the Colorado area, which is unique to any landlord site that we found. We believe that its slightly limiting because it only lists apartments. It also has very limited information on landlords and focuses more on the properties themselves. Thus, our project would be an extension on this site. One feature we found very helpful and that we think we should extend to our project is that use of a map. The pin essentially has "pins" that show where the apartments are located. This visual element is a good tool and very user friendly. It allows users to see where listings are available as well as what's nearby.

http://www.landorslum.com/ : This site has one rating for the Boulder area. It has a good ranking system that is easy to understand. However the ratings are based mostly on user comments and not terribly directed. It's difficult to always find specific information about why a tenant liked or disliked a landlord. The site also has no search feature on the main page and it takes a few minutes to figure out how one ought to navigate the site. So that's something we'd want to implement. They also had a map feature. This site ranges over the whole country so that areas were states instead of google maps, but its still a nice graphical feature. Again, only for apartments.

One product of our research is understanding what the limitations of getting a site like this up and running. Fro one, users don't seem to want to add to the community if the community has nothing to offer them. See next steps for what we're doing to combat upstart failure.

Implementation notes: The first step in creating the implementation mock-up for this project is to create a Functional Block Diagram or FBD. An FBD is a graphical representation of the modules that will make up the system and also shows the path of data flow between these elements. This helps to more concretely define the elements that need to be created in order to get the system functioning and also create a starting point in defining how these elements will interact with one another. So far we have created a first version of our Functional Block Diagram for the implementation of Rateyourlandlord.com.

User Interface Notes: The idea is to create an interface that has the following features: Login/Register as a member, Add a Landlord / Search for a Landlord / Browse Landlords, and something similar to Search by Location that utilizes Google Maps in some way. The last feature to be included in the interface would be a connection to a set of forums for the site to post feedback and/or commentary related to the site itself, etc. The color scheme will either resemble that of Boulder as a whole, something sleek and professional, or specifically centered as a CU-Boulder color scheme to appeal to the general student body within the city. The Login/Register as a member feature requires a database to keep track of all the members, which may automatically just register them as forum members and from there allow these "extra features" of adding landlords and/or rating landlords (as well as posting feedback about said landlords), since that may be an easier solution that creating multiple databases for the forum, the landlord information, and the registered members.

The searching feature may have a series of checkboxes that allow one to search for multiple types of properties that a landlord may own. For instance, in a general search one could check a box to search for landlords that manage apartment complexes, condominiums, and entire houses (not individual rooms, though that could also be an option to check for).

These features mentioned above would be categorized into a navigation menu for the site, and would always include a Home page link to return to the main site page. Search page results would have a default number of results to display per page (e.g. 25-40 range TBD), registered members would have an Account Options link to modify special settings and options only available to registered members, and at the bottom of every page would be a disclaimer that states something along the lines that the opinions posted on the site do not represent the opinion of the creators.

4. Question 3

Next Steps:

Research: Combating Upstart Failure: Now that we have a basic questionnaire written up, our next step is to take it to our peers, who just happen to be college students and the demographic we want this site to serve. We will both email out our form, start a Facebook group with our friends, and ask our coworkers and class mates to fill out the questionnaire we've written. Our hope in doing this is that A) We will have information to enter before the site is even open to the public. This will hopefully encourage use of the site as people will be able to use it to look at landlords before adding their own experiences. B) We will have a better idea of what issues as well as positives people experience with their landlords. Hopefully, this will enable us to flush out our questionnaire and make a form on the site that covers as much ground as possible. Fromt he research we've done already we know that an "Additional Comments" section is needed, because people like to be able to tell the exact story that has led to their rating.

Implementation notes: The next step in creating an implementation mock-up for Rateyourlandlord.com is to refine the Functional Block Diagram. The first thing that this entails is adding any missing modules to the FBD. Next, various coding languages must be evaluated and for each module those that are most appropriate for each task must be selected. Finally the hardware on which each software module will reside must be defined and interface protocols between the modules must be defined.

User Interface notes: Now that there is a basic layout for the site, what is left for the User Interface is the migration from the majority of xhtml format to php format of webpages to navigate through, a restructure of the main menu, adding the privacy and disclaimer statements for legality purposes, and plugging the back-end of the site in to connect to the front-end.

Relationship To Major Class Themes: The key to the success of a digital and social system such as Rateyourlandlord.com is having a large amount of information that is useful, easily accessible, and reliable. A website such as this must initially have enough data to attract users, but the ultimate survival of such a system depends on gathering a wealth of information from super-users contributing. The usefulness of this information depends on providing ways to add and view appropriate information in a manner that is intuitive and flexible. The accessibility of information making up a digital and social system arises from the ability of the system to readily access and present the information that is needed by users. Finally, the reliability of the information being presented is based on the accuracy of the initial data added to the system by administrators, and ensuring that contributions from users are also accurate. The accuracy of user-submitted data can be controlled by allowing the user community to rate submissions as useful or misleading. Ultimately the accuracy of information in a digital and social system depends on the community of which it is a part. This community represents the circle of trust of the system. The formation of the circle of trust can be aided by finding the right community to be users of the system. In the case of Rateyourlandlord.com, the community that we intend to focus on is college students that rent properties in Boulder.