Hiphophippotomi

"They call me the Hiphopopotamus
Flows that glow like phosphorous
Poppin’ off the top of this esophagus
Rockin’ this metropolis
I’m not a large water-dwelling mammal
Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
Did Steve tell you that, perchance?
Steve..."

-Flight of the Conchords

Second Progress Report can be found here: Second Progress Report

Our final project report is located here: Final Report

Title: The Technological Separation of Model Authoritative and Model Democratic

Description: Our project is based on the comparison between model authoritative and model democratic methods of design. Basically, the difference between the two is who drives the content and how that content is both created and viewed and who does the work.  Both model authoritative and model democratic depend on evolving technologies, but this evolution can affect model democratic more down the line as the desired functionality expands beyond the scope of the original design team.

Members:

Jon Mai: I've been reading a little bit more into our project and trying to think about what the final project is going to look like. We're planning to have a group meeting sometime this week or next week to really flesh out the ideas for what we want the final project to look like and how to get there. I think actually putting some quotes and figures to paper over the next couple of weeks would be pretty valuable, and we just need to have a better overall idea of where we're going. Once we get that done, I'm pretty excited about the project.

Ariel Aguilar: I've always been interested in communities of "consumers" and the extent to which they, by choice, lose their passive attitude and investigate deeper into what they're consuming. Our project not only focuses on the users of a product, but also the creators, how involved do they expect users to become? My research suggests this is quite complicated and varies from context to context. Particularly, most organizations working in developing communities not only aid the community by providing helpful technologies, but these technologies must blend into the community. This means the initial design of the product must not only meet what the community initially needed, but also, locals need instruction on maintenance and use of the product to make it their own and truly take advantage of the product. I look forward to synthesizing thoughts on model authoritative and model democratic methods with Jon and Eric this week and set a specific focus on our project.

Eric Holton:  I have been looking at sites and projects that would fall under both a meta design methodology as well as a model democratic methodology that utilize the Seeding, Evolution, and Reseeding model. The SER component of meta design ties in directly with the ideology behind a model democratic project, and the strength of the seed in the SER model can frequently determine the final success of a project such as the case with Linux, the Jquery library, and Ruby on Rails. I have also been exploring different software engineering design methodologies and their potential effectiveness in building a model democratic or model authoritative project. While the Waterfall and RUP methodologies are more suited to a project that does not rely so much on evolution such as one that supports a model authoritative stance, Agile, Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Crystal seem more suited to incorporate continual evolution as the project progresses. I have also been thinking about how the web's evolution from document management to applications has driven the possibility of developing model democratic projects. Open source language projects such as jquery and Ruby on Rails have made it possible to support future evolution as one's 'prosumers' do not have to reinvent the wheel every time they wish to design a new add-on. The importance of software quality ties into all of this, especially if one wishes to support a SER model that can incorporate evolution down the road. A prevention vs. inspection mentality combined with supporting continuous integration and a stop-the-line approach can make evolution from one's original seed more possible. I have been comparing quality issues with the android and iphone programming environments and languages.