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Yesterday saw the launch of a new blog written by current students for potential students: Sydney Life.

The blog, running on Movable Type, was put together by Marketing and Student Recruitment, with technical assistance from Web Services.

Joanna Cohen from Marketing describes it:

The move from school to uni can be a pretty frightening concept. It means a lot of changes because the students are moving into an un-known world. The blog allows them to have a vicarious uni experience by reading the current student's entries and the current students love having the opportunity to give all the advice they wished someone had given to them when they were starting. They seem pretty keen to share their more embarrassing teething problems. It is important to remember that a lot of people who start uni may be the first person in their family to have that experience. The blog means they can get advice and comment and ask questions if they want, or if they are a bit shy, they can just sit back and read the info without actively participating.

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/sydneylife/

So, what kind of use can we make of these 'Web 2.0 techniques'? We could do worse than look at the things we do offline and how we could move these online. Hardly groundbreaking I know but that has been the success of things like Flickr, taking an 'offline need', servicing it online and extending the possibilities. The design is critical, it has to take into account the foibles of human action and thought.

The Uni generates a lot of information. It also requires that information is discovered, read, shared and tracked. This happens on multiple levels, from keeping track of meeting appointments to analysing huge amounts of complex data for research.

Instead of building huge systems that reuire vast amounts of money and have no guarantee of success perhaps we need to look at existing systems, especially those of high use, and look at how we can build on them to provide not only extra functionality but to provide a closer fit between online and offline actions. This could be done incrementally, no need for big show-stoppers.

So any ideas? A quick brainstorm here has revealed:

• Desktop widgets (for PC and MAc) that allow searching of the phonebook and/or library catalogue
• Podcasting of lectures that could be distributed through feeds on UoS websites
• Wikis for information sharing
• Resource sharing among researchers through the use of a system like CiteULike, complete with RSS feeds for easy monitoring and portability to other systems
• Opening up a local intranet to a tagging system
• A catalogue that incorporates tags
• CMS approval notification through RSS

Note that some of these things are already happening.

Something to think about over the Christmas break then. (If you think I'm going to be thinking about the web you are sorely mistaken...it's beach and REAL books for me ladies and gentlemen).

Have a wonderful break.

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I've been rather slack in getting my remaining two posts on Web 2.0 on the blog haven't I? Apologies for that. [Note to self: don't promise posts unless you have completely written them first...]

So, designing websites with an eye on Web 2.0. The changes that I can see are:

• Design of overall structure of a site is still important but there is less design of fine detail and the use of classification to the nth degree.
• Less reliance on strict taxonomies, user classification through tagging naturally structures the information to some extent.
• Sites are a cross between an application and a 'traditional' website. There is content AND interaction.

The job of the designer is moving away from taking a whole lot of set content and dividing it up logically then creating a site around it. It's more about designing the 'interaction experience' (for want of a better phrase) and also keeping an eye on content. Of course, designers have also designed websites around interaction but now there is a closer fit with the content. The interaction defines more of the site purpose than the content.

If you want more read Dan Brown's Information Architecture 2.0.

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Web 2.0 is the dominant 'meme' in web development and design discussion right now. Like a lot of catchphrases associated with the web it could be dismissed as dressing something old in something new. It also could be seen as one of those terms that means whatever the user wants it to mean. There is a healthy amount of cynicism of the band-wagon-jumping happening at the moment. Like all buzzwords and movements, there is a certain amount of judgement required. Some of the tools involved in Web 2.0 are truly useful and are remoulding the web, others seem to be a hodge-podge of ideas that have very limited use.

There is however a core set of features that are at the centre of the Web 2.0 buzz. The one I want to talk about is that affecting design, namely the effect of user interaction. In the coming week I will follow this post with words on design and adopting Web 2.0 tools in the academic arena.

In the past IAs and others who design websites have been used to carefully laying out the available information, weighing up the needs of users and the strategies of the business and trying to come up with a structure that is user-focussed and also caters to the needs of the business. For examaple, high school students want to find out about the University, the University wants them to apply to study here. The language and structure used to communicate through the website is aimed at the high school students but the actual information comes from the organisation.

Sites designed like this are pretty simple, they deliver information and may provide a low level of interactivity, such as forms and registration. What we are seeing now is a proliferation of sites that provide more than information. They provide functionality, they allow users to create and organise their own content, they provide channels for further investigation and allow themselves to be built upon. A simple example is the use of RSS feeds on sites other than blogs.

The RSS feed took off with the escalation of blog use. Too much information being produced, not enough time to keep track of it. RSS feeds enable the constant monitoring of blogs without actually having to visit the sites. Bookmarks for high-content sites like blogs become redundant. The content is pushed to the user, who has initiated it by activating a 'pull' through their news reader.

Now the RSS feed offers more than a system of tracking content production. Deli.cio.us enables feeds of other's bookmarks, or a feed from a certain tag. For the user this acts as a lever to further investigate, to build upon the bookmark system itself. The feed keeps track of other user's interaction with the site, not the content the site provides.

Feeds from Flickr and other tag-based social applications work in the same way. Users generate content of sorts but it is their interaction with the application that provides interest to others.

An example: I live in Newtown and like to take photos of Newtown and post them on Flickr. I have an RSS feed from the Newtown tag. Any time anyone posts a photo with this tag I know about it. I look at the photos but I also interact with Flickr by posting my own photos, adding contacts, commenting on the photos of others and adding my photos to groups. It's a loose form of social interaction.

Another: I have an RSS feed from the del.icio.us tag 'IA'. Anytime anyone bookmarks something and tags it 'IA' I get notified. I can then investigate the bookmarks of others and find more material for research. Sure, I'm looking for content but I'm not browsing for it. The interactions of others are providing me with a different path to it. It's less labour intensive and allows me to tap into the thoughts of others in terms of classification. We don't all call things by the same name and sometimes you're sprung with some pleasant surprises.

As I mentioned, the idea of browsing the web is becoming redundant. The web has always allowed you to move sidewards, this is the beauty of it, but new tools associated with Web 2.0 allow for a more refined web using experience. It allows for the consumption of more content with less effort. The beauty of this is that a lot of it is user generated. You're not bound by the structure of sites and their connections with others sites (through links etc). You create your own connections and with luck this can lead to sideways movement of thought, building upon the oringial 'sideways' thought that the web allowed. Connection between information is sped up through the interaction of general web users with these new tools.

The really simple thing about this interaction is that it's informed by offline actions. Many web 2.0 tools fulfil purposes that have their roots in things we do in everyday life. They just move it online and thus are able to use the lateral nature of the web.

Sure, we've been able to interact with the web for a while, online banking for instance. These 'web 1.0' interactions were more streamlined, they had a beginning and an end. They had a defined purpose and had no larger context than this single purpose. Web 2.0 interaction is not pre-defined. There is a basic premise but they are able to be built upon. In the words of others they allow for mash-ups, they ask to be hacked, not in a technical sense but in a sense of what they can be used for. Of course, developers have always written ad-ons for software. Now the 'mashing' is happening with content.

Web 2.0 moved beyond the hard core of web enthusiasts long ago. Two mainstream examples: The Washington Post encourages 'mash-ups' of its content and UPenn library provides a bookmarking service that enables users to share their bookmarks using tags. It's high time we took a good hard look at it.

Other reading:

• O'Reilly - What is Web 2.0.


• So can we use this AJAX thing already?

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