NEW WAY TO VOTE: socialmedian iphone Application Design Contest

UPDATE:  See this post to learn how to vote in this contest.  http://blog.socialmedian.com/2008/08/democracy_prevails_the_rules_h.html

Mobile versions of socialmedian consistently scores as one of the top feature requests from our users.  So, as we do, we're going to get working right away on some mobile socialmedian apps.

To kick start our efforts, we recently held a global socialmedian iphone design contest.  The rules were simple. Each designer had 3 weeks to design a concept for potential socialmedian iphone application.  Designers were asked to emphasize user experience not just UI design in their entries. 


We have two prizes:
1.  A public vote.  Winner of the public vote will get $500 and a free iphone.
2.  socialmedian team judging.  Winner of the socialmedian team judging wil get $1000 and a free iphone.  Note:  If the socialmedian team independently chooses the same as the public vote, then there will just be a single winner of $1000 + a free iphone.

To vote, see the widget on the right side of this page.
Voting will conclude at 5pm EST on 8/8/08. May the best design win!


We received 9 entries in the contest.  Each of the entries were really well done.  The typical entry contained more than 10 pages designed.  Here are the entries.  We have selected what we believe to be 3 of the best images for each entry to present here. 

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Entry #1:  Joshua Kalle
Short Bio:  I am Joshua Kalle, a fifteen year old guy from the Netherlands. I love designing, so this contest was perfect for me. My other hobbies are drawing, playing the piano and coding stuff.
 

Joshua Kalle Image 1:  Homepage on iphone.  Design presents quick links to My Newsmakers, My Networks, and Me, with top 2 stories for each, expand options for each.  Bottom nav icons for Home, Networks, Topics, People, and Updates.

Joshua Kalle Image 2:  Enter news to socialmedian directly from iphone.

Joshua Kalle Image 3:  Story page.  Shows source, news networks, summary, clips, who clipped, options to share, and comments.

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Entry #2:  Venkat Vejay
Short Bio:  I am a UCD practitioner for the past 4+ years and have a CUA from HFI recently as an Add-On since I am not from a Design school but learnt on the Job, have worked on Desktop, Web application, Web Site & Marketing+Branding for 5+ years in product company. Currently consulting and on the lookout for a interesting break!

Venkat Vejay Image 1:  Home Page.  Quick links to add a photo, update status, My Networks, My Newsmakers, My Followers, Top 10 News, etc.  Bottom navigational icons for Home, Networks, People, Post News, and Settings.

Venkat Vejay Image 2: Reviewing summaries of stories from Network.  Links to expand to full stories.

Venkat Vejay Image #3:  Posting news to socialmedian by photo.

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Entry 3: Gajendra Agrawal
Short Bio:  Gajendra Agrawal is a User Interface Designer. After graduating from , IIT Guwahati in Design, he worked with one of India's major telecom providers. Currently he is working with a leading software product company in India. Gajendra's professional interests include social computing and information visualization and writing design reviews. Gajendra writes about design and usability on www.kicksandkisses.com.  Apart from design, he enjoys traveling and socializing. 

Gajendra Agrawal Image 1:  Story Page.  Page shows summary with recent comments on the page.  Design has bottom navigational icons for Home, Newsmakers, Followers, a new "Shuffle" feature, and More.

Gajendra Image 2:  Shuffle.  Image-based single-page view of popular/recent stories from a network.

Gajendra Agrawal Image 3:  Newsmakers.  View newsmakers and expand to view their recent clips.

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Entry 4:  Robyn Korine
Short Bio:  Syracuse University student.  Bio to come.

Robyn Korine Image 1:  Summary of hot right now and recent stories from My Networks.  Design also shows bottom navigation items for:  Home, Newsmakers, Me, My Networks, and a new feature NewsWire

Robyn Korine Image 2:  Robyn's NewsWire is intended to be easy way to send stories to your iphone contacts or socialmedian contacts.

   
Robyn Korine Image 3:  My NewsWire is intended to be a quick view at news my contacts and Newsmakers have sent to me.

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Entry 5:  Ranjit Dahiya and Sharad Baliayn
Short Bio:  Ranjit and Sharad are designers in India.  bios forthcoming.

Ranjit & Sharad Image 1:  (in their own words) Home: This is where the user can quickly scan through recent news, make adjustments to his/her settings and profile. The home page has been optimized to be a one stop dashboard of sorts.  Bottom navigation for Home, News, People, and Add something to socialmedian.

Ranjit & Sharad Image 2:  (in their own words) News Page --  clearly the pivot to the whole application. this has been divided into two sections; Networks and topics as we are of the opinion that this division will help users to understand the way the application functions and navigate to news of their interest. At the same time this division simplifies navigation for users by keeping options visible.

Ranjit & Sharad Image 2:  (in their own words) Add page -- A tab that is more or less not a tab! this is the all in one add widget which we thought would e a good way to help people add information (news, snips, contacts, networks) on the fly. When clicked this widget appears as an overlay and allows users to go about adding whatever it is they want to add,once finished adding, users can then go about whatever they were doing.

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Entry 6:  Deepak Singh
Short Bio:  I am a Mechanical Engineer (Manufacturing), currently In Product Design (2nd year of 2 and half year course) at NID, Ahmedabad, India (www.nid.edu). I like to be with nature, I sleep and Surf web a lot and I am a Lensmonkey (well not a member of that community yet good enough ). My personal website is www.dashamluv.com (still under construction).

Deepak Singh Image 1:  Home Page shows feed of stories from your news networks, with links to go to each story or network.  Bottom navigational tabs for Settings, Write, People, and Network.


Deepak Singh Image 2:  News Networks -- scanning through my, recent, and most active.

Deepak Singh Image 3:  Newsmakers -- zooming in on a Newsmaker and searching for people.  Deepak notes that user would be able to scroll through their newsmakers with a finger motion as they would an album cover or picture on the iphone.

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Entry 7:  Adithya Ananth
Short Bio:  I am Adithya Ananth, a student of interface design and an aspiring interaction designer from National Institute of Design, India.  I am a computer science engineer as well. I am very keen on exploring new domains of interaction design, and news forms of input to computer systems.  I have been working on multitouch technology for the last one year.  My multitouch blog -> http://therealdesktop.blogspot.com/

Adithya Ananth Image 1:  Home Page Tabs for My News Feed & Networks

Adithya Ananth Image 2:  Integration of socialmedian Clip-It functionality into browser, to instantlyl clip & submit any story to socialmedian while surfing the web via iphone.

Adithya Ananth Image 3:  Integration of GPS/maps functionality to find local news on socialmedian.

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Entry 8:  Abhishek Thakkar
Short Bio: Abhishek Thakkar, is an interaction designer at Webaroo. When not at Job, he spends time reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, watching Anime, organising BarCamps and planning for World domination.

Abhishek Thakkar Image 1:   Welcome Screen.  Abhishek notes:  "When the user logs in for the first time, he lands on the dashboard, which introduces him to the iPhone App, and the new UI. This page is also accessible from the home shortcut link in header.   All navigation routes are available at all times from the global menu. It should flyout on 1 tap, and on selecting an option should vanish/slide back. It can be closed from  the footer menu w/o choosing any option, or by tapping the menu button again. Advanced users should be able to configure any page as the default landing page when they login in settings. They should also be able to set the default open tabs per category of page (author level, network level, tag level ).   The contextual menu at bottom keeps changing as the User navigates through the site, its also conveniently positioned near the bottom, and can be operated by the thumb.

Abhishek Thakkar Image 2:  Page showing tabs for clips, networks, activity and profile.  Abhishek notes:  "The icons for clips have also been shortened. Guess is that SM users will use website first and then the App, so will be familier with the icons.  For a mobile device, I've removed the excerpt in default view, they'll be loaded but hidden. A single tap on the post title can expand it to show the excerpt and other meta data (alternately , all posts can be expanded from the footer menu), Users can also jump to the full post by side swiping."

Abhishek Thakkar Image 3:  Full story view, showing excerpt from story and recent comments.  Contextual menu at bottom changes to include clip this, comment, and share.

 

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Entry 9:  Nasarullah Khan
Short Bio:  My Name is Nasarullah and I am currently working as Sr. UCD Engineer with a Aerospace engineering firm called Honeywell. Working in design field for past six years.

Nasarullah Khan Image 1:  Find News Networks:  Search, Popular, and Most Recent.

Nasarullah Khan Image 2:  Add something to socialmedian -- In addition to Snip and News, ability to add visuals as images or video or direct from the iphone's camera.

Nasarullah Khan Image 3:  Checking out a Newsmaker.  Quick links to view Newsmaker's followers, newsmakers, recent activities, news networks, etc.