Jay Ni
UTube Project Critique
Dear BJ,
I personally think the premise of your project is wonderful; people without constant television access—college students, for example—need a centralized location to view streaming news programs and television. If you were able to stream live news on UTube, I would definitely watch it. However, I also think that expanding this project to everyone and offering all kinds of television services from the start is too ambitious of an undertaking. I envision your project as being structured like YouTube, but much, much bigger – streaming video for all types of channels, personalized and official, uploaded by hundreds of thousands of people across the nation. I imagine huge server costs, legal issues, and many security hassles that don’t necessarily make uTube a worthwhile investment over standard television.
As you said, this is probably the greatest hindrance to your idea, and the first thing that should appear on your website, I think, is something that immediately catches the reader’s attention about why UTube is so unique and special. Your MI3 trailer certainly is interesting and drew me in, but unfortunately it did not tell me anything about the website itself. Instead, maybe you could make your own informative video about UTube and stream it on the index page? Not only would this give the reader a better understanding of UTube, but by streaming a personalized video yourself, you also give the reader an idea of what UTube can do.
Also, why UTube, of all places on the web? People will ask you: “I can see MI3 trailers on yahoo movies; I can see live news from CNN or MSNBC. I have TIVO, or I have a media PC that can record television already. Why should I come to uTube, and how will it be better?” Since it is so difficult to compete with all online media at once and answer everybody’s questions, I think it would be best to narrow the scope of your project at first; for example, you might consider only broadcasting news for the first month. If UTube gains popularity, then add more videos and features. Also, just for now, I think you should avoid sharing videos, since this can get really messy for a startup project. Without a central theme to start out with, I find the entire website rather overwhelming—I may be uncertain as to what services you offer, or even what I’m looking for.
I searched for some of my concerns in your business plan, and while I really enjoyed your outline for uTube in the future, I’d like to see some specific goals set for uTube. Your business plan as of now only gives me a vague idea of how big UTube will be, but many of your readers and investors will only be interested in specific aspects of UTube. What are the exact numbers for projected cost and revenue? Where will you look for administrators? These are the kinds of things that your investors will probably want to know.
Great project overall, fun to review! Hope my comments help.
-Jay
Cryptography Project Critique
Dear Nathan,
As a potential math major, I find your topic of electronic voting and cryptography very fascinating. I strongly agree that it is important for people to understand how internet security works, since it is of growing importance in modern society and will only continue to evolve with the needs of the Internet. I also like how you narrowed the project down to electronic voting, because this gives the reader focus and a very good idea of what to expect. The biggest challenge for this site is clarity and keeping the reader’s interest. I imagine that online voting is not an easy topic to learn, and because of this, I feel like your site will need more visual appeal to stimulate the reader’s curiosity. Another issue, of course, is the ease in browsing through your website and getting the information the reader needs to know.
Now, the first thing I wondered when I arrived at your website was this: what exactly is Condorcet voting? I’ve come across this isolated word a couple of times, but without a specific explanation for what it actually is. Since the vast majority of the American population is unfamiliar with these voting systems, a good idea might be to add a “definition bar” at the bottom of the page – something similar to what you’ve already done with your side menu and references. If there is an esoteric term on the site that you feel users might not know without having browsed through other pages first, it would be very convenient to simply scroll over the term and have the definition appear in a box below the main page. This avoids the problem of having readers browse through every section before getting a coherent idea of how everything works.
Also, I am not sure if cryptography is still a key part of your project, but this motivates my next suggestion; you could implement some java applets that demonstrate how internet voting and security works! Interactive applets help a lot with educational and informative websites such as yours. It helps keep the reader’s attention and definitely serves as a better learning tool than just simply reading text.
In general, I think navigation could also use a bit more improvement. There are several ways to do this; one good way might be to add a linked outline of your website, or you might add dropdown menus to your main menu. My main concern right now is that all your pages seem very isolated, but the nature of your topic leads me to think that stacking a lot of information into one printable page is a much better idea. If users have to constantly go back and forth between different websites on different topics, it will be rather frustrating when he is trying to see the bigger picture.
I think you have one of the most interesting topics and really look forward to your completed website.
-Jay
