erin malone:: portfolio
AltaVista Live! Community
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Approach: Reviewing the competition at the time - from all the portals as well as stand alone Community sites and the current Zip2 offering - the Community team decided that a rich offering would include member created Clubs, Editor picked featured Clubs, Message Boards, Chat, Voice Chat, Hoempages, Photo Albums and that the main tab for Community would also show the user their clubs they belonged to as well as a listing of their photo albums created and their photo friends.
View PDF (25k) of Community tab wireframe
Learning from usability issues from the previous product as well as what the competition was doing well, the team worked to create a rich set of member tools.
Clubs - I was the lead UI designer, reworking the entire product to fix issues raised by our customers from the previous version. We reworked the entire creation process and streamlined the end users experience by cutting down the number of steps and simplifying the amount of steps to create a unique site. We also improved the user's ability to add more pages to their site, allowing up to a three level nesting hierarchy. Once launched, several sites pushed the limits of number of pages and sections a Club could have without breaking.
We partnered with third party providers for Chat (Talk City), Message Boards (Raging Bull), and Homepages (HomeSite). For these tools we created rich browse categories, templates for the message boards and the initial creation steps for Homepages so that the end user's work would end up in the database for browsing and searching.
Photo Albums - I directed the effforts in the creation of a rich photo album experience, working with a consultant UI designer. We developed a simple, yet powerful Create a Photo Album application that also included a powerful Search and Browse feature of existing albums. The presentation of photos included thumbnail view, list view, individual image view, image comments, album comments and ratings per album.
View PDF (54k) of wireframes from this section
A users list of existing photo albums and the Create an Album call to action was persistent in the left pane of each page. A unique feature we developed for Photo Albums was Photo Friends. When a member created an album, they were prompted to email the album link to their friends. If the email recipient was an AV member, then the photo album's creator would be added to a list of Photo Friends that was persistent below the users list of their albums. So with one click, a user could go see the photo albums sent to them by their photo friends. This was a very popular feature and was a viral way to convert viewers to members.
Searching and Browsing - Clubs and Homepages were accessible via keyword searching or browsing by hierarchical categories. As a user browsed through the listings, Homepages and Clubs were indicated by an icon. Top level categories showed the number of Clubs and Homepages in the category so a user could drill down further if the number was high. Once user ratings were added, the user could toggle the sort presentation by alphabet or by rating, with the highest rated Homepages and Clubs appearing at the top of the list.
Photo Albums were organized separately with their own set of Browse categories and pages and showcasing an Editor chosen Featured Album.
Outcome: The Community products on the AltaVista site had a small but steadily growing audience. Creators of Clubs, created rich and large interactive community experiences. Photo Albums were steadily growing as people discovered the service and we expanded file storage limits. Although, many of the albums created were porn related, the majority were not. The Community products, in general, were not well publicized or promoted and were not well supported by the management of the company due to the difficulty in proving the effort was good for the business. But despite that, they were well used by their small audience and they had a loyal band of supporters within the company. Unfortunately, these were among the first area to be shut down when the company refocused its efforts on Search.
The entire application suite was shut down in January 2001.