#IAday
a collaboration between startup and some awesome students
I just came back from #IAday, which is where the IA Students of Malmö University presents their projects they’ve been working on the past semesters. We’ve had the pleasure of working with four great students; Daniel Krusenstråhle, Thomas Svensson, Anton Tibblin & Richard Persson. Late last year we started to examine what parts of ambadoo would be interesting for them, and us, to work on. We divided the team in two; one working on usability testing & user interface and the other team working on the API and the possibilities with that.
What came out of the projects is quite amazing. Most importantly we’ve got a closer connection between us and the university. I’ve always wanted to have a good collaboration with the institutes & research centers and this has proven us right. Close collaboration with students pay off. They are curious, open-minded and thinking outside the box by nature. And the best thing is that they force us as a company to re-think and re-evaluate our concepts and ideas.
The User Interface
Richard & Anton set out to test and improve the User Interface, with usability testing. The current front-end is pretty non-existing so doing tests on that was pointless. Instead we started from scratch to build mock-ups, converting them into a usable interfaces that could act as a dummy since there’s been no connection to the back-end.
The students focused mainly on how to edit & update the user profile, and the listing & contacting friends in an easy manner. Inline editing and jQuery elements to expand and minimize both profile sections & contact list was a clear response to the user testing.
The outcome is a very clear & easy navigable interface which we’ll definitely use elements from. If we look at existing address books like Google Contacts & Mac Address Book, the work by Anton & Richard is easily in competition with those big boys. It should be as easy to navigate and find friends as to keep them updated. Big up for you guys!
The API
From the very beginning we wanted to work with an Open API to create an ecosystem of developers that together can create a unified better system that we could ever do ourselves, and of course working with standards such as OAuth, OpenID, Microformats to make it easier to integrate with existing platforms and user bases. Thomas & Daniel decided to work with and examine the possibilities with the API, which is yet to be open.
First off the students looked at the possibilities; strengths & weakness of an Open API and some of the cases that was brought up was Auto-fill Registration Forms, Ambadoo – Yellow Pages updating, Contact Widgets & Apps built directly on the API.
To prove their point they went to build a Contact Widget and a Web App which they very cleverly called WebAppaDoo.
A:Widget.
A very simple little snippet to put on whatever site you have and want to show your contact information. Instead of hard-coding in your details let your ambadoo-profile update it to all your sites. It’s a totally customizable widget that can be a little contact button or a fully fledged “Business Card“. The point is, edit in one place, update on all sites. Just to try it out I did a customized Business Card suitable for for mobile visitors. I’m using petter.palander.se as my sole e-mail signature, which directs people to all my contact information instead of listing everything you usually do. Try it from your iPhone.
Here you have all the information you’ll need to get in touch with me. Obviously this looks different on a desktop browser than in your mobile, but the information is the same. All users on ambadoo will get a contact widget like this as default so they can direct their contacts and friends to this one spot where they collect all relevant information to connect.
This is the super simple code snippet. They made a code generator so that you could chose your own language & decide if you want it expandable or not. Some restrictions in the current version of the API does require a small PHP-proxy but we’ll change that so the only thing you need is this piece of code.
<!-- AMBADOO API WIDGET / START -->
<script type='text/javascript'>
userID = '9';
minimized = false;
toggable = true;
expanded = false;
expandable = true;
lang_phones = 'call'
lang_emails = 'email';
lang_addresses = 'locate';
lang_websites = 'web';
lang_jobs = 'jobs';
lang_button_on = 'contact info';
lang_button_off = 'minimize';
lang_profile_link = 'connect';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/ambadoo_widget.js"></script>
<!-- AMBADOO API WIDGET / END -->
.
WebAppaDoo.
Just like it sounds, a web-app for ambadoo. No more, no less. In fact, the first functional application built on the ambadoo platform, made by two 2-year MAH students. Pretty damn cool. Thomas & Daniel acted 3rd party developers, using the API to create an app to keep your contacts up-to-date. They’ve done it very well, and exceeded all expectations. This really shows the power of an API and the Web as a platform. It’s a proof of concept and we just get a glimpse of what’s possible.
If you have an ambadoo account you can just log in with Facebook Connect and try it out. Works like charm. You can update your profile, contact & add friends and see notifications when someone’s added you.
No Limits.
This is what close collaboration with students can do. If you haven’t tried yet, you should. It’s been a very good journey, and I’ve got to know these guys very well and got insight in how they work at the university. We’ll continue working together, build amazing stuff and show the world what we can do with extremely limited resources. Your imagination is your only limit.
lokaldelen
reality check
I received the funniest phone call today.
A women, introducing herself with “Hi, I’m Anna from Lokaldelen, this will cost you nothing and isn’t about advertisements. Can I get two minutes from you?” was in a serious hurry to find out some crucial information. Nice as I am, I kindly let her continue to describe her matter, and here goes the conversation in brief:
P: Hello, it’s Petter.
A: Hi, I’m Anna from Lokaldelen, this will cost you nothing and isn’t about advertisements. Can I get two minutes from you?
P: Yes, sure.
A: Ok, this won’t cost you anything, I’m just calling on behalf of Lokaldelen and now we’re moving to “internet“, problem is that a lot of our information is outdated. We already have a printed version but now when we’re moving to “internet” we would like to know if the information we have is correct.
P: Ok.
A: So, you company name is ambadoo?
P: Yeah.
A: Your main number is 073 08 22 240?
P: Yep.
A: Can you describe your business?
P: If you check our website you find out, and this phone call will turn into comedy.
A: Well, I don’t have access to internet. (So, let me ask here. You’re working with internet, but don’t have access to it?)
A: So, you have a website?
P: Yes, and there you can find out why this phone call will become irrelevant soon.
A: And the web address is… ambadoo? dot ? se ?
P: dot com
A: And your company address is Sundspromenaden 1, 21116 Malmö?
P: Ya.
A: Ok, I’d like to thank for your time and…
P: So, now you’ve taken two of my minutes, and I’d like to take two of yours.
P: Let me explain what we do. ambadoo is a self-updatable address book, that let you get contact details automatically, to your system, so that you don’t have to call me and ask if it’s correct, hence saving you and your company lots of time and money.
A: Ooh. That sounds fantastic, I’m waiting for it already and I wish it will be implemented here soon.
P: Me too.
A: Thanks for your time.
P: No worries, you made my day.
I couldn’t stop laughing after hanging up. It’s incredible. A business index sales-woman calls you up, telling you that the database is filled with crap. Just the fact that they call you up, take yours, and their time, just to check if they’ve got correct information is worrying. There’s no system they can assure the contact information is up-to-date. So, what if we decide to move, change number and name of the business tomorrow. What do they do? Call us up again? Intriguing.
Imagine how many companies a day they can call. A quick calc on a basis that every phone call takes 3 min, 20 companies an hour, 160 companies a day… for one person. There’s about 900.000 companies in sweden. So, in rough numbers it would take Lokaldelen 5625 days, with one employed to get their system updated. Imagine they’re 20 calling and it’s still 281 days to make all the calls, and when updated they’d most likely have to start over.
It’s not an easy task, and I’m impressed that they actually do try to make an effort to get their system up-to-date. I really hope she does remember both my 1 minute pitch and our name, and she’ll call back when they run out of credit. We’re here to solve their problem too, as much as everyone’s else. Lokaldelen, as other developers, will be able to access data from our system through our Open API. Meaning they can concentrate on building a their site, focusing on good user-experience, instead of spending valuable time on making useless calls to check information that could be updated automatically.
Next time I’ll call them, asking if can get two minutes of theirs, to save them days, weeks and loads of calls to get a system that are updated. Not just when they hang up, but all the time.