pba lens 2007 1128 final

1LENS ON ATLANTA : : PUBLIC SQUARE | SOLUTION OUTLINE November 12, 2007 LENS ON ATLANTA : : PUBLIC SQUARE | SOLUTION OUTLINE

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Public Square

Solution OutlineNovember 12, 2007


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01. Executive Summary

Introduction by Milton Clipper, President & CEO, PBA AtlantaLENS on Atlanta Mission and GoalsOverview Public Square AtlantaWho will use LENS on Atlanta?Creative Approach to LENSTechnical Overview for LENS on Atlanta

2. Requirements for LENS on AtlantaMission and Business EnvironmentAudience Profiles and ScenariosFunctional Requirements for LENS on Atlanta Web SiteContent RequirementsVisual Design RequirementsArchitectural Requirements

3. User Experience Navigation Flows for the Web SiteFunctional Wireframes for Key Areas of the SiteCreative Design Studies

4. Architectural OverviewArchitectural Overview Model

5. Best Practices for Social Networking and User Generated Content

6. Roadmap for Rolling Out LENS on Atlanta

7. Summary

Table of Contents


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Citizenship is serious business.


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3LENS ON ATLANTA : : PUBLIC SQUARE | SOLUTION OUTLINE

November 12, 2007 LENS ON ATLANTA : : PUBLIC SQUARE | SOLUTION OUTLINE

1Executive Summary

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Executive Summary

Letter from the President and CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time and considering Public Broadcasting Atlanta’s newest multi-smart media initiative, LENS on Atlanta. LENS is an initiative that reaches out to positively impact many aspects of our community and help empower others to do the same.

We are making changes at PBA and LENS on Atlanta is just one piece of what we are trying to accomplish. LENS on Atlanta is a social networking, multi-smart platform for intelligent discourse and communication. LENS gives us the opportunity to further intertwine and connect our current and emerging communication channels. As technology evolves, we see our viewer base changing with it. LENS gives us the opportunity to connect all communication channels and platforms – television supports online initiatives, online content supports television, online supports radio, radio supports online. And, as we enable our platforms to interconnect, we will further engage our current users and entice new viewers. LENS gives the public a voice, and together we can help define how to make Atlanta the City it wants to be.

The facets of LENS are explained on the following pages. We have paid considerable attention to the Public Square facet of LENS. As we conceptualize and consider this new initiative, we will focus on the Public Square as the first facet to be released to the community. Public Square is an aspect of LENS that will engage the public in civic life. It also highlights the themes that are present across LENS as all facets collapse into a focus on Democracy, Education and Culture.

We hope you will take the time to review the highlights of the LENS on Atlanta concept. We have included design considerations that are both visual and technical to give you an overview of our direction for LENS on Atlanta.

Cordially yours,

Milton Clipper


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Executive Summary

LENS on Atlanta Mission and Goals

LENS on Atlanta is a ground breaking website and service for citizens of Atlanta.

The LENS Mission:

The LENS mission is to create a robust, interactive, user-driven community about all things of interest and relevance to Atlanta (all of Metro Atlanta), which fosters citizenship and culture, inspires the joy of learning and celebrates the power of diverse perspectives.

The Public Broadcasting Vision:

We (Public Broadcasting Atlanta) believe that communication is the foundation of civilization. It is the path by which knowledge, understanding, discourse and values are achieved, nurtured and passed down. We envision our communities as informed, energetic, engaged and with a pervasive sense of interconnectedness to each other and the world. And we believe that our role as a trusted enabler of communication is fundamental in building the beloved community to which we aspire.

LENS on Atlanta is made up of 8 different facets:

1. Atlanta Forum will provide on-demand access to local and national discussions. It will communicate local to global inter-connectedness and promote the understanding of social and cultural change

2. Public Square Atlanta will create a new venue for digital journalism and energize the public will by providing a platform for civic discourse and engagement

3. Outreach Atlanta will partner with and give a voice to the nonprofit community

4. Metrocast Atlanta will serve as an emergency information network for schools, city officials and citizens that could provide direct links to law enforcement and emergency care institutions in the event of natural or terrorist disaster

5. Creative Atlanta will partner with cultural and community organizations to expand the access to the arts and position Atlanta as the region’s cultural center

6. Entertainment Atlanta will provide knowledge about and access to social, entertainment, informational resources and events

7. K-12 E-Classroom Atlanta will support preschool, K-12 pedagogy and prepare our next generation to be global citizens

8. E-University will provide access to life-long learning and collaborate with our intellectual, scientific and health institutions

Each of the different facets will have its own unique characteristics, content and user groups although we believe most of the users will find value and use the entire site.


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Executive Summary

LENS on Atlanta Mission and Goals

The following goals have been identified for LENS on Atlanta:

1. To foster citizenship and culture by increasing engagement in the democratic process as understood through civic discourse, community activism and representative government.

2. To foster increased engagement in the artistic/cultural life of Atlanta.

3. To celebrate the power of diverse perspectives by creating a sustainable social network about life in Atlanta.

4. To leverage PBA’s trusted brand to provide video and audio content to the LENS application. Conversely, leverage LENS’ citizen journalistic content appropriately within PBA’s existing business.

5. To inspire the joy of learning by engaging students of all ages in collaborative, creative interactions through which they contribute to expanding the store of human knowledge and understanding.

6. To harness the power of mass collaboration to affect positive social change.

7. To stimulate creative expression.

8. To be Atlanta’s most trusted and credible resource for digital information.

9. To be a positive force in the community.

Licensing/Station Toolkit

PBA is excited about leveraging this robust suite of social networking tools. The LENS application has been designed to be an extensible solution, with the ability to be leveraged by other Public Broadcasting stations. For example:

• The design has followed a modular approach to enable logos and graphics to be changed easily

• The technical solution has been designed with an open source solution to allow the application to be used by other Public Broadcasting Stations without the high cost of proprietary software licensing

• The content management system will be designed to accommodate various types of content and media specific to Public Broadcasting (video, audio, photos, etc.)

• Once the initial system has been developed and deployed in Atlanta, it will be straightforward to redeploy the system for another Public Broadcasting organization with similar goals


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Executive Summary

Public Square Atlanta

Public Square Atlanta will be the second facet of LENS on Atlanta to be developed and launched. Public Square embodies all that LENS on Atlanta plans to be. It is a new venue for digital journalism and will energize the public will by being a platform for civic discourse and community activism. Public Square was initially conceived as a process to enhance Public Broadcasting’s news process by creating citizen journalism to enable the community to contribute to the news gathering process. It has further evolved into a networking site, enabling users to discuss and share their thoughts on some of the most debated topics as they occur in the Atlanta metro area. Going back to the original concept, the discussion that occurs on the website will allow a PBA reporter to understand the mood of the community, what they are talking about and what concerns them. Public Square will provide a balanced platform for discussion and enable PBA to communicate to its listeners what is really going on in the community.

To facilitate this discussion, Public Square Atlanta will provide an array of social networking tools that will allow users to participate in discussions and post their own content (user generated content). Users will be able to view hot topics, read what is being discussed, participate with comments or become actively involved in driving the discussion.

Some of the features on Public Square will include:

• Community tools such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums and content tagging so the most discussed topics will rise to the front of the web site

• User generated content tools that provide the ability to upload text, photos, video, audio and documents

• Moderation tools – automated and manual tools to ensure the content is appropriate and not, for instance, abusive

• Personalization – customizing the site to present the users’ preferences and interests rather than the entire spectrum of content and applications

• Polls, Surveys and the “Topic of the Day”

Content topics on the site may include:

• Transportation and Traffic discussions

• The environment

• Education

• Healthcare

• A wide variety of other user generated topic areas


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Executive Summary

Who will use Public Square Atlanta? User Profiles

Who might use this site? To answer that question, User Profiles are created to identify the types of users. By identifying these users, their characteristics and their needs, we can develop a site that meets the requirements of a broad range of users. The following six profiles were developed to help define and design the Public Square site. These user profiles are fictitious and are used for the exercise of determining possible user types.

Alex Wheeler

Environmentalist

20 year old college student

Karen Pollitt

Fulton County Commissioner

48 years old, married, 2 college aged children

Catherine Hayes

Teacher

38 year old divorced mother of 2

Stephen Ramirez

PBA Journalist

52 year old, married, father of 2

Tom Jamison

Head of a lobby group

63 years old, married with 4 grown children

Alicia Johnson

Receptionist

29 year old unmarried mother with one child

Alex Wheeler is a student at Georgia Tech, studying Public Policy. He is currently without a car, so he rides his bike back and forth from his off-campus apartment to school and to meet with friends around Midtown Atlanta. Although Alex loves to ride and often spends weekends on the Silver Comet Trail with his cycling buddies, he has become more and more frustrated by the treacherous riding conditions within Atlanta. Because there are practically no bike paths, he often feels like he is risking his life every time he gets on his bike, but he has little choice.

Karen Pollitt is a Fulton County Commissioner. A few months ago, she received a mailing from PBA, announcing the launch of LENS on Atlanta, a new social networking site intended to encourage public discourse and civic engagement. Being as busy as she is, she never got around to exploring the site, but at the last Commission Meeting, she was chatting with one of the other commissioners who mentioned how much value he was getting out of the site and suggesting that Karen sign on to see for herself. Karen asked for the URL and the colleague told her that there’s a link to his LENS page from his official Fulton County website.

Catherine Hayes is a lifelong resident of Metro Atlanta. She lives in Virginia Highlands and is a high school Social Studies teacher at Decatur High School. One of the biggest frustrations she faces every morning is the traffic congestion that occurs due to the lack of left turn signal from Briarcliff onto Ponce De Leon Ave. The left turn lane backs up so far at certain times of the day that it often takes her ten minutes waiting at the light. She has raised the issue at several neighborhood association meetings, and many of her neighbors have expressed similar frustrations, but to date, nothing has been done to solve the problem. It has gotten so bad that she often chooses to commute miles out of her way to avoid that particular intersection.

Stephen Ramirez is a PBA Journalist and host of Morning Edition. Stephen is very familiar with the LENS site, not only because the LENS site has become an integral part of the PBA mission and culture, but because he now serves as a moderator/blogger for the Transportation category. In that capacity, Stephen’s job is to peruse the various topic discussion boards, take the pulse of the conversations and distill some of the more interesting conversations, debates and activities undertaken by the various organizations, ad hoc entities, officials and individuals networking on the LENS site.

Tom Jamison is a former Fulton County official who left his government career years ago to earn more money in the private sector in order to fund his children’s college educations. He accepted a position as the head of a transportation lobby group called “Georgia Transportation Advocates” (GTA). The group has an existing website, with an events calendar, news and reports.

Alicia Johnson is a single mom, living in Lithonia with her 6-year-old daughter. Every morning she makes sure her daughter gets on the school bus, and then she walks to the Blue Flyer bus stop that takes her to the Five Points station. She then either walks or takes the train to her job as a receptionist in Peachtree Center. As of October 1st, her morning routine was drastically disrupted when the Blue Flyer bus she takes every morning had its schedule reduced. Due to the scheduling cuts, Alicia cannot get from her daughter’s school bus stop to the Blue Flyer stop in time to catch the 7:35 bus, putting Alicia at work a full thirty minutes late. Alicia was starting to panic because she couldn’t afford to lose this job and the health insurance that it provided.


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Executive Summary

Creative Approach to Public Square Atlanta : Design Study

The following design study was created to capture the look and feel of the LENS on Atlanta Public Square site.

The concept behind the design is democracy in action. To achieve that feel, the top band highlighting the “Lens on Atlanta” logo was designed with a nod towards bunting. The Georgia State capital building with the brilliant fall sky behind it further adds to the majestic feel of democracy and also conveys the location of the site: LENS on Atlanta.

Social Networking sites require a great deal of information to be delivered in a clean and concise manner. The design is based on a grid layout. This design lends itself for easier accessibility and provides white space around the content to make it more readable.

Public Broadcasting Atlanta represents the best in public broadcasting, therefore, any web application that is integral to extending PBA’s image must be a responsible reflection of the PBA brand promise and vision. The key objective of the LENS on Atlanta web site – to be a social networking, multi-smart online platform for civic discourse and community activism – will be imbued into every design concept and showcased through the use of several creative elements.


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Executive Summary

Public Square Atlanta : Technical Overview

The architecture proposed for the LENS System was designed to support a powerful user experience while minimizing costs. The design was driven by the realization that significant custom development would increase construction costs, delay the release, reduce maintainability, and increase total cost of ownership after launch. With this in mind, off the shelf, open source components have been leveraged, and the thrust of the development effort will instead be towards tailoring existing components to reflect the spirit of the LENS system.

Industry standards have been strictly followed and will enable the system to seamlessly coexist with search engines, data providers, analytics systems, and social networking sites. Adherence to standards will also reduce costs by minimizing the learning curve for administrators and contributors. The LENS System will consequently be a platform that can be managed by diverse skill sets at reasonable rates.

Though off the shelf software components have been leveraged to reduce costs, the LENS System Architecture provides hooks so that new functionality can be easily added. The result is a powerful architecture that serves the functionality needed today while providing room to grow for the future.

The following diagram is a high level overview of the deployed system that touches on both the topography of the system as well as the modules included. All of the components shown are the result of an exhaustive search to find the right software to support the LENS on Atlanta vision.

Lens System

Drupal CMS

MySQLDatabase

Data Provider 1 Data Provider 2 Data Consumer

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

StoryModule

Browser PDAMobilePhone

SearchEngine

LoadBalancer

With session affinity

FeedAggreg

EventMonitor

ThrottleModule

TrackerModule

TriggerModule

UploadModule

AuthSystem

CRONModule

PingModule

PollModule

UserProfileModule

SearchModule

StatsModule

FilterModule

ForumModule

Help Module

Localiz.Module

ThemeModule

CommentModule

ContactModule

BookModule

BlogModule

ForumModule

Suggest.Module

HooksModule

LogFiles

LENSTheme

SANFor

Backups

SMTPServer

Linux &Apache

Web Server

Linux &Apache

WebServer

LENSDeployment Model


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2Requirements for LENS on Atlanta

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Mission and Business Environment for LENS on Atlanta

Mission:

The LENS mission is to create a robust, interactive, user-driven community about all things of interest and relevance to Atlanta (all of

Metro Atlanta), which fosters citizenship and culture, inspires the joy of learning and celebrates the power of diverse perspectives.

Goals:

1. To foster citizenship and culture by increasing engagement in the democratic process as understood through civic discourse, community activism and representative government.

2. To foster increased engagement in the artistic/cultural life of Atlanta.

3. To celebrate the power of diverse perspectives by creating a sustainable social network about life in Atlanta.

4. To leverage PBA’s trusted brand to provide video and audio content to the LENS application. Conversely, leverage LENS’ citizen journalistic content appropriately within PBA’s existing business.

5. To inspire the joy of learning by engaging students of all ages in collaborative creative interactions through which they contribute to expanding the store of human knowledge and understanding.

6. To harness the power of mass collaboration to affect positive social change.

7. To stimulate creative expression.

8. To be Atlanta’s most trusted and credible resource for digital information.

9. To be a positive force in the community.



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Mission and Business Environment Continued

Critical Success Factors

• LENS cannot do harm to PBA operations or the brand.

• LENS must attract users and have widespread adoption among the metropolitan Atlanta area.

• Funds must be acquired to cover Phase 1 development and operating costs.

• Executive sponsors must obtain support from the Atlanta political establishment, e.g., Mayor’s office, County Commissioners Councils, etc.

• LENS must be designed with open standards so it can grow and evolve quickly and inexpensively.

• PBA must identify and secure a network of fiscal and content partners.

• LENS must apply best practices with respect to privacy.

• LENS must develop a standard of discourse that supports and advances the brand position as an open source for information and analysis.

• When operating at a steady-state, LENS must generate a net income.

• PBA’s senior staff must support the LENS initiative.

• Use must be of a sufficient level to attract corporate and individual advertising /contributions. The resulting revenue should be sufficient to support ongoing operations.

• LENS should create social capital by creating linkages between non-profit institutions and their users in ways that increase activism and support for those organizations, creating increased engagement in the democratic process and creating increased engagement in the arts and cultural life of Atlanta.

• LENS must establish and reach target number of registered users



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Internal Drivers

• CEO’s vision. Milton Clipper serves not only as the CEO for PBA but also as the executive sponsor for this LENS initiative. As such, his vision and leadership are core internal drivers. It is his intent that Public Broadcasting function as a valued community resource in a fully digital communications environment.

• The existing PBA Mission dictates that it serve the community in the best way possible. It follows that an initiative such as LENS must, likewise, serve the community.

• Many aspects of PBA’s existing business consist of one way communication. For example, a television broadcast is produced and transmitted, but is not interactive. PBA believes it must enhance its ability to have interactive communications on behalf of the Atlanta community. This move to an interactive form of communication will lead to increased communication creating stronger local connections between communities and people in Atlanta.

• Finally, the team strongly stated that it is “Part of PBA’s DNA” to serve its community.

External Drivers

• Technology is dictating change. Today’s communication tools are largely interactive and many are synchronous. The pervasiveness of interactive technology necessitates a similar communication vehicle for fostering robust community action and discourse. Traditional methods are no longer productive or viable.

• In addition to demanding contemporary technology, our users are demanding content in new and different forms and readily available.

• Young audiences consume content differently. For example they engage in limited e-mail usage in contrast with tools such as Facebook. PBA must respond with tools that support their methods of communication.

• Among our target audience, there is a general dissatisfaction with the performance of elected officials.

• Currently there is pent up demand, but a lack of effective means, to aggregate Atlanta content and participate in a social network.

• The community desires recognition of ideas and contributions and LENS should be designed to meet those needs and desires.

• As audiences migrate from traditional media to digital platforms, LENS will be an effective means to counter leverage opportunities within existing and emerging digital platforms.

• There is a critical community need for robust discourse and action.



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Fiscal Drivers

• Technology enables cost effective means of direct consumer contact with minimal barriers.

• PBA believes that revenue must be generated via new platforms.

• Advertising revenues are shifting from traditional media to new digital platforms; LENS will be well positioned to take advantage of this trend.

• PBA needs to engage new channels to re-energize their philanthropic support. LENS is seen as a channel that will drive additional philanthropic support.

• To fill the need for the highly valued digital services to be operated in a financially self sustaining manner.



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Audience Profiles and Scenarios

The following list of User Profiles were identified during the Joint Requirements Session. The purpose of the User Profiles is to begin to identify user groups and user attributes to help drive the requirements for the web site. During the facilitated session, the team started by identifying User Groups, which are groupings of users who will benefit from the site. The resulting list a consolidated list of the major groupings:

• Citizen- Journalist (pro-user), content creator- User (consumer)

• Academic (higher ed/teacher)- Student

• Content creator- Artist- Software Developer

• Moderator/Bloggers• Researcher/Journalist• Politician/Government Official• PBA Sponsors/Contributors• Entities

- Non-Government Agencies (nonprofits)- Corporation- Partners- Moderators- Subgroup

• Issue Advocate/Activist/Organizer- Neighborhood- Environment- Education

• Visitor (non-resident)• Business Leader• Vandals/Trolls

The following pages take a more detailed look at a few of these users and how they might interact with LENS on Atlanta.



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User Profile – Alex Wheeler

How did he hear about LENS? Facebook message with link to rally event

Demographics: User GroupsGender: Male Citizen

Age: 20 Issue Advocate

Marital Status: Single Moderator/Group Leader

Children: 0 Blogger

Household Income: $0 Content Creator (Citizen Journalist)

Occupation: College Student Student

Vehicle: Bicycle

Relationship w/ PBA: Non-listener

Web Savvy ness: Expert (esp. in social networking)

Activism Level: Leader

Neighborhood: Midtown/Home Park

Primary Drivers

Connect with like minded people, create space for virtual strategizing, get more involved with activism scene and stay up to date on flash mobs/events.

Background

Alex Wheeler is a student at Georgia Tech, studying Public Policy. He is currently without a car, so he rides his bike back and forth from his off-campus apartment to school and to meet with friends around Midtown Atlanta. Although Alex loves to ride and often spends weekends on the Silver Comet Trail with his cycling buddies, he has become more and more frustrated by the treacherous riding conditions within Atlanta. Because there are practically no bike paths, he often feels like he is risking his life every time he gets on his bike, but he has little choice.

Embedded Calendar Events

One Monday morning, Alex receives a Facebook message from one of his cycling buddies who attends Georgia State, announcing that one of their cycling acquaintances was hit by a car over the weekend and is in critical condition. The cycling community is holding a rally to urge the establishment of more bike paths and safer conditions for cyclists in Metro Atlanta. Embedded in the message is a link to an invitation to the event.



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Alex Wheeler Continued

Group Page and Event Invitations

Alex clicks on the link and is taken to a page on the LENS on Atlanta website. The page is associated with a group called the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign (ABC). They, along with another group called the Southern Bicycle League, are holding a rally at Hurt Park this coming Friday at 9:45 am. After the rally, they plan to ride en masse to City Hall to deliver Mayor Franklin a letter and petition.

Quick Registration with Option to Add Additional Information Later

Alex is fired up about participating in an action around an issue that is so important to him. He clicks to accept the invitation, and is asked to register on the site. The registration process is easy and painless because it gives him to opportunity to enter the bare minimum of information at first. He’ll go back and add more information once he has a good reason to, he thinks to himself.

Online Petition Signing

After registering, he is taken back to the event invitation page, showing his acceptance. He then clicks on the link to the petition which is included in the event information. The petition clearly and succinctly expresses the group’s needs, so Alex is anxious to sign it. He notices there are 57 signatures so far. His signature makes 58, but he knows they will need more than that to make an impact.

Email Event Invitations/Petitions to Friends

He notices that there is a link allowing him to forward links to the event invitation and the petition to friends. He clicks the link to forward the announcement to friends, copies and pastes all of the email addresses in his address book, and adds a personal note letting people know how important it is to have strong turnout at the rally, but if they can’t make it to the rally, to please at least sign the petition.

Code Snippets Capable of Being Embedded in Other Sources

When he’s finished forwarding the event information, he notices there’s a link to a string of HTML code he can embed in other online sources, so he copies the embedded code for the event announcement and the petition page and posts it on his own blog as well as his myspace and facebook blog pages along with an explanation of why the issue is so important to him.

Group Blog with Photos/Video/Audio Upload Capability and Map Mashup Widget

He then returns to the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign page on LENS and reads more about their group and how to get more involved. In addition to basic group information, there is a blog with up-to-date postings about their member who was hurt in the accident, as well as prior entries with various bike trail photos, and a clickable map showing the various bike trails around town.



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Group Membership and Group Update NotificationsHe clicks to see the members of the group and recognizes several cyclists he doesn’t know personally but whom he often sees during his weekend rides on the Trail. He decides to join the group and updates his profile to receive daily email notifications of new postings and discussions. Recognized Value of Adding Address InformationWhile updating his profile, he notices that he can add his address information, and although his address won’t be specifically shown on the site, he will be able to locate other members by their proximity to him. He thinks this may be useful is getting carpool rides up to the Trail on weekends.

User/Address-specific Elected Officials & Ability to Message Officials via LENSOnce he enters his address information, he finds that the system has automatically populated the local, state, and federal elected officials for his specific district. Back on the LENS ABC page, he notices that they have provided a sample letter to send to local officials. Using the sample letter as a starting point, Alex edits it with personal information about the numerous close calls he has had while biking in Atlanta, and clicks Send, getting a confirmation that the letter had been sent to the specific representatives he had selected.

Discussion Board Finally, Alex explores the discussion board and posts a topic suggesting that they get someone to videotape the rally and ride and asking what the specific ride route will be so he can tell his friends where to set up to get the best shots. The next morning Alex checks his email to find a notification of new updates to the ABC group page. When he opens his email, he sees that the discussion topic he started now has 8 responses and the petition is up to 150 signatures. After clicking to the ABC discussion board, he is happy to find that all of the responses were supportive of his idea and input. One of them, from one of the leaders/moderators of the group, included a map of the ride route and added that he was planning to take video with his cell phone, but that higher resolution video would obviously be preferable. Another member responded that he planned to wear his helmet cam.

Petition Signature ViewAlex then clicked on the petition and noticed that several of the new signatures on the petition were from the friends he emailed.



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Email Event Invitations/Petitions to Friends

Alex forwards the event invitation page to one of his classmates who wants to be a documentary filmmaker. In the personal note he adds, he includes a link to the discussion thread and asks if his friend would be willing to videotape the rally and ride and notes that a map showing the exact route can be found via the included link.

Group Update Notifications

Each day, Alex gets notifications of updates to the LENS ABC group page, and each day, Alex is more and more pleased to find that the petition signatures are growing exponentially and that the injured cyclist is now out of the ICU.

Annotation Tools

The letter the group planned to deliver to Mayor Franklin was also posted on the group’s blog, and when Alex clicked to read it, he found that there were cool annotation tools that allowed group members to comment on specific sections to make wording and ordering suggestions and to contribute their ideas. Alex made a suggestion about one paragraph, and the next day was happy to see that his advice had been incorporated.

Send comment/suggestion for Blog Entry to Blog Owner/Moderator

The day of the rally came and it was well-attended and got a lot of news coverage. Alex was interviewed by Odette Yousef, from the local public radio station so when he got home, he set up his computer to record the audio from the WABE online live news stream. His friend sent him the video file and Alex sent a request to the moderators to post it on the group’s blog. In the meantime, Alex posted the video on youtube and linked to it from his own blog, myspace and facebook. He also included a link to download the audio file he saved of the WABE coverage (which included his interview!).



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User Profile - Karen Pollitt

How did she hear about LENS? PBA communications to officials

Word of mouth conversation with colleagueDemographics

Gender: Female

Age: 48 User Groups

Marital Status: Married Citizen

Children: 2 (College age) Government Official

Household Income: $200,000

Occupation: Fulton County Commissioner

Vehicle: SUV

Relationship w/ PBA: Occasional Listener – non-member

Web Savvy ness: Intermediate


Neighborhood: Cascade, SW Atlanta

Primary Drivers: Take pulse of constituency, share positions on issues, solicit input/ideas from constituents

Background

Karen Pollitt is a Fulton County Commissioner. A few months ago, she received a mailing from PBA, announcing the launch of LENS on Atlanta, a new social networking site intended to encourage public discourse and civic engagement. Being as busy as she is, she never got around to exploring the site, but at the last Commission Meeting, she chatted with one of the other commissioners who mentioned how much value he was getting out of the site and suggested that Karen sign on to see for herself. Karen asked for the URL and the colleague told her that there’s a link to his LENS page from his official Fulton County website.

Civic/Political Representative Page, including Blog and Calendar

The next day, Karen accessed Tom’s site and found the link to his LENS profile. When she got there, she was impressed with the freshness of the content. Tom had been posting regular blog entries letting constituents know the current resolutions he had been working on, clarifying his position on topics addressed at the last meeting, and letting constituents know about upcoming public forums on the Transportation Plan. These public forums, as well as the Board of Commissioners meeting schedule, were also listed on Tom’s personal calendar of events.



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Karen Pollitt Continued

My Constituents and Constituent Interests (Topic Tags)

What was most interesting to Karen, however, was that the page listed the topics that LENS members who were also Tom’s constituents were discussing throughout the LENS site. Karen saw, for example, that the highest number of postings was within the Health Care category, since the Grady Hospital situation had been in the news recently, but the Transportation category was a close second, with topics such as Traffic Congestion, Beltline Project, and MARTA listed as most hotly debated.

Topic Aggregation Page including appropriate Discussions, Blog Posts, Events, Links, and affiliated Groups

Karen realized that she could click on one of these tags and the site automatically aggregated all of the discussion board topic threads, blog posts, events, links, and groups associated with this topic. A cursory glance at one of the discussions showed that the quality of the discourse was surprisingly high.

Ability to post as an individual or as a group

She also noticed that in most cases, posts were made by individuals, but in some cases, it looked like groups, such as the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign, and Georgia Transportation Advocates were posting on behalf of their organizations. It made for an interesting discussion for entities and individuals to be engaged in conversations with one another.

Polls

Back on Tom’s page, Karen saw that Tom had posted a poll, asking users to vote for their highest priority issue. Viewing the results showed that, with 240 votes, Health Care, Education and Transportation were running about equal.



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Karen Pollitt Continued

Registration and Association with Elected/Appointed Official

Karen knew that she had to sign up for this. It would give her a platform for communicating her views, while at the same time, giving her a means to take the pulse of the community (and her constituents in particular), while also giving her constituents another means of communicating with her and engaging in the kind of debate and solutioning that there was rarely enough time for at BOC meetings. So Karen clicked the link to register and filled out the required information. After submitting her registration, Karen was presented with a page stating that there was a name and email match on Karen Pollitt and asking her to verify that she was the Fulton County Commissioner. If she was, the LENS system would associate her profile with the elected officials database and from now on, when users signed up and saw her listed as one of their government representatives, her name would be linked to her LENS profile and she would be able to view her constituents’ topic interests. So Karen clicked to verify that she was indeed the official, and completed her registration. The confirmation page stated that a verification email would be sent to the govt. email she registered with, and until she verified her identity by clicking the link within that email message, her profile would not be activated.

Account Activation via Email Verification

After verifying her account, Karen returned to the profile setup to post her initial entry welcoming people to her site. She then added a post similar to what she saw on Tom’s site, inviting residents to the Public Forums on the Transportation Plan.

Ability to copy events from one calendar to another

She was pleased to find that by going to Tom’s site, she was able to quickly copy all of his events and meetings to her own calendar without having to re-enter each one manually. She was also able to copy the poll from Tom’s site to her own.

Most Active Topics of Constituents

But the best part was when Karen noticed that she already had 110 members listed under My Constituents. And she was able to see the same topic list that she had seen on Tom’s site, showing what her constituents were posting about. She noticed that in her case, Transportation was far and away the most popular category, with Traffic Congestion and Beltline Project being the most popular topics. She clicked to access the aggregation page for the Beltline Project and posted to some of the discussion threads.



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User Profile – Catherine Hayes

How did she hear about LENS?

Email from neighborhood organization

Link to LENS entity group page from email

Demographics User Groups

Gender: Female Citizen

Age: 38 Content Creator

Marital Status: Divorced Moderator/Blogger

Children: 2 Teacher


Occupation: Teacher

Vehicle: Honda Accord

Relationship w/ PBA: Viewer/Listener – PBA Member


Activism Level: Involved but not a leader

Neighborhood: Virginia Highlands

Primary Drivers: Enable change, share information, teach about civic involvement

Background

Catherine Hayes is a lifelong resident of Metro Atlanta. She lives in Virginia Highlands and is a high school Social Studies teacher at Decatur High School. One of the biggest frustrations she faces every morning is the traffic congestion that occurs due to the lack of left turn signal from Briarcliff onto Ponce De Leon Ave. The left turn lane backs up so far at certain times of the day that it often takes her ten minutes waiting at the light. She has raised the issue at several neighborhood association meetings, and many of her neighbors have expressed similar frustrations, but to date, nothing has been done to solve the problem. It has gotten so bad that she often chooses to commute miles out of her way to avoid that particular intersection.



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Catherine Hayes Continued

Email Invitation to Join a GroupOne day, she receives an email invitation from her neighborhood association inviting her to join the neighborhood association group on the LENS on Atlanta site. The idea is to give neighbors a means of engaging in discussions and brainstorming beyond what is possible within the limited timeframe of the monthly association meetings.

Discussion Board & Registration Required to PostShe clicks the link to access the Neighborhood Association LENS site and notices that there is already a discussion going on about the traffic light at Briarcliff and Ponce. After reading through the posts, she decides to join in the conversation and clicks to reply, at which point she is asked to register. Once she verifies her email address, she is able to post to the discussion board. One of the things she posts about is that she has started to take daily photos of the traffic with her cell phone. She posts these photos to the discussion board and one of her neighbors, who also happens to be a group leader/moderator, suggests that they compile a photo album showing the extent of the problem.

Editor Status May Be Required to Blog (depending on group-defined access levels) & Ability to Upload Photos to BlogHer moderator neighbor gives Catherine editor status so she can post to the main group blog. Catherine uploads the photos she has taken to the blog and writes an accompanying blog entry about how far she has to drive out of her way to get to work in the morning due to the traffic light problem.

Content Tagging (with possibility of suggesting tags based on keywords found)Before finalizing the submission, Catherine is asked to add tags to the entry to make it easy for others to aggregate content on similar topics. The site suggests that, based on the keywords it found in her post and the keywords in other posts on the site, she might wish to add the tags “turn signal”, “stoplight” and “traffic congestion” to her posts.

Ability to Upload Video Files to BlogsLater that day, Catherine finds that there are four comments to her post. One of the comments suggests that she videotape her wait at the intersection so people can see just how long it takes. The next morning, Catherine experiments with the video feature on her cell phone and successfully videotapes her morning commute. At lunch, she edits her original blog post, adding the video to the photos she has already posted. The response is overwhelming, with people posting that they were always frustrated by the light, but never realized just how much time they were wasting out of their lives. One commenter multiplied the number by the number of work days in a year to come up with startling estimates of the amount of time the stoplight costs them in a year.

Related Content Accessed via Content TagsAnother commenter pointed out that by clicking on the tag “turn signal” and choosing to view tagged content from the entire LENS site and not just their group, she was able to find discussion threads, blog posts, and a wiki-type entry posted in another neighborhood association group explaining how they went about petitioning Fulton County for a turn signal to be added to a particular intersection, along with historical and geographical context on the issue.



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Online Petition Creation, Content Collaboration Tools, and PollingBecause her original blog post had since been pushed down on the list, Catherine posted another blog post linking to the other association’s wiki. Since one of the first steps in the other association’s procedure was to develop a petition and get signatures, Catherine added in her post that she was looking for help in creating an online petition and that she had posted a rough draft based on the successful petition of the other association in the collaboration tools area. Other group members were then able to comment on the petition language and add their support for the petition process via a group poll.

Ability to Create “Sticky” Content Entries (e.g. Welcome Messages, Group Activities)Once the petition was finalized and a certain number of the group’s membership had expressed support for it, a sticky message was added requesting neighborhood association members to sign the petition online (these sticky messages stay at the top of the page until the moderator takes them down, as opposed to the regular blog posts that move down the page as new posts are added). Catherine brought her laptop to the next monthly Neighborhood Association meeting, so members could sign the petition at the meeting and become familiar with the LENS group site and the functionality available there.

Submit Content (Petitions, Letters, etc.) to Government Officials via LENS siteOnce the online petition had gathered a certain number of signatures, and the photos and video were attached, Catherine submitted it through the LENS site to her Fulton County Commissioner, Karen Pollitt. Karen, in turn, posted a message to the neighborhood association group, acknowledging that she had received the petition and the associated photo and video evidence, and inviting the members to the next Fulton County Commissions meeting, promising that she would add this issue to the agenda.

Success Stories ContentAfter several months and continued meetings with various county boards and the Department of Transportation, the turn signal was eventually installed. Catherine posted the story of their group’s success to the Success Stories area of the site, hoping that it would inspire others to take action and accomplish goals the way they did.Using Model for Civic Engagement as Teaching Tool

After this success, Catherine became a virtual evangelist for the benefits of sharing information, exchanging ideas, and unifying community voices on the LENS site. She decided to use her experience as a model for teaching her students about civic engagement. She showed her students her Success Story article, and afterward, revealed to them that, as a class exercise, they would be using the LENS tools to create their own community of interest, and to use the tools to try to solve a problem that they agreed upon.



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Creation of Ad hoc Group, and Establishment of Membership and Leadership Roles

In order to participate on the site, each student was first required to register on the site. Next, an ad hoc group page was created by Ms. Hayes, and she then sent invitations for the students to join the Decatur High Senior Social Studies Class Group. At first, Ms. Hayes was the sole moderator, but as time went on, and certain individuals emerged as leaders, some of the students themselves were selected by the group as leaders/moderators.

Discussion Boards for Idea Generation and Polls to Determine Group Priorities

A discussion board thread was used to suggest issues to solve. At an agreed upon deadline, the suggestions in the discussion board were added to an online poll, and the students voted on the issue to be addressed. The students voted to create a school-wide recycling program and then used the blogging and discussion board tools to brainstorm ways in which they could not only recycle the paper, plastic and aluminum waste created by the school every day, but change school policies to purchase goods made of composted and recycled materials.

Expansion of Group Purpose and Membership

What originally started as a single class project eventually expanded to encompass a school-wide recycling initiative. Other members of the student body were encouraged to register on the site and join the group, whose name changed from “GHS Senior Social Studies Class” to “GHS Green Team”.



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User Profile – Stephen Ramirez

How did he hear about LENS?

Internal Communications

Serves as moderator/blogger


Gender: Male Citizen

Age: 52 Content Creator

Marital Status: Married Moderator/Blogger

Children: 2 Teacher


Occupation: PBA Journalist

Vehicle: Jeep Cherokee

Relationship w/ PBA: PBA Stakeholder/Employee

Web Savvy ness: Expert

Activism Level: Interested but not involved

Neighborhood: Stone Mountain

Primary Drivers: share information, establish new venue/audience for stories, access interesting story subjects

Background

Stephen Ramirez is a PBA Journalist and host of Morning Edition. Stephen is very familiar with the LENS site, not only because the LENS site has become an integral part of the PBA mission and culture, but because he now serves as a moderator/blogger for the Transportation category. In that capacity, Stephen’s job is to peruse the various topic discussion boards, take the pulse of the conversations, and distill some of the more interesting conversations, debates, and activities undertaken by the various organizations, ad hoc entities, officials and individuals networking on the LENS site.



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Aggregated Content via Topic Tags

Although Stephen does not live in-town, he has experienced in-town Atlanta residents’ strong opinions about the Beltline Project through his examination of transportation issues via LENS. He knows that by visiting the Transportation category and clicking on the Beltline Project tag, he can view aggregated content about the Beltline Project from various areas of the site.

Wiki Feature

One of the most interesting content areas on the site that has developed over the past six months has been the Beltline Project wiki entry, which provides historical background of the project, the interaction of various groups, and the debates that have ensued over disproportionate funding and the potential for community displacement.

Leveraging LENS Discussion and Members as Fodder for Traditional Broadcast Stories

Stephen proposes a Special Multi-Part Report on the Beltline Project to take place every day for a week during the local Morning Edition broadcast. In addition to interviewing leaders of advocacy groups and local politicians, Stephen is interested in hearing from average citizens about how they think the Beltline will affect their communities.

Sorting by Most Active Threads and Highest Rated Threads, as well as Most Active Posters and Highest Rated Posters

Going back to the Beltline topic page, Stephen reads through the most active and most recent discussion thread topics. He is able to see visual representations of the contributors to each thread and also see whose posts are most highly rated. He notices that in most of the threads, two or three users consistently rank at the top of the list of most active posters as well as most helpful posts.

Links to Individual Profile Pages

Stephen delves deeper by clicking on these particular users avatars and accesses their individual profile pages. Here, he can see an aggregation of their discussion thread posts as well as their blog posts and groups that they belong to. By exploring the group pages, he can see how these particular users fit into existing organizations and which ad hoc organizations they’ve created themselves.



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Message users through LENS site

Through the LENS site, Stephen sees that these three or four primary users who usually provide the most thoughtful, articulate posts are members of a key organization, and by looking at this organization’s LENS group pages, he can see that it is having a meeting event within the next week. Stephen sends messages through LENS to these highly rated users and to the leaders of the groups they belong to, inquiring about the possibility of his attending the next group meeting and asking if they would be willing to be interviewed for the Beltline radio series he is developing.

Notifications of Messaging responses

Within a day or so, Stephen receives a notification that he has received responses via LENS messaging from the Beltline users he had reached out to, all of whom were planning to attend the upcoming meetings and were agreeable to being interviewed.

Upload of photo/video/audio files to Blog and Content Tagging

Stephen then makes sure his producer can attend the upcoming meetings with him to take photographs and capture the interviews in audio/video. At the meeting, many interesting points are made, but the limited time available for the Beltline Radio Series required that the interviews be highly edited. Because Stephen is the blog owner for the Transportation category, he realizes he can post the full audio/video interviews in their entirety to the Transportation blog. After he uploads the files, he is presented with a set of relevant topic tags and he selects the tags “Beltline Project” and “Interviews”. Once the Beltline radio series is developed and broadcast, Stephen adds those audio files to the Transportation blog as well.



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User Profile – Tom Jamison

How did he hear about LENS?

Watched Town Hall Meeting on Transportation broadcast on PBA


Gender: Male Citizen

Age: 63 Entity Representative

Marital Status: Married

Children: 4 (grown)


Occupation: Head of Lobby Group (ex-Politician)

Vehicle: Lexus

Relationship w/ PBA: Sporadic PBS viewer/non-member



Neighborhood: Buckhead

Primary Drivers: Express his lobby group’s opinion, encourage membership in organization, exploit opportunities for partnerships, network with potential contributors

Background

Tom Jamison is a former Fulton County official who left his government career years ago to earn more money in the private sector in order to fund his children’s college educations. He accepted a position as the head of a transportation lobby group called “Georgia Transportation Advocates” (GTA). The group has an existing website, with an events calendar, news, and reports.



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Drive users to LENS site via existing PBA broadcast channels

As a key player in Atlanta as far as Transportation policy goes, Tom must stay up-to-date on key transportation issue, legislation, and events. He heard through his former government colleagues that Karen Pollitt, a current Fulton County Commissioner, is holding a Town Hall meeting on the issue of traffic congestion in Metro Atlanta. He participates in the meeting as an audience member, and then later watches the television rebroadcast of the event on PBA30. At the end of the event broadcast, a message is delivered inviting viewers to lend their thoughts and opinions to the debate by going the LENS website and becoming active in the discussion forums there. Wanting to make sure he stays on top of the transportation debate, Tom makes a note of the website URL.

Links from PBA programs on PBA website

Tom accesses the LENS site via the URL he had noted, and on the front page, he sees a module called “Recently Seen on PBA30”, along with another module entitled “Recently Heard on WABE.” The link to the Town Hall Program LENS site is clearly linked under the PBA30 header, and clicking the link takes Tom to the Town Hall Program Page on the LENS site.

Program Pages

This site includes the full video of the program as well as bonus video of the extended question and answer period following the end of the broadcast. The page also features a discussion forum with topics related to the questions posed to the panel. Links to some of the individuals and organizations featured on the Town Hall panel are also available, as well as content tags that would offer extended aggregated LENS site content about that topic.

Adding Group to Link List

Tom wants his group’s website to be listed along with the other organizations already listed under Related Organizations so he sends a message to the program moderator requesting the addition. He’s not sure how long it will take to get a response, however, so he goes about trying to find another way of promoting his organization on the site.

Discussion Board

When he tries to post to a discussion thread, he discovers that he needs to register for the site, so he completes the registration process and activates his account. After registering, Tom posts to the discussion board, both by responding to existing posts and starting a new thread of his own so as to get his organization’s name out there in as many places as possible.



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Use of content tags to aggregate content (ability to have LENS groups listed on topic aggregator pages without manual intervention as with group pages)

After posting to several discussion threads, Tom clicks on the “Northern Arc” content tag to see what has been written about this topic. He ends up on a page that appears to aggregate content from various sources: discussion boards, blogs, links, and groups. Since this page doesn’t appear to be owned by anyone in particular, he realizes that if he creates a LENS group and tags it with “Northern Arc”, he will be able to get his group listed on this aggregator page.

LENS group page creation (as an established entity as opposed to an ad hoc group)

In Tom’s profile, he sees a link to create a new group page. He follows the steps and sets himself up as the leader/moderator. Because he sets up the site as an established entity and not an ad hoc group, he must submit additional information so that the group can be verified. It is explained that until the group is verified, it will not appear on the site and it cannot solicit members, although he can continue content creation and group setup process in the meantime.

RSS feeds from existing sites

He then adds RSS feeds from his external blog and events calendar to the LENS group page. This will prevent him from having to create and upload content in both places, which is a relief.

Approval Notification

Once his group has been verified, Tom receives an email letting him know that the group will be viewable on the LENS site and can now accept members.

Distribute Membership Invitations

Tom sends membership invitations to his existing group member email distribution list. In the invitations, he explains the benefit of showing strong membership support in this arena and of networking and engaging in discussions with other transportation organizations and communities online.



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Initiate Membership in Other Existing LENS Groups

Tom also uses the content tags to view aggregation pages and other groups associated with the same issues he is. Once on those pages, he clicks to “Join this Group” and the GTA is soon listed under the Affiliated Groups listings for the various other groups he has joined. Tom also becomes a member of some of the groups as an individual.

Link to simulation game

Because Tom is so keen on letting people know how bad the traffic situation in Metro Atlanta will become if no action is taken and additional lanes and thoroughfares are not added, he adds a link to a simulation game that a public policy graduate student has developed allowing users to enter data such as the city and the future year, and the widget will return population growth projections and traffic congestion projections, showing current and projected rush hour averages from point A to point B in key cities. Because this particular widget was built using Google Map APIs and is scalable to fit the column grid of the page, the widget is easily integrated into the LENS entity page.



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User Profile – Alicia Johnson

How did she hear about LENS?

TransitTV commercial


Gender: Female Citizen

Age: 29

Marital Status: Single

Children: 1 (5 years old)


Occupation: Receptionist

Vehicle: None (takes public transportation)

Relationship w/ PBA: non-listener/child watches PBS

Web Savvy ness: Basic (has computer on desk at work

Activism Level: non-involved

Neighborhood: Lithonia

Primary Drivers: Get voice heard, share information

Background

Alicia Johnson is a single mom, living in Lithonia with her 6-year-old daughter. Every morning, she makes sure her daughter gets on the school bus and then she walks to the Blue Flyer bus stop which takes her to the Five Points station. She then either walks or takes the train to her job as a receptionist in Peachtree Center. As of October 1st, her morning routine was drastically disrupted when the Blue Flyer bus she takes every morning had its schedule reduced. Due to the scheduling cuts, which extend the time between buses from 10 minutes to 25 minutes, Alicia cannot get from her daughter’s school bus stop to the Blue Flyer stop in time to catch the 7:35 bus, the last bus she can catch to get to work on time. The next bus now leaves at 8:00 am, putting Alicia at work a full thirty minutes late. Alicia was starting to panic because she couldn’t afford to lose this job, especially because of the health insurance that it provided for herself and her daughter.



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LENS marketing on MARTA broadcast channels (e.g. TransitTV)

While on the Blue Flyer bus, when Alicia wasn’t reading, she occasionally watched the TransitTV screens. One morning, a few days after MARTA’s schedule changes, Alicia noticed a 2-3 minute commercial for a new Atlanta-based website called LENS. The commercial made it seem like this website allows people to get involved in discussions with other Metro Atlanta residents about community issues and gives citizens tools to take action to improve the quality of their lives and their communities. She mentioned to the woman sitting next to her that the new Blue Flyer schedule changes had had such a negative impact on her schedule and her job, and she wished she could do something about that the way the people in the commercial did. The woman next to her agreed, complaining that the new schedule was going to add almost an hour to her commute every day.

Access to LENS via Search Engine

For the rest of the day, Alicia kept thinking about the LENS commercial she had seen earlier on the bus. So at one point, she typed “LENS Atlanta” into her Google homepage search box. LENS on Atlanta was the first result and the explanation of the site matched what the commercial described, so she clicked on the link.

Search Functionality

On the home page, she saw lots of activity and discussion threads. But Alicia was especially interested in whether anyone else was discussing the latest MARTA schedule changes, so she entered “MARTA” in the search field.

Discussion Boards

The result page showed several active discussion threads, one of which was entitled “MARTA Oct 1 schedule changes bad news for Blue Flyer patrons.” Alicia clicked on the link and read through the discussion and practically every response had a story just like hers.

Requirement to Register in order to post

She wanted to post a response to the thread as well, but when she clicked to reply, it was clear that she would have to register to post, and Alicia was wary of registering for websites on the reception desk computer, so she ultimately decided not to contribute to the discussion.



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Identification of Elected Officials for both Registered and Unregistered Users

Later that day, Alicia returned to the site to see if any additional comments had been posted to the discussion board thread. One additional reply had been posted, suggesting that affected Blue Flyer patrons write to their representatives. The poster also explained how to use the LENS site to find out who your representatives are. For unregistered users like Alicia, it was still possible to determine their specific representatives by entering address information without storing it. So Alicia copied the sample letter the poster had included, and then easily found her representatives’ email addresses with the LENS site tools. Alicia then emailed the sample letter along with information about how the changes had personally affected her, to her representatives through her Gmail account.

Value of Sharing Information

The next day, Alicia returned to the site to see if any additional comments had been posted to the discussion board thread. The most recent poster explained that, in conjunction with the Blue Flyer cuts, MARTA had added additional buses on the 116 line, which would take you to the Indian Creek MARTA station, where you could then take the train to Five Points. Alicia decided to try that route the next day and was elated to find that she got to work on time.



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Functional Requirements for LENS on Atlanta

OverviewThe following Functional Requirements were identified for Public Square Atlanta. Functional requirements describe what the users will find when they enter the site and how the site will function. During the joint requirements definition (JRD) session, the requirements were prioritized.

Basic Functionality

The following list of functionality was identified as basic and mandatory and expected by all users from any web site.

• Copyright

• Terms of Use

• Privacy

• Site Map

• Search

• About Us

• Contact Us

• Become a Sponsor

• Settings: My LENS profile, change address, etc.

• Register

• Login / logout

• Navigation – user filter against available content.

- Social issues, concern, interests

- Topical issues such as the environment, healthcare, traffic

- Number of voices – how many people have responded or commented to a particular topic

- Meta-tags to describe content by containing the key words of that content

- Geographical to identify entries, users and content by geographic location (example: Midtown, Roswell, etc)



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Site FunctionalitySite functionality is defined as the components that make up the site, how the site works.

• Real-time or Near Real Time contact with other users – mailbox, instant message, private message, ability to turn on and off

• Multi-Lingual – the ability to provide the site structure and tools in multiple languages and the ability to allow for multi-lingual user generated content

• Accessibility – Section 508C compliance may not be realistic given some of the technological constraints associated with full compliance

• Personalization – customizing the site to present the user’s established interests and preferences rather than the entire spectrum of content and applications

• User Notification of new information such as alerts, e-mail

• Community Tools such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums

• User Generated Content – tools to upload text, photos, video, audio

• Moderation Tools for Text, Audio, Video, Photos – automated moderation tools for obvious offenses, user policed moderation, and moderation provided by PBA staff

• Mapping Feature – ability to annotate maps

• Lost and Found – ability to post lost items

• Info Visualization Tools – on-line multi-user tools, such as charts, graphs, whiteboards that allow multiple users to annotate or update documents in an on-line space

• Polling

• Surveys

• RSS Feeds from other content providers

• Calendars

• Group/entity creation for social communities

• Content Tagging – geographic, how popular, how many people have commented on this?

• Recommendation engine – what other people with similar interests are talking about

• Representation of how you fit in to the Social Network

• Show visually that you are among other people on the site - “Maximize co-presence

• Support for Mobile devices

• Advertising model

• Suggestion Box



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Site Functionality PrioritizationThe following table indicates the identified site functionality with a prioritization rating. The rating was given on two characteristics. The first one was to identify if the functionality was core to the website. In other words, would the site suffer considerably if the functionality was not included? The second was value to the user. For this exercise, we combined all user groups into one group for simplicity. Each characteristic was given a value of 5, 3, or 1, with 5 being the highest value and 1 being the lowest. In some instances of extended discussion, a value of 2 or 4 was given to reach somewhat of a consensus or compromise that allowed us to move on to the next item.

REQUIREMENTS Core Value Total

Search 5 5 10

Accessibility - reasonable, basic standards 5 5 10

Personalization – interest, preferences, profile, saved feed searches 5 5 10

Community Tools – blogging, wikis, discussion forums 5 5 10

User Generated Content – tools to upload text, photos, video, audio 5 5 10

Rating 5 5 10

Surveys/Polling 5 5 10

RSS Feeds 5 5 10

Calendars 5 5 10

Group/entity creation 5 5 10

Content Tagging – geographic, how popular, how many people have commented on this? 5 5 10

Basic Functional Areas – Copyright, Terms of Use, Privacy, Site Map, About Us, Contact Us, Become a Member, Help, FAQs 5 3 8



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Site Functionality Prioritization

REQUIREMENTS Core Value Total

Registration : Login/Log out 5 1 6

Moderation Tools for Text, Audio, Video, Photos 5 1 6

Advertising model 5 1 6

Notification – alerts, e-mail 3 5 8

Mapping Feature – ability to annotate maps - geographic 3 5 8

Real-time or Near Real Time contact with other users – mailbox, instant message, private message, ability to turn on and off 3 4 7

Recommendation engine – what other people with similar interests are talking about, where they are on the site 1 5 6

Maximize co-presence – you are among other people on the site 1 5 6

Info Visualization Tools – charts, graphs, whiteboards 1 3 4

Representation of how you fit in to the Social Network 1 3 4

Support for Mobile devices 1 3 4

Suggestion Box 1 3 4

Lost and Found 1 2 3

Multi-Lingual 1 1 2



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Content Requirements

Content TypesAlthough much of the content of Public Square will be user generated, there will be initial content requirements as well as ongoing “seed” content to keep the conversation lively. The following are the initial content types:

• Feeds from radio news (e.g. topic of the day)

• Legislation / bills

• Contact info for local officials

• Multimedia (video clips, transcripts or summary of programs)

• Fundraising / how to become a member

• Listing of major civic groups – Kiwanis, rotary, etc.

• Links to city / county services:

- Links to websites

- Links to relevant content on local government (city, county) websites for “quality of life” issues such as “How to request speed bumps” or “How to report pot holes”

- Links to relevant content. Note: we don’t want to leave general web site links that will just present more challenges to find what they need (don’t drop them in front of the mountain).

• Suggestion box

• Event Postings

• Linked content – off site to be embedded

• Files / documents (link to report, resource, actual file)

• Polls, Surveys

• Photos / webcam

• What the site is about

• Entity created content

• Issue of the day

• Hot topics



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Content Requirements

Content PartnersThe following organizations and content providers have been identified as potential content partners for the site.

• Neighborhood organizers & associations

• Civic league

• Healthcare, transportation, environment content partners to provide content to generate discussion on key issues

• Public Action - a tool produced by Public Interactive. We might be able to use this tool and bring in content from other public organizations.

• Public Insight Network – developed by Minnesota public radio. Tool for citizen journalism. Collaborative filter that allows newsrooms to access citizen generated stories.

• News Vine - another example of citizen journalism

• Atlanta.net

• Note: we have the potential to partner with a large number of sites/content providers using an RSS Feed Reader.



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Visual Design Requirements

Brand AttributesThe purpose of this section of the document is to identify the brand attributes and characteristics (gathered and defined in the JRD) sufficient to inform the visual design of the web site’s graphical user interface (GUI). In addition, all information related to brand development captured during the two day session was captured and is presented here.

Brand IdentifyThe following items describe the PBA brand identity / Identities:

• “LENS on Atlanta” will be the overarching brand identity name.• “Public Square Atlanta” will be the brand identity name of the sub-section, or facet, of LENS that is the focus of this Solution Outline.• LENS, although an acronym, will not include periods.• There are currently no marketing / public relations initiatives underway that should influence the brand or web site’s look and feel.• A placeholder logo (visual brand identity) for both LENS on Atlanta and Public Square Atlanta will be provided to IBM by PBA for the

purposes of design study creation.• There will be overt relationships made between PBA, LENS on Atlanta, and the other facets of LENS reflected in the visual brand identity

(logo) and/or GUI.

Brand Adjectives, Attributes, and CharacteristicsThe following list includes adjectives, attributes, and characteristics used to describe the look and feel of the Public Square Atlanta Web site:

• Trustable / trustworthy / trusted source*• Clean / Open• Uncluttered• Readable• Inviting / friendly / approachable (“non-stuffy”)• Dynamic / energetic / compelling• Contemporary• Intuitive / Easy to use• Ordered / structured

*A trusted source for information, analysis, and understanding based on the principles of”:- Transparency- Unrestricted access- Encouraging democracy- Independent media voice – a non-commercial character as well as an editorial integrity and independence are critical to the public service mission- Programs and services available to all – regardless of their ability to pay- Fundamentally a local institution and service, rooted in the social, educational and cultural fabric of our community- Note: there is a critical distinction between a trusted source in the broadcast world and the on-line world. To be the trusted source in the broadcast world

means being vetted/sourced by “experts” through an editorial process (heavily controlled process). To be the trusted source in the on line world (for LENS) means being vetted/sourced by a populist “open-source” process.



2

Architectural Requirements

OverviewThe LENS application has the freedom to be architected from scratch. Initially, components of PBA online may be leveraged as part of a starting point for the overall roadmap, but there is no technical requirement that LENS utilize existing systems for the LENS application platform. Starting with a relatively clean slate will help system designers be creative and choose the most appropriate systems to ensure success. This approach also helps alleviate costs and constraints to PBA associated with performing systems integrations or migration from legacy systems.

In addition to starting fresh, LENS will approach this development with the intention of re-using existing tools, content, applications, and services that are already in place on the internet wherever possible. PBA does not intend for LENS to be a large custom application, but rather a focal point that facilitates community using existing tools and content as much as possible. As each component or piece of functionality is considered, pros and cons of building a new application versus re-using existing assets on the web will be evaluated.

Interface Points

The functional requirements for the LENS System have implications for external interface points:

• The system calls for the aggregation of content from third parties that are of interest to LENS users. Even LENS users themselves will be content providers.

• The system also may need to project content to third party systems in order to create a viral presence beyond the LENS domain.

• The system will use the tools and services offered by third parties wherever possible to alleviate the burden of building from scratch and maintaining and also to take advantage of an existing user base.

Systems Interface Partners

Most of the existing systems that will be considered for inclusion in LENS are ASP based services that can be easily leveraged or replaced. The following systems and partners will be considered for the LENS System at this time:

• Public Action

• Public Insight Journalism

• Verio Hosting

• Quick Pledge

As new opportunities for third party components and partners arise, they will be evaluated based on the system requirements and costs during a standard evaluation process.



2

Architectural Requirements

Requirements

Standards-based content feeds

Integrating a wide variety of content from third party sources can present huge challenges unless the mechanisms for making that happen are based on established standards. For that reason, RSS and ATOM feeds will be used wherever possible. PBA technical staff agrees that these standards are appropriate and as straight forward as they are ubiquitous. Such standards also will facilitate incorporation of new content providers with minimal cost and effort.

Content Partners

A variety of content partners are anticipated for LENS. Feeds will be incorporated from partners, such as:

• Atlanta.net

• User blogs

• Atlanta News agencies

Social Networks

The goal of LENS is to create a series of social networking communities. Because certain existing social networking sites are hugely successful on a global scale, LENS can leverage these systems to grow the LENS user base. The LENS system will support addition of content or LENS specific applications to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.


1



3User Experience

3



3

User Experience

User Interface Design Process OverviewThis diagram illustrates the design process the team underwent to design the user experience for Public Square. We began with User Profiles, created user scenarios that helped us verify our Features and Functions. From the scenarios we designed the navigational flows and the wireframes, which led naturally into the Visual Designs.



3

User Experience

Navigation Flows: Legend

Link

This symbol represents a section of a flow that is continued on one of the following pages.

Screen This symbol represents a single page (screen) template.

<XYZ>Text in brackets represent a variable that is dynamically served by a database or content management system.

Global Nav

These symbols represent a collection of buttons, links, and/or other elements which appear consistently on each screen of the site or section.

Global Tools

SubNav

This symbol represents a series of related pages. It indicates the exact number of pages is not yet known or will be generated dynamically and therefore vary.

This symbol represents page content or fields. A repeatable format for content /fields is referred to as a module.

Screen Screen

Screens

A bolded outline on either a screen or a module represents that this is the element being described on the current page.

This symbol represents a hyperlink (could also be implemented as a button)

This symbol represents a page that opens within a new browser window.

This symbol represents an action or event.

This symbol represents a system decision.

This symbol represents a login routine that allows an unrecognized but registered member to log in, and an unrecognized unregistered user to register.

Conditional state This symbol represents a conditional state affecting content and/or functionality.



3

User Experience

0.0PBA LENS Main page

Global Footer

Public Square1.0

LENS Areas

Entertainment5.0

Metrocast3.0

University E-Learning

8.0

Outreach2.0

Creative6.0

Atlanta Forum4.0

K-12 Electronic Classroom

7.0

PS Section Navigation

Education1.1

Health & Well-being

1.2

Children & Family1.3

Energy & Environment

1.4

Government & Politics

1.5

Crime & Public Safety

1.6

Civil Rights1.7

Transportation1.8

Economy & Business

1.9

Immigration1.9

About LENS0.1

Contact Us0.2

Privacy Policy0.5

Terms & Conditions of Use

0.6

Become a LENS Sponsor

0.4

Copyright

Page Content

Discussion Thread Module

Blog ContentModule

Wiki Module

PollModule

Online Petitions Module

As Seen/Heard on PBA/WABE

Module

Citizenship Facts

Related Links

Related Organizations/Ad

Hoc Groups

Calendar Module

Global Tools

Site Map0.3

Topics Module

RSS Feeds Module

Tags Module

Advanced Search

Search

GO

Advanced Search

Recognized User?

Registration FlowLog in / Register

No

Yes

My Profile

Log Out

Log Out Confirmation

My Profile Main

Search Result

Help

Transportation

Issues & Action

Groups & Communities

People

Why RegisterWhy Register

page

Browse Menus

Preferences

Inbox

Invite Friends

Preferences

Inbox

Invite Friends

Navigation Flows: Public Square Home



3

User Experience

Global Footer

Public Square1.0

LENS Areas

Entertainment2.0

Metrocast3.0

University E-Learning

4.0

Outreach5.0

Creative6.0

Atlanta Forum7.0

Electronic Classroom

8.0

PS Section Navigation

Education1.1

Health & Well-being

1.2

Children & Family1.3

Energy & Environment

1.4

Government & Politics

1.5

Crime & Public Safety

1.6

Civil Rights1.7

Transportation1.8

Economy & Business

1.9

Immigration1.9

About LENS0.1

Contact Us0.2

Privacy Policy0.5

Terms & Conditions of Use

0.6

Become a LENS Sponsor

0.4

Copyright

Page Content

Discussion Thread Module

Blog ContentModule

Wiki Module

PollModule

Online Petitions Module

As Seen/Heard on PBA/WABE

Module

Citizenship Facts

Related Links

Related Organizations/Ad

Hoc Groups

Calendar Module

Global Tools

Advanced Search

Search

Site Map0.3

GO

Advanced Search

Recognized User?

Registration FlowLog in / Register

No

Yes

My Profile

Log Out

Log Out Confirmation

Tags Module

My Profile Main

Search Result

RSS Feeds Module

Help

Transportation

Need to investigate the ability for the user to create a list of Favorites/Bookmarks within the application as opposed to simply bookmarking through the browser.

Issues & Action


People

Why RegisterWhy Register

page

Browse Menus

Preferences

Inbox

Invite Friends

Preferences

Inbox

Invite Friends

Navigation Flows: Issue Category Page (example: Transportation)



3

User Experience

Navigation Flows: Blog Content Module

Per Entry

Blog ContentModule

Profile type

IndividualPage

Established EntityGroup Page

Govt OfficialPage

Ad Hoc GroupPage

Poster Name

Blog Entry Detail

Blog Entry Detail(anchor linked to comments area)

### comments

Read more

Post a comment

Rate this entry

Rate this comment

Report offensive content

On-page rating function

Blog Entry DetailPermalink

Redisplay blog content according to selected criteriaSort by: Date Added | Highest rated | Most comments

User logged in?

On-page rating functionality

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

User logged in?

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

Blog Entry Detail(anchor linked to

comments submission form)

User logged in?

Login routine

Login successful

?

No

YesYes

No

Offensive content reporting form

Create NewUser

logged in?

Blog Entry Creation Page

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

Yes

Authority to create?

Yes

Yes

Add New Blog Entry

Page Content



3

User Experience

Navigation Flows: Discussion Thread Module

User already

logged in?No

Yes

Forum

Post Entry Page

Post Preview SubmitThread Page showing this

post as originator or anchor linked to this reply

Main Forum List

Forum page(may include sub-forums or threads)

Sub-forum

Preview

Sub-Forum page(list of threads)

Pass

Create New Thread

Thread page(Original post & replies)

Thread

Post Reply

Editable post is displayed below preview

Post is checked by an obscenity filter

Fail(Display error message)

Submit

Preview

Login routine

Login successful

?

No

Yes

Discussion Thread module

Redisplay module content according to selected criteriaShow: Newest threads | Most recent comments

Thread titleThread view

(Original post & replies)

Post viewAnchor link to individual

postPost title

View all

Page Content



3

User Experience

Per Entry

WikiModule

User logged in?Edit

Wiki Entry Edit page

Redisplay wiki content according to selected criteriaSort by: Most Recent Updates | Highest rated | Most viewed

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

Yes

Authority to edit?

Yes

Yes

Create NewUser

logged in?

Wiki Entry Creation Page

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

Yes


Yes

Yes

User logged in?Rate


Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

Yes

Authority to edit?

Yes

Yes

Page Content

Navigation Flows: Wiki Module



3

User Experience

User has not already voted in poll (based on IP address or login cookie)

User has already voted in poll (based on IP address or login cookie)

PollModule

Select option and click Vote

Display poll results in poll module(see above)

Display poll results in poll module(see above)

View results VoteDisplay poll options in poll module

Display poll results in poll moduleComment on this poll

View comments on this poll (##)Poll comments

Page

User logged in?

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

User logged in?


Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

Rate this poll

Poll comments submission form

Page Content

Need to identify whether we want o block users from voting more than once.

Navigation Flows: Poll Module



3

User Experience

User unrecognized or has not already signed petition (based on login cookie)

Recognized user has already signed petition (based on login cookie)

Online Petition Module

Send to a friend

Display date/time of signing

Page Content

Petition DetailPetition Title

Sign this petitionUser

logged in?

Login routine

Login successful

?

No

YesYes

Signature form

User logged in?

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

Email/Send to LENS friend form

SubmitValid/

required fields?

YesSigned Petition

View(see above)

SubmitValid/

required fields?

YesSend to a Friend

confirmation

No

No

Email/Send to LENS friend form

SubmitValid/

required fields?

YesSend to a Friend

confirmation

No

Send to a friend

Navigation Flows: Online Petition Module



3

User Experience

Tag Aggregation Page

Blog entry

Wiki entry

Discussion Thread

Discussion Post

Individual Page

Govt Official Page

Ad Hoc Group Page

Established Entity Page

Program Page

Online Petition

Topic Aggregation page

Tag Aggregation page

Calendar Entry

Tags module

Page Content

Navigation Flows: Tag Module



3

User Experience

Per Entry

Calendar EntryModule

Profile type

IndividualPage

Established EntityGroup Page

Govt OfficialPage

Ad Hoc GroupPagePoster Name

Add to Calendarroutine

Send to Friend form

Send to Friend

Accept / Add to My Calendar

Post a comment

Rate this event

Rate this comment

Report offensive contentOn-page rating

function

Calendar Entry Detail

(anchor linked to comments area)

### of comments

Redisplay calendar content according to selected criteriaSort by: Date Added | Most popular

User logged in?


Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

User logged in?

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

YesYes

Calendar Entry Detail(anchor linked to comments

submission form)

User logged in?

Login routine

Login successful

?

No

YesYes

No

Offensive content reporting form

<< Previous Month | Next Month >>Redisplay next or previous

calendar month

User logged in?

Calendar Entry Creation Page

Login routine

NoLogin

successful?

No

Yes


Yes

Yes

Add New Calendar Entry

Page Content

Navigation Flows: Calendar Module



3

User Experience

As Seen on PBAModule

As Heard on WABE 90.1

Module

Program pageProgram title

RelatedOrganizations

Established Entity Group Page

Entity name

Ad Hoc Groups

Ad Hoc Group Page

Citizenship Facts

Show another fact

Display fact

Display another fact

Citizenship Facts pageView all

RSS feeds

Link title External or internal link?

External websiteExternal

(launch as new window)

Existing LENS page

Internal(launch within

current browserwindow)

Related Links

Established or AdHoc?

Established

Ad Hoc

Page Content

Navigation Flows: Additional Content Modules



3

User Experience

match? Yes

No

Search

GO

Advanced Search

Search Result

No HitsSearch Result

Search again

GO

Advanced Search

Advanced Search Form

Blog Entry

Wiki Entry

Discussion Thread

Discussion Post

Search

Individual Page

Govt Official Page

Ad Hoc Group Page


Program Page

Online Petition


Tag Aggregation page

Calendar Entry

Global Tools

All of Public Square

Navigation Flows: Search



3

User Experience

If data can be refined by add’l address data

Yes

Who Are My Representatives?

entry page

My Representatives

Global Tools

Submit AddressAddress valid?

Yes

No(display error message)

Store with my ProfileUser

logged in?

Login routine

Login successful

?

No

YesYes

No

Store address/representatives with

profile

My Profile (showing My

Representatives)

User logged in?

No

Yes

Add more specific addressdata to find more

local representatives

AdditionalAddress field entry

page

Submit Address

Address valid?

No

Per Wayne, this page should include links to govt. agency websites as well as individual representatives.

Navigation Flows: Find My Representatives



3

User Experience

User already

logged in?

Previously registered?

Yes

Login fields entry

Submit

Valid login?

No

No

Registration Required fields

Continue

Registration Optional fields

Clicks link in email

Email Validation instruction screen

Continue

Skip

Email validation sent

Email Validation confirmation screenEmail validation received

by new registrant

Login routine

No

Yes

Unrecognized user tries to access content or functionality reserved for logged in users

What user clicked

My ProfileLog in or Register

Site content or functionalitythat requires login

User is directed to originally requested content or functionality

Forgot password Enter email addressPassword reset link sent

User clicks link in email Password reset formPassword reset

confirmation

Continue to original destination

Global Tools

Log in / Register

Navigation Flows: Login / Registration Flow



3

User Experience

Navigation Flows: My Profile

My Profile

Blog entry

Wiki entry

Discussion Post

My Friends

My Representatives

My Groups

My Organizations

My Programs

Online Petition

My Topics

Calendar Enry

Global Tools


My Blogs

My Wikis

My Discussion Threads

My Petitions

My Calendar Entries

Individual Page

Govt OfficialPage

Ad Hoc Group Page

Established Entitty Page

Program Page

My Video

My Audio

My Photos

Video File Detail

Audio File Detail

Photo Detail

Poll DetailMy Polls

My FilesOther File Type

Detail

Preferences

Account Information(chg pwd)

Inbox

Message Detail



Blog entryBlog entry

Wiki entryWiki entry

Discussion Thread

Discussion PostDiscussion Post

Calendar EnryCalendar Enry

Online PetitionOnline Petition

Poll DetailPoll Detail

Video File DetailVideo File Detail

Audio File DetailAudio File Detail

Photo DetailPhoto Detail

Other File Type Detail

Other File Type Detail

Individual PageIndividual Page

Govt OfficialPage

Govt OfficialPage

Ad Hoc Group Page

Ad Hoc Group Page



Program PageProgram Page

Message DetailMessage Detail



3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Public Square Home (1-3-1)The wireframes evolve from the User Scenarios and flow charts. A wireframe is created for each design treatment. Two different layout concepts were explored during this stage. This wireframe of the Public Square homepage represents the 1-3-1 option. The 1-3-1 layout represents the vertical allocation of space in proportionate columns where the middle column is 3 times as wide as the outside columns.

LENS Home Public Square Outreach MetroCast Atlanta Forum Entertainment Creative K-12 E-Classroom E-University

Contact Us | About LENS | Site Map | FAQ | Advertise | Become a LENS Sponsor | RSS | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | © copyright 2008 PBA Atlanta

Welcome

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod

Explore: Connect: Act:Issues & Topics of with Friends, Representatives Write Letters, Sign Petitions, interest to Metro Atlanta Groups & Communities Share Your Experience

As Seen on PBA30

Embed <>

Program Title

View all related PBA30 programs >

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this program

Sponsor AdsSponsor AdsSponsor AdsSponsor AdsSponsor AdsSponsor Ads

>

Newest Members

Current Poll

Poll question poll question poll question poll question?

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Vote View results | Discuss

Discussion Forums

Thread name thread name thread name thread name thread Started by Membername

Thread/Thread starter

Oct 29, 2007 7:05 PM by Membername

Last reply

18

Replies


40

Thread name thread name thread name thread name Started by Membername

22

HH

Rating

HHHH

View all discussions >>


Oct 29, 2007 8:33 AM by Membername

Sort by: Date of last reply | Highest rated | Most replies

Question of the Day

How will the Beltline Project affect you?Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam.

Respond Read what others are saying

Online Petitions

· Petition title (135 signatures)· Petition title (105 signatures)· Petition title (55 signatures)

View all petitions >

Most active | Most recent

Citizenship Facts

More citizenship facts >

DID YOU KNOW… Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam.

< Previous | Next >

Blogs Photos VideoMain Page

Search: All of Public Square Search

LENS on Atlanta Public Square

Discussions Wikis

Issues & Action Groups & Communities People

Public Square Issues

· Issue 1· Issue 2· Issue 3 · Issue 4· Issue 5 · Issue 6 · Issue 7 · Issue 8 · Issue 9

Most Popular Topics

· Topic 1· Topic 2· Topic 3· Topic 4· Topic 5

All Topics >

Public Square Home

BookmarkSharePrint

Groups

Group Name(## members)Created by Membername

View all groups >



Member Login Register Why Register? | Help


My FriendsMy Representatives-----------Find FriendsFind My Representatives-----------Invite Friends to LENSSend a Message-----------Friends Online NowEveryone Online Now

My Groups-----------Search for GroupsBrowse all Groups-----------Recommend Groups I Might Like-----------Start a New Group

EducationHealth & Well-beingChildren & FamilyEnergy & EnvironmentGovernment & PoliticsCrime & Public SafetyCivil RightsTransportationEconomy & BusinessImmigration

Sample issues only. Actual taxonomy to be determined in Macro Design.

LENS categories TBD. LENS facets that are not yet launched would not appear.

MembernameView ProfileAdd to Friends

GroupnameView ProfileJoin Group



3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Public Square Home (1-2-2)This wireframe represents the 1-2-2 option. This 1-2-2 layout represents a different vertical allocation of space.



Welcome

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Public Square Home

LENS on Atlanta


Bookmark

Public Square Issues Question of the Day

How will the Beltline Project affect you?Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam.

Respond Read what others are saying

Share

Citizenship Facts

More citizenship facts >

DID YOU KNOW… Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam.

< Previous | Next >

300 x 250

· Topic 1· Topic 2· Topic 3 · Topic 4· Topic 5 · Topic 6 · Topic 7 · Topic 8 · Topic 9

LENS Members

View all LENS members >

Public Square

Sort by: Newest | Most active

Success Story

LENS community clears path for traffic solutionLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Read more

Discussions Wikis

Most Popular Topics

All topics >

· Topic 1· Topic 2· Topic 3· Topic 4· Topic 5

Print

As Seen on PBA30

Embed <>Program Title


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this program >

Groups


View all groups >



Online Petitions

· Petition title petition title petition title petition title (135 signatures)· Petition title petition title petition title petition title (105 signatures)· Petition title petition title petition title petition title (55 signatures)




Discussion threads

Thread name thread name thread name thread name threadStarted by Membername, 18 replies by 4 users Last reply on October 29, 2007, 7:05 pm by Membername

HH

Sort by: Last reply date | Highest rated | Most replies



HHHH

Current Poll


Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

View results | DiscussVote

Search: All of Public Square SearchIssues & Action Groups & Communities People

Welcome, Catherine. My Profile Preferences Inbox Invite Friends Log out Help




3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes Functional Wireframes: Issue Category Page (example: Transportation) (1-3-1)This wireframe represents the Transportation category page in the 1-3-1 layout.


Blog Posts

Discussion Threads

Thread/Thread starter Last reply Replies

HH

Rating

HHHH


Most popular topics

· Beltline project (XX)· Northern Arc (XX)· MARTA (XX)· Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (XX)· Traffic Congestion (XX)· Toll Roads (XX)· Bicycles & Pedestrians (XX)

As Seen on PBA30

Embed <>

Program Title

As Heard on WABE 90.1 FM


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this program

Audio Title

View all related WABE stories >

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this story

Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:

October 29:Event title event title event title


More upcoming events >


>


Issue: Transportation

LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

Discussions Wikis PrintGroupsEvents

All topics within this issue >



18


40

Thread name thread name thread name thread name Started by Membername

22


Oct 29, 2007 8:33 AM by Membername

Sort by: Date of last reply | Highest rated | Most replies

Blog Post TitlePosted by Membername on October 29, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam volutpat. Read more...

Topics: Beltline Project, Traffic Congestion

Comments (10) | Post a comment | Email this | Rate this | Permalink | del.ic.ious | Report offensive content

Sort by: Date added | Highest rated | Most comments


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat . Read more…

Topics: MARTA, Traffic Congestion


Groups


View all groups >

Contributors

Membername(15 threads, 122 replies)



Most active | Highest rated

View more contributors >



Listen

Letters






3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Issue Category Page (example: Transportation) (1-2-2)This wireframe represents the Transportation category page in the 1-2-2 layout.


Groups


View all groups >


As Seen on PBA30

Embed <>Program Title


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this program >

As Heard on WABE 90.1

Program Title

View all related WABE programs >

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam. Discuss this program

Listen Now


Topic: Transportation

LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

Discussions Wikis PrintGroupsEvents

Most popular topics



Blog Posts


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam volutpat . Read more...





Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Read more…








Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:

Discussion threads


HH



HHHH




Contributors








Letters






3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Groups & Organizations Search or Browse Result PageThis wireframe represents the Groups and Organizations Search or Browse Result page.


Search for Groups & Communities

Sort by: Newest | Most active | Most members

Search

All Groups/Organizations





LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

Print

Refine by:

Neighborhood Communities (XX)Community-Created Groups (XX)Established Organizations (XX)Non-Profits (XX)

Page: 1 2 3 4 5

Page: 1 2 3 4 5

















3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Neighborhood Association GroupThis wireframe represents a Neighborhood Association Group page.



Members

View all members >

Sort by: Newest | Most active

Candler Park Neighborhood Association

LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

PrintBlogsMain Page Discussions Wikis Events

Most popular topics



Related Groups

Lake Claire Neighborhood Association(15 members)Created by Membername

Petitions Photos Video Members


Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:

Discussion threads


HH




HHHH

Related Petitions

Related Wikis

· Wiki title· Wiki title· Wiki title

View all related wikis >




Related Links

· Link name· Link name· Link name

View all related links >




Blog Posts


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam volutpat. Read more...








Photos

>

Video

Added 20 hours ago by Membername

View all videos >

Embed <>Embed <>

View all photos >

Contributors






Letters






3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Topic Aggregation Page (example: Beltline Project) (1-2-2)This wireframe represents a Topic Aggregation page in the 1-2-2 format. It can easily be changed to 1-3-1 if that format is selected.


Blog Posts


Contributors






Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:


Discussion threads


HH




HHHH

Photos

>

Video

Added 20 hours ago by Membername

View all videos >

Embed <>

Embed <>

View all photos >Related Petitions

Related Wikis

· Wiki title· Wiki title· Wiki title

View all related wikis >




Related Links

· Link name· Link name· Link name

View all related links >

<Topic Aggregator page, e.g. Beltline Project>

LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

PrintBlogs Photos VideoMain Page Discussions Wikis Events Petitions

















Letters






3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Government Official Profile Page (1-2-2)This wireframe represents a Government Official Profile page in the 1-2-2 format. It can easily be changed to 1-3-1 if that format is

selected.




Karen’s Blog


Karen’s Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:




Karen Pollitt (Fulton County Commissioner)


Karen’s Friends

View all friends >

Karen’s Constituents’ Most Popular Topics

· Topic 1 (XX)· Topic 3 (XX)· Topic 5 (XX)· Topic 7 (XX)· Topic 9 (XX)

More popular topics >

· Topic 2 (XX)· Topic 4 (XX)· Topic 6 (XX)· Topic 8 (XX)· Topic 10 (XX)

About Karen

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam

nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Read more about Karen

Karen’s Groups

Group Name(15 members)Created by Membername


Current Poll


Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

View results | DiscussVote



Welcome


LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

PrintBlogs Events PhotosDiscussionsMain Page

Contact Information

Party: Democrat Residence: Cascade, SW AtlantaMarital Status: Married (Eric)Prev. Occupation: Restaurant OwnerEducation: Emory University

Web Site: www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/house/07alpha.htmlE-mail: [email protected]

604 Legislative Office BuildingAtlanta, GA 30334Phone: (404) 656-0265

Main District Office:346 Arthur StreetAtlanta, GA 30310Phone: (404) 522-8900Fax: (404) 523-5222

Committees

Committees:· Committee 1· Committee 2· Committee 3· Committee 4

Send Karen a Message



Video




3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Group Event DetailThis wireframe represents a Group Event Detail page.


Event Calendar

Events for October 2007:

October 29, 7:00 pm:Event title event title event title




Event title event title event title

Hosted by: Candler Park NeighborhoodAssociation Monthly Meeting

When: October 30, 2007, 7:00 pm

Where: First Existentialist Church470 Candler Park Dr.Atlanta, GA 30307View map | Get directions

Add to calendar

Sponsored by:

OPTIONALPHOTO or GRAPHIC

Candler Park Neighborhood Association(15 members)Created by Membername

Do you plan to attend this event?

More options

Yes Maybe No

Embed event code in other applications

Invite friends

Related Petitions

· Petition title (135 signatures)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet.

OPTIONAL PHOTO, MAP OR GRAPHIC


Editor Tools

· Edit invitation· View responses· Send a message to invitees· Print invitation


LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

PrintBlogs Photos VideoMain Page Discussions Wikis PetitionsEvents

< Back to all events

MembersLetters



Upload photos or video of this event

Download

· September 2007 Meeting Minutes (PDF)


Editor tools will only appear if the user has Editor/Moderator Access.



3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Online Petition DetailThis wireframe represents an Online Petition Detail page.



Petition title petition title petition title153 signatures as of October 28, 2007 @ 2:05 pm ET

Submitted by: Candler Park Neighborhood AssociationSubmitted on: October 26, 2007

Sponsored by:

Candler Park Neighborhood Association(15 members)Created by Membername

Take action

Embed petition code in other applications

Send petition to friends

Related Events

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

Upload additional photos or video to support this petition

Editor Tools

· Edit petition· View signatures· Send a message to petitionees· Create associations (links,

events, groups, etc.)

Search: All of Public Square Search


LENS on Atlanta Public Square


Blogs Photos VideoMain Page Discussions Wikis Events

< Back to all petitions

MembersLettersPetitions

Discuss this petition

Sign this petition



Recent Signatures

View all 153 signatures >

* First Name MI * Last Name

* Address

* City * StateGA

* ZIP code

* Email Address

Submit Signature

Believe in this cause? Sign the petition by entering your information below.

* Enter Verification CodeEnter the characters you see into the field below.

Ready to sign this petition?

( optional)

BookmarkShare

Print Invite



Editor tools will only appear if the user has Editor/Moderator Access.



3

User Experience

Functional Wireframes: Individual Profile PageThis wireframe represents an Individual Profile Page page.

My Feed Catherine’s Event Calendar

Upcoming Events:




Catherine Hayes

Content of interest based on your topic preferences

Catherine’s Friends

All friends >

About Catherine

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam

nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

More about Catherine

Catherine’s Groups





LENS on Atlanta

BookmarkShare

Public Square

PrintBlog My EventsMain Page My Friends My Groups

Favorite Topics

· Topic 1 (XX)· Topic 3 (XX)· Topic 5 (XX)

All topics >

· Topic 2 (XX)· Topic 4 (XX)

Discussions My Archive

Catherine’s Representatives

Official NamePosition title






All representatives >

Send a message

My Representatives

Add a topic

Edit preferencesEdit preferencesEdit

Add | Edit

Add | Edit

My Archive

· LETTER: Letter (10/20/2007)

· DISCUSSION: Discussion Post (Title title title title title title title title title) (10/23/2007)

· BLOG: Blog Comment (Title title title title title title title title title) (10/22/2007)

View | Edit

· LETTER: Letter (10/20/2007)

· DISCUSSION: Discussion Post (Title title title title title title title title title) (10/23/2007)

· BLOG: Blog Comment (Title title title title title title title title title) (10/22/2007)

· CONTENT TYPE: Title title title title title title title title title (10/20/2007)



· NEW GROUP FORMED: Title title title title title title title title title (10/20/2007)

Would be more readable to use icons reflecting the different content types.

Content I’ve contributed to LENS Public Square

Edit Preferences Inbox






3

User Experience

Design Studies – Design 1

“Democracy in Action

There are several images that may come to mind when someone mentions the term “Public Square.” The physical space of gathering could be envisioned with podiums, microphones, flags and other related patriotic appointments. This design study offers a subtle nod to such Americana by employing an image of bunting - an image that can be associated with democratic arenas - embedded in the masthead. However, to avoid the perception of political bias or point of view, the image is softened, colorized to match the site’s primary palette, and pushed into the background. The dominant image of the capitol below focuses the attention on Atlanta. These images could be a “slideshow” of relevant photographs showing Atlanta and its people engaged in civic action. Informative copy here invites the user in, builds context, and compels them into action.

This design study’s column structure is

“1-3-1.” Content modules are clearly delineated with ample air space between them to open up the page and aid readability. This page shows a 300x250 ad space embedded in the “Question of the Day” central module supporting the site’s need to generate advertising revenue. This ad is in the top portion of the page starting “above the fold” – the area most desirable to advertisers.



3

User Experience


The following is the Public Square for the Transportation Issue based on Design Study #1.

Through the use of categorical drop-down or keyword search, the user can select or find a topic of interest with which to engage. These powerful tools are supported by a background of red to reinforce the section’s primary palette. Below the masthead area, several content types are available through the use of tabs. These tabs, relevant and contextual to the particular area of the site, filter content and functionality to enhance the user experience and invite interaction.

Global navigation for LENS on Atlanta spans the top of the page giving users the ability to see the breadth of content and categories accessible from anywhere in the web site. Shading of site elements and drop-shadows lend a sense of depth to the design while helping to define content areas and enhancing the overall feeling of structure and order.



3

User Experience


“People in Action”

Discourse. Communication. Interaction. People. These are the elements central to public squares. This design study focuses attention on the people of Atlanta. Images of people in community gatherings or engaged in civic action illustrate a more literal interpretation of Public Square. The masthead contains LENS on Atlanta’s global navigation more subtly, but the placement is obvious and compelling.

The color palette of this study is primarily beautiful shades of green with blues for accent and linkage. It is a friendly and inviting palette which may dispel the intimidation some may feel who are new to civic engagement.


“1-3-1.” Ample white space is used between content elements helping the page avoid feeling “busy” and project an approachable quality. Content-filtering “tabs” above the main content give clear direction to the user regarding content types and available functionality. The user is welcomed with a bold “Welcome Module” where context to the site is given through copy while immediately engaging the user with direct links into relevant content. Another image of people in action reinforces the notion that Atlanta’s people are the Public Square and the space is virtual.



3

User Experience


This page illustrates the Public Square for Petitions based on Design Study #2.

This design treatment supplies LENS on Atlanta with a 160x600 “skyscaper” ad for revenue generation opportunities. This full column usage gives advertisers prime real estate for ad placement.

As in the first study, site sponsors are promoted in this study along the bottom within 120x90 graphic tiles familiar to PBA.org.

The site’s central, fixed-width content area targets a 1024x768 screen resolution. The outer area containing the vertically placed Public Square name in the gray would stretch left and right to accommodate higher resolutions.



3

User Experience


“Urban Activism”

Atlanta is a thriving metropolis whose citizens regard community and civic stewardship seriously. This study is highly structured and sophisticated to reflect the nature of Atlanta citizens who care about their city and community.

The main image welcoming the user offers several iconic views of Atlanta and its citizens involved in shaping life in their urban environment. The images could be rotational and random upon page load or an elegant slideshow. Global navigation in this design is incorporated below the logo and anchors the top of the content area.

The color palette is a shell of neutrality with a primary use of rich blues for identity. The abundant use of white space permeates the design with readability and ease of content consumption.


“1-2-2” and illustrates how content modules could be displayed in wider columns. Content-filtering in this design is accomplished with a intuitive set of vertical buttons in the upper portion of the first column. This page contains a 300x250 ad “above the fold” in the upper right portion of the third column.



3

User Experience


Here is an example of an Event Details page based on Design Study #3.

The page creator is given ample area to supply details about their events and has the ability to upload imagery unique to the group or event. This design treatment supplies LENS on Atlanta with a 728x90 “leaderboard” ad for revenue generation opportunities. This ad spans the masthead area giving advertisers prime real estate for ad placement.

As in the previous studies, site sponsors are promoted in this study along the bottom within 120x90 graphic tiles familiar to PBA.org.

The site’s central fixed-width content area targets a 1024x768 screen resolution. The outer area, a simple neutral tone, would stretch left and right to accommodate monitors set to higher screen resolutions.


1



4Architectural Overview

4



4

Architectural Overview

OverviewThis section outlines a proposed system architecture for the LENS on Atlanta’s Public Square initiative. This overview is a first step towards the technical solution. The components and mechanisms used to implement the system will evolve during the detailed design phase.

Service ProvidersThe following Service Providers are key service providers that will be needed to support the application:

Analytics

While the core system will have built-in analytics that provide information recording user activities and areas of interest, complex analytics systems can deliver more detailed information, such as referrals and user geography. Google Analytics or WebTrends are recommended for analytics beyond those already provided by the CMS Platform. An evaluation will be done to determine which is more appropriate based on price. Functionally, both Google Analytics and WebTrends meet our requirements.

Hosting

Hosting is currently handled by Verio. Verio will be considered along with other providers during the micro design phase when technical requirements can be provided at a more detailed level and hosting providers can be thoroughly evaluated.

There are several key hosting features that will be critical in the evaluation of hosting providers:

• LAMP Support (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

• PHP version currently used by CMS platform

• Administrative access to database (preferably PHPAdmin)

• FTP Access to machines

• Application Server Clustering

• Load Balancing with Session Affinity

• Redundant Trunk Lines

• Nightly Backups

• 24/7/365 Support Team

• 4 hr Support Request Turnaround

Feed Providers

Feed providers will be identified by PBA and integrated in to Public Square using RSS and the Feed Aggregator module.



4


HardwareThis section outlines general hardware needs for the LENS system based on the known requirements and current information.

Application Server Cluster

At least two application servers should be established to provide a level of fault tolerance. IBM recommends dedicated machines with 2G of memory and quad core, if possible. While the hosting provider should ultimately determine the hardware for the application server, it is important that the hardware be able to meet concurrent user requirements and service level requirements.

Load Balancing Router

A load balancing router should be used to control traffic between the web server cluster. A simple session-based affinity mechanism should be used to handle the load balancing.

Database Server

The database server will not be clustered because it will not be necessary to support the server load to the site, however, the database server must be a powerful machine. The following configuration details are recommend for the database server:

• 3G RAM

• 1TB RAID Drive

• 3.0 Ghz Quad Core Processor

• 1Gbit Ethernet Card

• 4MB L2 Cache

• 800MHz Bus Speed

SMTP Server

The LENS System will need to be configured to have access to an SMTP Server in order to send e-mails to users and systems administrators. All hosting providers have SMTP servers available to hosted applications, but it is something that needs to be called out.



4


SoftwareThe following section describes the critical software components for the LENS system.

EncryptionSSL will be used over HTTP to encrypt sensitive information over insecure lines. The LENS application will leverage an SSL certificate to handle the encryption. A one way hashing algorithm, such as MD5, will be used to encrypt user passwords in the database.

CMS SystemThe following CMS Systems were given consideration during the evaluation process:

• Drupal• Mambo• Typo3• Ruby on Rails• Movable Type• WordPress• TextPattern

The results of the study can be summarized in the table to the right:

Though not included in the diagram, IBM experience with these systems was a key factor. The Innovation Center and our partners have experience with Drupal implementations and have a level of confidence that the LENS System can be reliably built.

Here are just a few sites that are currently using Drupal.

http://www.suburbview.com/http://www.flixya.com/http://ifood.tv/http://www.uwff.ca/http://www.stockmanngroup.com/listingshttp://warnerbrosrecords.com/

CMS Assessment Table



4


Lens System

Drupal CMS

MySQLDatabase

Data Provider 1 Data Provider 2 Data Consumer

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

StoryModule

Browser PDAMobilePhone

SearchEngine

LoadBalancer

With session affinity

FeedAggreg

EventMonitor

ThrottleModule

TrackerModule

TriggerModule

UploadModule

AuthSystem

CRONModule

PingModule

PollModule

UserProfileModule

SearchModule

StatsModule

FilterModule

ForumModule

Help Module

Localiz.Module

ThemeModule

CommentModule

ContactModule

BookModule

BlogModule

ForumModule

Suggest.Module

HooksModule

LogFiles

LENSTheme

SANFor

Backups

SMTPServer

Linux &Apache

Web Server

Linux &Apache

WebServer

LENSDeployment Model

Deployment ModelThe proposed deployment model identifies the LENS System components. The model illustrates access via clients such as web browsers, PDAs, mobile devices and search engines. A load balancer will accommodate traffic bursts and provide general scalability in distributing requests to the application server cluster. The application servers will be built upon Linux and Apache.

Drupal is the proposed Content Management system. Drupal is open source, free or charge and provides many of the LENS Public Square social networking features out of the box.

The system will leverage RSS feeds from various data providers. It will also publish such feeds so that LENS content can be leveraged by data consumers such as RSS readers, content aggregators and search engines.

The database used to support the application servers will be MySQL. MySQL is an open source, free database server that is robust and suitable for production.

This is a proposed deployment model. Enhancements and modifications will be made to the model during the detailed design phase.



4


CustomizationThere are several points where the Drupal system will be customized to support features specific to the LENS Application.

CRON

CRON is the scheduling service that will be used to perform arbitrary jobs such as building indexes, deleting log files, building archives and doing backups.

Themes

There are two aspects of theming.

1. The first aspect of theming is related to the skin of the application and involves Cascading Style Sheets and graphics for components, icons and logos.

2. The second aspect of theming is the general layout of pages. The theme will control how the taxonomy of the site is presented using menus, tabs and links as well as the general format of pages in terms of layout.

There are many themes available, and we will likely use an off the shelf theme and customize it to give us a theme that matches our needs as closely as possible.

Drupal provides hooks for executing logic at certain key times. Hooks can be used to modify content before it is submitted or even to modify search terms or search results.



4


Pluggable ModulesDrupal supports pluggable modules. We will use the pluggable module API to build out functional requirements such as a recommendation engine. Following is a list and description of the many pluggable modules that will be leveraged for LENS on Atlanta.

Feed Aggregator The Feed Aggregator will be a powerful on-site RSS news reader that can gather fresh content from news sites and web logs around the web and make them available on the LENS site. Users will be able to view the latest news either chronologically in the main news aggregator display or by source.

The Feed Aggregator will support management of feeds through a web interface. Feeds will also be taggable with categories and offering selective grouping of some feeds into separate displays. Listings of the latest news for individual sources or categorized sources will be enabled as blocks for display in the sidebar.

Block Module Blocks are the boxes of related/grouped data that are visible in the left and/or right sidebars of the web site. The Block Management admin screen will let administrators specify the vertical sort-order of the blocks within a sidebar.

Blog Module The Blog Module will allow registered users to maintain an online web log, which is commonly known as a blog or an online journal or diary. Blogs are made up of individual posts that are time stamped and are typically viewed by date similar to a diary. Blogs often contain links to web pages that users have read and/or agree/disagree with. The blog module adds a blogs navigation link to the main navigation menu (the link must be enabled), which takes any visitor to a page that displays the most recent blog entries from all the users on the site. The navigation menu will have a create content link that will take them to a page with a link to a submission form and a my blog link that will display their blog entries as other people will see them. The Blog Module will also create a recent blog posts block that can be enabled. The Blog Module will also provide an RSS 2.0 feed for each blog.

Book Module A book is a set of pages tied together in sequence, perhaps with chapters, sections, subsections, and so on. The Book Module will be used for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), etc.

Users with permission will be able to create a book and write, review, modify, or rearrange the pages. Many users can work together on a book. Collaboration can be allowed or disallowed to whatever extent is desired.



4


Pluggable Modules continued

Theme Module The Theme Module will enable the creation of a custom look and feel for the LENS application and also to change the look and feel in the event the LENS system is licensed to others.

Comment Module The Comment Module will create a discussion board for each post. Users will be able to post comments to discuss a forum topic, blog post, story, collaborative book page, etc. The ability to comment is an important part of involving members in a community dialogue. An administrator will be able to give comment permissions to user groups, and users will be able to (optionally) edit their last comment, assuming no others have been posted since.

Attached to each comment board will be a control panel for customizing the way comments are displayed. Users can control the chronological ordering of posts (newest or oldest first) and the number of posts to display on each page. Comments will behave like other user submissions. Filters, smileys, and HTML that work in nodes will also work with comments. The comment module will provide specific features to inform site members when new comments have been posted.

Contact Module The Contact Module will enable users to get in touch with one another and also with administrators. Through personal contact forms, users will be able to send each other e-mail. And through site-wide contact forms users will be able to send e-mail to administrators. Through contact forms, users allow themselves to be contacted yet keep their own e-mail addresses private. Users will be able to turn their personal contact forms on or off.

When users view their own profiles, they will not see their contact tab, but other users will see it if it is turned on.

Filter Module The Filter Module will be used to strip out malicious or unwanted content from user comments or posts.

Forum Module The Forum Module will provide a facility for the creation of threaded discussion boards, or forums, on the site. Topics, or threaded discussions, will be posted to a forum. Each topic will be comprised of an initial post and replies, or comments. Forum topics should have their own URLs.

Multiple forums will be supported for different areas of discussion. Forums may be nested, which means they can be placed inside another forum for a discussion area that is a subset of the parent forum, in which case they are often called child boards or forums. Containers can also be created to hold a group of forums though they may not contain posts.



4



Administration Module

Administration of the site is handled primarily through the Administration Module. This module is a web interface that will enable users to make changes to key aspects of the site without any programming knowledge. While the administrative interface is web based and does not require programming skills, it does have its share of complexity. The administrator should be a web master or someone with intimate knowledge of how administrative changes will affect the site as a whole.

Help Module The Help Module will provide context sensitive help on the system.

Localization Module

The Localization Module will provide a facility for rendering pages in multiple multi-byte languages, if needed in the future.

Menu Module The Menu Module will support the creation of menus to help users navigate the site and access content. The Menu Module will have a user interface that allows for the creation of menus from the administrative site.

Ping Module The Ping Module will alert interested sites that new content is available for download.

Pole Module The Poll Module will support the creation and management of polls. It will support real time feedback of poll results and also manage the number of times users can vote within a specific interval.

User Profile Module

The profile module will capture information about users via web forms on their account page. This information will be available to other users on the site. This module will need to provide custom fields beyond those that come with the chosen CMS system.



4



Search Module The Search Module will let users search for specific content on the site. Search will support finding users as well as words and phrases. An Advanced Search will provide mechanisms to support "any of these words" or "this phrase," or both. Advanced Search will also filter by content types. Out of the box search functionality includes the following:

• Scheduled indexing (e.g. nightly)• Indexes names of users, content• Simple Search

Looks for all search terms provided Supports “or” logic Supports phrases through quotes

• Advanced Search Supports search for any of the words provided Supports filtering by content type Supports negation

Statistics Module The statistics module will keep track of numerous statistics of site usage. It will count how many times, and from where, each post is viewed. The statistics module will be used to convey many useful things about how users are interacting with each other and with the site.

Statistics module features:• Logs will show statistics for how many times the site and specific content on the site has been accessed.• Referrers will document where visitors came from (referrer URL).• Top pages show what’s hot or what is the most popular content on the site.• Top visitors will show the most active visitors for the site and allows banning abusive visitors.• Recent hits will display information about the latest activity on the site.• Node count will display the number of times a node has been accessed in the node's link section.



4



Story Module The Story Module will support creation of content. Stories are articles in their simplest form: they have a title, a teaser, and a body. Stories are typically used to post news articles or as a group blog.

The story administration interface will allow for complex configuration. It will provide a submission form, workflow, default view permission, default edit permission, permissions for permission, and attachments.

CRON Module A CRON Module will be provided that supports the execution of arbitrary jobs at particular times to handle administrative tasks and for building indexes and other performance enhancing structures.

Taxonomy Module The Taxonomy Module will support the creation of categories and subcategories for organizing and establishing relationships between content items. The content items will then have links back to the categories to which they belong.

Throttle Module The Throttle module will support streamlining the content that appears on the site when it is under heavy load. For example, images may be withheld until after the heavy load subsides.

Tracker Module The tracker module will handle the display of the most recently added or updated content to the website allowing users to see the most recent contributions. The tracker module will provide user level tracking for those who like to follow the contributions of particular authors.

A "recent posts" page will be available via a link in the navigation menu block and contains a reverse chronological list of new and recently-updated content. The table will display the content type, the title, the author's name, the number of comments that item has received, and when it was last updated. Updates will include any changes to the text, either by the original author or someone else, as well as any new comments added to an item. The tracker module will also support tracking particular users.

Trigger Module The Trigger module will provide the ability to trigger actions on system events, such as when new content is added or when a user logs in.

These combinations of actions and events can perform useful tasks such as e-mailing an administrator when a user account is deleted, or automatically removing comments with certain words in them. By default, there are five categories of events: Categories, Content, Comments, Cron and Users.



4



Upload Module The upload module allows users to upload files to the site. The ability to upload files to a site is important for members of a community who want to share work. It is also useful to administrators who want to keep uploaded files connected to a node or page.

Users with the upload files permission will be able to upload attachments. The module will support a configuration for determining the types of posts that can support uploads. Each user role will be customizable for the file size of uploads and the dimension of image files.

Authentication and Authorization module

The Authentication & Authorization module will allow users to register, log in, and log out.

The user module will support user roles, which can be set up with fine-grained permissions allowing each role to do only what the administrator permits. Each user is assigned one or more roles. By default there are two roles: anonymous (a user who has not logged in) and authenticated (a user who has signed up and been authorized).

Users can use their own name or handle and can fine tune some personal configuration settings through their individual my account page. Registered users need to authenticate by supplying a local username and password.

User sessions will be maintained by Cookies.

Event Monitor The event system will record system events in a log that can be reviewed. This will help provide a quick overview of activity on the site. The Event Monitor will log records errors, warnings, usage data, performance data and operational information. The system will provider filtering for entries.

The Event Monitor will need to be checked regularly to catch site issues.



4


DatabaseWhen using Drupal, database options are limited to MySQL and PostreSQL unless we choose to do a Drupal database port. MySQL is open source, free and available in most hosted environments. The database will need to be backed up at least nightly, which can be a requirement for the hosting provider. A robust server is recommended with a RAID drive to provide ample reliability since it will be a single point of failure.

Operating SystemThere are a number of operating systems from which to choose, but IBM recommends using Linux because it is robust and free.

Web ServerThe preferred web server for Drupal is the Apache Web Server. Apache is open source and free and available on most platforms.

LicensingThe vast majority of the LENS development effort will be dedicated to creating a theme, site setup and development of custom modules. Once the initial system has been developed and deployed, it will be relatively straightforward to redeploy the system for another Public Broadcasting organization with similar goals.

Licensing has been an area of consideration from the beginning of this project and efforts will be made to create a system that can be re-branded.



4


PersonnelWhile the goal is to deliver a system that is as self supporting as possible, it will be necessary to have support personnel. This section captures the requisite roles needed for a stable system.

Web MasterA Web Master will be needed to handle the following:

• User support questions or problems• Minor theme modifications, such as logos• Content changes such as privacy policy & terms of use• Review of Event logs• Banishment of users that are abusive• Detection of denial of service or hacking• Creation of new sections

Content ManagerThe content manager will be responsible for making LENS a destination that is relevant and up to date. Responsibilities of the content manager will be as follows:

• Identifying and integrating new content feeds via RSS• Establishing new groups and forum leaders• Working with the public to identify new volunteers to assist with content creation and moderation.• Working with other sites to publish LENS content.• Identifying key integration points with social networking sites, search engines, and blogs.• Promotion of the LENS site through media outlets and online properties.• Management of tagging.• Management of site modules, positioning, and relevance on LENS.• Management of taxonomy and navigation structure. Much of the actual implementation of this will be handled by the Web Master.

SummaryThe contents of this document are based on the business and functional requirements for the PBA LENS on Atlanta application. The system architecture presented here describes a technical foundation upon which the LENS system can be built. There will be hardware and system software and database components as with most web applications, but the core of this solution is Drupal. The open source, pluggable, flexible and reliable nature of the Drupal Content Management System make it the right choice for PBA’s LENS on Atlanta.


1


5Best Practices

5



5

Best Practices

Social ComputingSocial Computing is fundamentally changing the way businesses and people interact with each other. Social Computing is defined as:

“A social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions.” 1

Social computing evolved through changes in technology, such as the growth of processing power and storage capacity putting unprecedented power into the hands of users. The advent of connective software such as open protocols like XML and RSS feeds make applications like blogging, wikis, instant messaging and other networking much more prevalent. The technical changes combined with the human desire to connect with others has caused an explosion in the growth of social computing and systems that enable social networking and networks.

There are many forms of social computing, this graphic provides some examples:

(Source: Forrester Research, Inc.)



5

Best Practices

Social Computing and Public Broadcasting AtlantaWhat does Social Computing mean for Public Broadcasting Atlanta? It could mean a fundamental shift in the way PBA views itself or the way others view PBA. One concern that was voiced during the JRD and captured during the session was the need for PBA to continue to be a trusted source in journalism. But how do you maintain that trusted source status when promoting a web site that is primarily driven by user generated content? One way to handle this challenge is to begin a shift in the way the business views the new venture. 2

1. Educate executives and the legal department – convey the reach and concept of social computing to the decision makers. This could quite possibly represent a new paradigm for corporate behavior. They need to understand that Social Computing changes the power dynamic between PBA and consumers. It does this by making free and instantaneous the ability of people to form networks and communicate with each other. In this environment, the etiquette for corporate behavior is different. Here are the basics:

• Be transparent about your intentions. If you are not, people will sniff them out, and you'll look worse for having hidden them.

• Speak with a real human voice and face. If you do not, your critics will put aside their good manners and give your institutional avatar the best they've got.

• Participate in communities, don't try to control them. If you try the command-control approach, they will evaporate, or form somewhere else, shutting you out.

• Contribute. If you add real value, consumers will reciprocate. Showing up just to pick their brains and load them up with viral videos will prompt them to ask, "What have you done for me lately?“ Assess PBA’s position by identifying areas of interest and areas of risk. Create several “what if” scenarios to determine what possible responses could be. This can be an exercise carried out by executives, the legal department and the IT department.

2. Test a social media model prototype – launch with a prototype version of Public Square Atlanta to test out theories of building an audience, how to successfully moderate the content, what are the “rules of engagement”. Identify the success criteria and document the outcome.

3. Build a “task force” with the right expertise. The key roles on this team are: an innovator who "gets" social media and learns new technologies quickly; a communications expert who understands relationship dynamics; a legal advisor who is committed to developing guidelines that will help the company safely navigate new waters; an IT specialist who understands the platforms that the social media initiatives will run on and can ensure that metrics are captured consistently; and a management consultant competent in identifying the organizational changes that will accompany the roll-out or response to successful initiatives.

4. Establish the “rules of engagement” for the site that are reasonable for PBA. Focus on the value of the initiative and not the risk. It is tempting to provide too much governance on a social networking site.



5

Best Practices

Social Computing and Public Broadcasting AtlantaContinuation of organizational change strategies:

5. Plan a Flexible Strategy with a realistic roll out plan with the governance model in place and possible action plans for different scenarios.

6. Estimate demands on internal resources. Social Computing is more than a new tactic that can be bolted on for N dollars; it requires the participation of those who are already responsible for many aspects of PBA. This will impact executives because it will be another channel of public interaction as well as another channel for fundraising targets and goals. Business Development must be able to assist in the development initiatives as well as identifying content partners. The news department must be aware of the new initiative so they can provide content as well as promotion. IT must find time to integrate new platforms and reporting. Human Resources will be impacted with the need to identify, hire and onboard new talent. The impact of social media will be felt across the business and the organization.

7. Plan a “build up” phase to ramp up new people in the business. Determine the staffing plan. Will the initial roll out be dependent on consultants? Will interns do some of the work? Will development work be outsourced? Will there be a need to hire additional full time staff to focus on moderation and content generation? Will a third party vendor be hired for moderation? There are many roles and options to consider when planning a staffing model to support the new initiative.

8. Respect the membership of LENS on Atlanta. It will be the most valuable resource and content source for the success of LENS.

9. Let the community evolve and become what it will. Protect the PBA brand as much as possible but not at the expense of controlling the community.



5

Best Practices

Building an AudienceBuilding a Social Network audience takes more than just identifying the organizational change or building a technically perfect site.

Define the Marketing Plan

Promote on WABE and PBA30 in the early stages to build the community. Include what is being discussed on Public Square in news reports. Help users understand that what they discuss really can bring about change.

Limit controls and governance

It may be tempting, but limiting the number of controls and overall moderation will lead to a more dynamic and sticky site. Every site has a “velocity” which is defined as the motion or speed to an adoption rate on the site. Overburdening the site with registration requirements and excess controls will reduce the velocity.

Define the “voice of the site”

The “voice” will set the tone for what users can expect. The Public Square home page “welcome” text is a good place to start to introduce users to the intent of the site. Another example is the “voice” of a site like slashdot “news for nerds…” the tone is appropriate for the users, it is informal and free-spirited. When unregistered users post to the site, they are listed as “Anonymous Coward”, This mildly insulting name was encouragement to register and post under your own name or persona. Another opportunity to define the voice of the site is through the HELP or FAQ and About Us sections. These give users the opportunity to know what to expect and what is expected of them.

Listen to your audience and be flexible

As the saying goes…”the best laid plans…”, be prepared to make a decision about the site and then make changes to improve the plans. Users will help by making suggestions and they won’t be shy. Some of the information will be helpful while other suggestions will be unusable. For example, the comment box on www.usopen.org , a highly trafficked event website receives thousands of user comments during the two week tennis tournament. The comments range from technical questions about how to “launch the leaderboard” or use different features of the site to spelling or factual errors in the news stories. The other end of the “useful” range included posts from users watching the television coverage commenting on some of the tennis players’ outfits. Although the web site team got a good chuckle out of their comments, they were not helpful in improving the site.

Provide incentives When building the audience for a new site, one strategy is represented in MTV’s new venture “Think MTV”, which enlisted was the concept of a Rewards for participation concept. In the MTV model, users accumulate “badges”, which can be traded in for rewards. These reward could be access to exclusive MTV Events, exposure on the Think homepage, meetings with celebrities or social activists or publicity for a cause in a nationally published magazine. 3



5

Best Practices

Building an Audience continuedBuilding a Social Network audience takes more than just identifying the organizational change or building a technically perfect site.

Keep the site fresh Keep the conversation going with seed content when the site is new.

Give registered users a “number”

Everyone wants to be in on the ground floor of something big. When people register, they could receive a number which would reflect the order in which they registered. For example, the early people who register will have the numbers under 100, this could represent a sort of ‘status” as later users register and receive numbers like user number: 678907. This could be analogous to the early adopters of AOL or GMAIL where they would have for example, [email protected] or [email protected] rather than [email protected] or [email protected].

Incorporate concepts from “Made to Stick”

“Made to Stick”, by Chris Heath and Dan Heath is a guide to creating sticky ideas. It’s in the same management and business genre as “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell or even “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. It presents concepts for creating ideas and trends that are truly memorable. According to Ben Bex Huff’s review on Amazon.com, the concepts based on urban legends, advertising campaigns and public service messages can be broken down to the following concepts:

Simplicity: the idea must be stripped to its core, and the most important concepts should jump out.

Unexpectedness: the idea must destroy preconceived notions about something. This forces people to stop, think, and remember.

Concreteness: avoid statistics, use real-world analogies to help people understand complex ideas.

Credibility: if people don't trust you, they'll ignore you. In some cases, they will be openly hostile, which means they'll actively try to dispute your message!

Emotional: information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow's hierarchy.

Stories: telling a story encourages people to pay closer attention, and to feel more connected. Remember the Jared Subway commercials?

These concepts can be used in not only the advertising and marketing campaigns around LENS to build the audience but can also act as “guiding principles” throughout the site and can guide the decision making process.



5

Best Practices

Moderation Strategies

There are several different approaches to take in a moderation strategy. There are various steps on the moderation continuum.

Moderation Strategy

AnarchyCorporate Control

Control

Inexpensive

Expensive

Co

st

Complete control

Perceived as Wild West

Moderate

User Moderation

Delay in posting content

Shows lack of trust in community

Encourages Free speech

Could be “offensive”

Site is “self policing”

Some “offensive” content is possible

Increased trust in communityIBM would recommend PBA pursue a “Moderate” Moderation Strategy


1


6Roadmap

6


6

SolutionOutline

Business User Experience Technology

User Needs AssessmentCreative BriefFeature Map

Digital Brand ExtensionInformation ArchitectureUser Interface DesignContent Strategy

Information DesignContent MatrixUser Interface Refinement

Content DevelopmentDesign ImplementationNavigational TemplatesDesign Guidelines

Content Managemente-Marketing ManagementInteractive Advertising

Strategic RoadmapProcess InventoryRequirements Inventory

Business Case / ROIDefine RequirementsPackage Evaluation/Selection

Identity DesignInteractive Marketing& Advertising Models

Content & Business Model Integration

Web Development Review & Analysis

Non-functional RequirementsSystem ContextArchitecture Overview

Architecture ModelsHosting InfrastructureDevelopment Environment

Application DefinitionDatabase DesignPlatform Definition

Application DevelopmentSystems ProgrammingQuality AssuranceTesting

Web Hosting ManagementWeb Metrics & AnalysisData Mining

Deploy

MacroDesign

MicroDesign

Build

Roadmap

OverviewThe PBA roadmap outlines the phases to a fully functioning LENS on Atlanta website. IBM will build on its proven methodology for launching User Centered Solution Designed web sites. The following chart is an overview of the general steps and phases that will be undertaken during the engagement.


6

Roadmap

Overview

As the team developed the Roadmap, we realized that in order to develop a robust User Generated Social Networking site like LENS on Atlanta we needed to evolve our methodology and process. In order to efficiently design and develop the LENS vision, we will need to approach the design process as an integrated effort between the Solution Architect, the Information Architect and the Creative Director. We will almost take a “backwards” approach where the Solution Architect installs the social networking modules like Registration, Blogs, Wikis, etc. and the User Experience team (Information Architect and Creative Director) works with the Solution Architect to design the look and feel of the pages based on the “out of the box” functionality. The results of this effort will lead us to a more collaborative and efficient design process with a faster release cycle starting with a prototype. The intersection between the three disciplines – Technical Architecture, Information Architecture and Graphic Design will lead to a cohesive and well designed User Experience.

TechnicalArchitecture

Visual Design

Information Architecture

UserExperience

Information Design

Technical Feasibility

Creative Design


6

Roadmap

Overview

This tight collaboration between Technical and User Experience will allow for a series of shorter release cycles. The releases will be defined as Major Facet Launches and Minor Interim Launches. The following chart shows the cyclical approach to launching with each cycle consisting of Design, Build and Test and Deploy.

Launch LaunchMinor Launch

Test andDeploy

Build

Release 1

Design

Build

Release 2

Test andDeploy

Design

Test andDeploy

Design

Minor Launch

Build

Release 3

Project Start Launch


6

Roadmap

Project Team

The following chart represents the Core teams for both PBA and IBM. In addition, it identifies the extended teams.

PBAProject Manager

PBA Business Sponsor

PBA Content Team

PBA Hosting Team

IBMProject Manager

IBMUser Experience

Designer

IBMCreative Director

IBMTechnology Architect

IBMEngagement Lead / Executive Consultant

IBM Centers for Solution Innovation

LENS on AtlantaSteering Committee

PBA & IBM Core Team

Executive Sponsor Development Team

Testing Team


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Roadmap for Public Square

Description IBM has broken the LENS on Atlanta: Public Square phases into distinct releases followed by a regular release schedule for all of the facets. This schedule shows the first year.

EPR

EPR

EPR

Month 1

EPR

EPR

Public Square• Prototype• Detailed Design

Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8 Month 9 Month 10 Month 11 Month12

Month13

Month14

R1.1: Public Square• Creative Design • Reg / Profile• Search• Moderation• Discussion/Blog/Wiki• Basic Func Content• Polling• RSS Feeds• Advertising

R1.2: Public Square• Groups• Audio / Video• Events• Notification / e-mail• User Rating

R1.3: Public Square• Calendar• Survey• Recommendation Engine

R3: Entertainment• Detailed Requirements• Detailed Design• Build / Deploy

R2: K-12 E-Classroom• Detailed Requirements• Detailed Design• Build / Deploy


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Roadmap for LENS on Atlanta

Description IBM has broken the LENS on Atlanta phases into distinct releases. The other facets will be released on a regular schedule approximately every four months after Public Square. The chosen sequence for release of the facets is for illustration purposes only.

EPR

EPR

EPR

End Q1

EPR

EPRR1: Public

Square complete

Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12

R3: Entertainment

R2: K-12 E-Classroom

R4: Outreach

R5: Creative

R6: Atlanta Forum

R7: Metrocast

R8: E-University

Facet Release Details:• Approximately 4 months duration

• 2 months requirements/design

• 1 month build

• 1 month test/deploy

• Detailed Requirements

• Detailed Design

• Re-use previous facet functionality

• Assume 2-3 new functional components

• Apply facet specific concepts to overall

LENS theme.


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Roadmap for Public Square

Public Square Release ScheduleFebruary, 2008 (2 months from start)

April, 2008 (4 months from start)

May, 2008(5 months from start)

June, 2008(6 months from start)

Release 0.1:LENS On Atlanta: Public

Square Prototype

1. PBA Internal Prototype Site Core functionality for Phases

1.1, 1.2, and 1.3

Basic creative applied (top banner, creative elements that divide functional components)

2. Detailed Requirements for Public Square

3. Creative Style Guide

4. Functional Guide (Screen shots with description and flow information)

5. Micro Technical Design

Release 1.1:

Public Square Launch

1. Advanced Search

2. Profile – multi-step registration process.

3. Registration - Login/Log out

4. Moderation Tools automated starring out of content and e-mail to moderator

5. Discussion forums

6. User Generated Content – tools to upload text, photos

7. Administrator posting audio/video (broadcast media)

8. Rating Hottest Topic - system pushes hottest to top

9. Content Tagging

10.Basic Functional Areas (Copyright, Terms of Use, Privacy, About Us,)

11.Contact Us – basic form to webmaster (dropdown of subjects)

12.Become a Member – link to existing pba.org form

13.Help, FAQs – text only

14.Advertising model – HTML tag with link to ad provider

15.Blogs

16.Wikis (partner w/ Wiki Atlanta)

17.Polling

18.RSS Feeds

19.Theme – apply creative design to the site

Release 1.2:

Public Square Enhanced

1. Organic Groups

2. Site Map

3. Asynchronous contact – let people post to you or you send messages to them; mailbox; ability to turn on/off

4. Audio & Video User Generated Content

5. Notifications – e-mail alert when posts to my blog, thread, or receive note

6. Events Calendar

7. User Rating of Content

Release 1.3:

Public Square Complete

1. Calendar

2. Surveys

3. Recommendation Engine


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Roadmap for LENS on Atlanta Costs

Public Square Release Schedule

Timeline: February, 2008 (2 months from start)

April, 2008 (4 months from start)

May, 2008(5 months from start)

June, 2008(6 months from start)

Release Details:

Release 0.1:LENS On Atlanta: Public

Square Prototype

1. PBA Internal Prototype Site

2. Detailed Requirements

3. Creative Style Guide

4. Functional Guide

5. Micro Technical Design

Release 1.1:

Public Square Launch

1. Advanced Search

2. Profile and Registration.

3. Moderation Tools

4. Discussion forums

5. System Rating Hottest Topic

6. Basic Functional Areas

7. Advertising model

8. Blogs

9. Wikis

10.Polling

11.RSS Feeds

12.Creative Theme

Release 1.2:

Public Square Enhanced

1. Organic Groups

2. Site Map

3. Asynchronous contact

4. Audio & Video User Generated Content

5. Notifications

6. Events Calendar

7. User Rating

Release 1.3:

Public Square Complete

1. Calendar

2. Surveys

3. Recommendation Engine

Release Costs: $391,000 $552,000 $288,000 $305,000

Each additional facet is estimated to cost 25-30% of the cost of Public Square.


6

Roadmap

Budget and Planning Estimate IBM is pleased to present Public Broadcasting Atlanta with this budget and planning estimate for IBM assistance for the LENS on Atlanta Project. This letter is not a formal proposal or contract. It is a written confirmation of our approach to assisting you with this work. When we have reached a final agreement about our level of assistance, a formal contract will be presented to you for your signature and the resulting work would be performed under the terms and conditions of the IBM Customer Agreement. IBM cautions PBA to refrain from widely distributing the specific budget and planning estimate listed above. In our experience, this sets a strong expectation of permeance that simply does not exist in any conceptual design estimate.


6

Roadmap

Assumptions

The following assumptions apply to the time and materials estimate.

General Assumptions1. These estimates are for budget and planning purposes only. At the end of the first phase, IBM and PBA will re-evaluate the timeline and estimate

2. PBA will provide all content for Public Square

3. IBM and PBA will work together on the schedule and agree on the approval timetable prior to the start of the design phase.

4. IBM may elect to use Subcontractor personnel to perform a portion of the proposed work

5. IBM is not responsible for managing any PBA third-party work and/or deliverables unless explicitly contracted to do so.

6. Work will be performed at IBM Atlanta locations with the exception of key face to face meetings with the PBA team.

7. PBA will designate a dedicated Project Manager to expedite project decisions, provide access to key personnel as required, provide visibility to the client’s project team concerning the project’s progress and issues, and facilitate management commitment to the implementation. IBM will also designate a corresponding Project Manager who will have a similar level of responsibility, authority and decision making capability.

8. Each additional facet will include up to three new functional areas above and beyond what has already been implemented. Re-use of functional components is anticipated, but further customization is not part of the estimate.

Technical Assumptions1. The cost for the web hosting is not included in this estimate. PBA and IBM will work together to define the hosting specification and to hire the vendor. The

hosting vendor will be hired through PBA.

2. Drupal is the recommended technology for Public Square given the current requirements. If requirements change, IBM will make further recommendations to PBA to change this assumption.

3. The hosting environment will consist of a production and staging environment so changes can be tested on staging prior to being placed in to production.

4. Prototype will include out of the box functionality with customization sufficient to prove a requirement or design capability.

5. Prototype will include primary core functionality of R1.1, R1.2, and R1.3, but will be implemented only as much as time allows.

User Experience Assumptions1. IBM and PBA will follow a similar approval process as the Solution Outline phase.

2. All site content will be sourced, collected, managed and administered by PBA.

3. PBA will provide all content and images in a format agreed to by IBM.

4. Adaptation of the creative design will be limited to a one week review cycle. Final approval will be subject to technical review.

5. Graphical and content revisions throughout the project will be limited to eight (8) hours of effort. If additional effort is required to finalize deliverables after client review period, or to edit approved deliverables, IBM will create a PCR to support the additional work.

6. Traditional wireframes will not be produced. A Functional Guide will consist of individual screen shots plus a text description of the functionality and a description of the navigation flow for each potential path from the screen.

7. Creative design for facets will follow the same design as for Public Square with only minor distinctions.


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7Summary

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7

Summary

In conclusion, building a LENS on Atlanta Web 2.0 Social Networking site is an exciting venture. Here is a tag cloud representing some of the elements.

DemocracyATL

Tagging

LongTail

Web2.0

blogs

P2P

Content Management

wikisModeration strategy

SocialNetworks

PBA

RSSWisdomOfCrowds

User Generated Content

TheWorldIsFlatWABE

innovation

Citizenship is Serious Business

intelligent discourse

ViralMarketingSocial Partnership

Multi-Smart Platform

Phased Roll Out

Education

CultureFACETS

Trusted Source

audio

video

text

The power of a diverse perspective

authenticationRecommendation


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Sources

1 Forrester Research, February, 13, 2006 “Social Computing”

2 Forrester Research, “Social Computing Strategy for Life Sciences Firms”

3 MTV Think Rewards information: http://think.mtv.com/-/Info/GetRewarded.aspx

Some photography courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.