Some thinking about GetHelp!

I like the idea of GetHelp. It is the idea I am always thinking of realizing through the Internet. Asking for or offering help through the internet is an effective way to spread information and share knowledge. It takes the advantage of the wisdom of crowds and lets people get information accurately instead of searching extensively. However, I can hardly find a way to realize this idea perfectly. How to offer a platform that is convenient enough for people to use? How to attract the first loyalty customers and let them bring in their friends? What kind of help should the platform focus on at first? etc. These are all the questions I am thinking about.

Coincidentlly, GetHelp is a simplified and preliminary version of my idea. It's a good try, but I think it's too simple and has no focus which makes the app impractical. It's hard for me to imagine what kind of people will ask for what kind of help in this app.

When we are asking for some help, the most important thing is to state the request clearly. If the request is vague, helpers will be hard to figure out what kind of help is needed, let alone offering accurate help. "I need help with ..." is simple but too open. Users can add anything behind it but hardly state it clearly. For example , if I say "I need hep with chocolate.", what do I mean? Do I want to know where to buy chocolate, do I want to know how to make chocolate, or do I just want my friends offer me some chocolate? Even through some of my friends may offer help, probably their help is useless and waste their time as well. The description below the request helps little. Most of the time, developers cannot reckon on the users knowing what they want and stating their wants clearly. Users are always confused about what they want and their wants are changing all the time. In addition, granted that users know what they want, they may not state it clearly. Just recall that you ask a question in lecture you think you have state very clearly, lecturer still cannot get the point and let you explain again and again. It's because for a question, there exists many conditions to let it set up. Requesters always unconsciously assume that listeners know some of the conditions. When they are describing, they may omit these conditions.

I think the biggest problem of this app is , after all, having no focus. It's important to have a focus. Focus on making the app's focus perfect is the best way to attract users. Nowadays, only the perfect app can be really successful.

Here I don't mean that GetHelp is without a single redeeming future. The interface of it is really simple. Users themselves may figure out it's helpful for some specific requests like selling or buying second hand books ("I need help with CS3216 textbook") and make it established by usage for this app. In this way, this app may be hot. But for this kind of app, I don't agree to let the users discover the usability by themselves. It feels like throwing the dice to decide the destiny of the app. The better way is to guide the users and let them feel that they need this app =]

Talk about Fame League

Today is my first time to play Fame League. It's a very complicated game for a raw hand. It makes me very confused. But after playing(actually random clicking) for a long time(around 4 to 5 hours), I realize that this complicated game in fact has many good ideas behind it. It combines some of the most popular and advanced elements, like Prediction market and the wisdom of crowds, althrough the technology of it sucks. I don't think it's user-friendly and its UI is good enough. Maybe that's why it's hard to learn. But I don't want to talk about the technology, because I believe technology will always be better and better after some time. I want to analyse the ideas behind the game which I believe are more important. Actually these ideas are all mentioned by the presenting team in the presentation. I just want to summarize them and add some my own thoughts.

1. prediction market. In economics, prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. Assets are created whose final cash value is tied to a particular event (e.g., will the next US president be Obama?) or parameter. The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. People who buy low and sell high are reworded for improving the market prediction.

In fame League, it uses prediction market to predict fame. It's very interesting. It seems that no matter who the people are, No matter whether they are famous actor, American presidents or ordinary people, their fame can not be decided. Nobody can give an accurate prediction of people's fame. Is that mean prediction market is useless in fame? No. Fame League gives you the answer.

Fame is the state of being known and talked about by many people. So if more people know you and think you are famous, you are more famous; On the other hand, If less people know you and think you are famous, you are not famous. All the fame depends on the wisdom of Crowds(Which I will talk about later). So the people who make the choose the same as the majority, improves the market prediction; who make the choose opposite to the majority, degrades the market prediction. Prediction market works well in Fame League.

Prediction market has a lot of potential. Because in a democratic world, it's very important and useful to listen to the majority. Through the voice of the majority, people can know what makes the majority happy, and what will infuriate them. Public figures and the government can make good use of it. In the past, it's very hard to collect the opinions of a large number of people. Now according to the internet, collecting becomes much easier. And prediction market makes it more convenient. Everything has been reflected as a simple number. It's easy to operate and understand.

2. The wisdom of crowds. It means that the many are smarter than the few and collective wisdom can solve many problems which can not be solved by computing. In the Fame League, the use of the crowds wisdom is very direct -- deciding the fame of people. It's a perfect usage of crowds wisdom because the fame of people is fortunately decided by the crowds.

Here, I want to talk something else about the wisdom of crowds. Google is the company I think make the most advantages of it. Except Image Labeler and SearchWiki these two tools which are based on users' interests and voluntariness, I think the best of all is the reCaptcha service which has been bought by Google. reCaptcha is a system originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University that uses CAPTCHA to help digitize the text of books while protecting websites from bots attempting to access. Google buys it to help realize the unrecognized distorted words in book scanning. Every time, users can see two words. One is that the reCaptcha has already known the correct answer, the other one is the one that reCaptcha hasn't known. If user answers the first one correctly, they can be proved that they are not machine. Then they can answer the second one. If his answer is the same as the majority, this one will be recognized to be true.

Not only these little application, more and more problems which are thought hard have been solved and are being solved by the wisdom of crowns. For example social search and social news. This trend looks very familiar with the Cloud Computing. They all use the resources of one large platform to solve special problems.

I only want to talk about these two points. Because all the other ideas are actually included in these two or they are not as representative as these two. Especially for the wisdom of crowds, I believe it's the developing trend and key point of future. No matter how the technology is improved, it's impossible to replace the wisdom of people.

Ideas behind a game are the most important. Technology is also important, but people can improve it anyway. Sometimes users can even bear bad UI for a good concept game. If a game lacks good and fresh idea, It has no soul.