friendshelp.

com
First Author Brambck Benedikt Marktstrae 16 6850 Dornbirn, Austria benedikt.bramboeck@ students.fhv.at Second Author Hofmann Tatjana Winkelgasse 3 6850 Dornbirn, Austria tatjana.hofmann@students.fhv.at Fifth Author Wetzig Moritz Frstergasse 7 6850 Dornbirn, Austria moritz.wetzig@students.fhv.at

Abstract
This paper explains the concept behind friendshelp.com, which is a platform where you can search and find students from different fields of studies, in various countries, as cooperators for projects you are working on. The users are able to give you online support in subjects you are not familiar with to realize otherwise impossible ideas.

Keywords
Platform, social, diversity, help, collaboration

ACM Classification Keywords

Third Author Huber Stefanie Winkelgasse 3 6850 Dornbirn, Austria stefanie.huber@students.fhv.at Fourth Author Schelling Steven Wichnerstrasse 103 6850 Dornbirn, Austria steven.schelling@students.fhv.at
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

H.5.3: Group and Organization Interfaces: Computersupported cooperative work.

General Terms
In general the platform is to search and find co-workers, which have the knowledge in subjects you need for your project. When you have created your account, you have the possibility to create pages for your projects. At the project page you can search for other users that could be helpful to realize your project. You are able to contact the other users by sending them a message. Also other users are able to contact you, if they are interested in working on your project.

CHI 2011, May 712, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

ACM 978-1-4503-0268-5/11/05.

Introduction
During the past few years social media has become a part of our everyday-life. Updating your facebook status or tweeting about something is as normal to us as brushing your teeth in the morning. But most of the time our social interaction is limited to keeping contact with friends from school and doing other leisure activities such as games and writing messages. But there could also be various other fields of life, which can profit from social interaction. Differences should not only be appreciated by us. We should make use of the fact that people have different backgrounds like their culture, community and education. The resulting different interests and skills should be used to help and learn from each other. We therefore decided to take social media to the next level by using the idle potential of the mixture of people within a community and helping them combining their individual skills to create something new, something unique which they would not have been able to do without the help of others.

to be and what kind of skills he/she is looking for in his potential collaborators. With the project site set up the creator gets suggestions about possible future coworkers depending on different factors he/she can assign custom priorities. These include the following factors:

Interest Competence Closeness

By default closeness is being set to the highest priority in order to match users within a certain radius to the creator of the project. These factors can be altered as well to find co-workers specialized in a certain field of studies or someone who has been interested in your work in the past. After finding the ideal co-worker the creator is able to contact this person and ask him/her about his/her excitement for the project and his/her willingness to collaborate. If some co-workers are added to your project, it is possible to communicate and exchange information by using the platform. Serving as some kind of dashboard the news section informs the user about all recent changes within the projects he/she is currently collaborating in including layout drafts and questions from other team members. Additionally it is possible to ask other users not directly included but interested in the project for their feedback for further improvement. As soon as a project can be considered as being complete the co-workers get the opportunity to give each other constructive feedback and rate the project in general and the work of the individuals as well. This should be helpful

The Platform
Taking the social experience from sites like facebook, myspace and twitter and optimizing these existing platforms in order to achieve a productive collaborative online workspace is the main goal of friendshelp.com. Whenever a student has the idea for a special project requiring skills he/she does not possess or isnt able to acquire, he/she can sign up to the site and create his custom profile describing his/her interests, personality and working skills. Following this step he/she is ready to create the project page where he tells the community of friendshelp.com about his new idea, what he expects it

in considering the users help for future collaborations. At the same time there is the opportunity of creating a simple review page of the completed project, which serves as part of the users portfolios. These sites will also serve as an additional decision-making basis when searching for co-workers again in the future.

Testing
Following our research we decided to create a first prototype in order to test the users reaction while searching for appropriate collaborators for a given project. Therefore we set up a simple wireframe layout, which gave the subjects a first overview of a possible structure of the site. Basically just a small amount of the final range of functions was provided in order to focus on the chosen sample task. However, the downside of this limitation meant at the same time that an expert was needed in order to guide the subject into the right directions and not letting him/her getting lost somewhere or frustrated because of some not functioning buttons. Before the test, the subject was set up by the instructor who gave him/her a very detailed description of the upcoming test, the platform itself in general as well as the given task the subject has to face.

figure 1. Wireframe Prototype of co-workers site.

The task for the tested persons was to find co-workers which fit into their project. The tested persons already had an account and started their search from the project page. From the project page, were their project is presented they could get to the site project members, where you can search for new co-workers for the project. At the project members site you automatically get recommended some potential co-workers, which you can sort according to interests, competence and closeness. At this site you have the possibility to directly contact them via message, which automatically gets sent as an email aswell.

For optimal results eye tracking, physiometric tests and video were provided.

figure 3. Screenshot from testing video. tested person

Evaluation / Discussion and Future Works The test with the prototype helped us to see at which parts we have to improve our platform. The tested persons especially had problems with the ranking of the co-workers, which the platform has recommended them. It was not clear for the persons that they have the possibility to set priorities in terms of interests, competence and closeness. Most of the tested persons also thought that it is dubious that you dont see the qualifications of the recommended persons on the first view. The task for the test persons could have been completed by only 4 clicks. But all of them needed considerable more clicks and time to complete their task than expected. We have discussed in our team which reasons could have caused these misunderstandings and unclear points. A possible reason for these misunderstandings was probably the fact that this prototype was very limited in actions

figure 2. Wireframe Prototype of sending message

and didnt show in detail which previous steps have already been taken. Also the test subjects needed some time to get into the platform to get used to it. They have been put right in the middle of a scenario with just some basic explanations about what they are supposed to do and what they have already done. For example the competence filter, which has allowed them to sort the coworkers by their competences has calculated the ranking also by their qualifications, which werent visible to the test persons on first sight. Only by clicking on more information they saw the co-workers qualifications and competences in detail. By misunderstandings like these we have learned that the user wants to see more information form a possible co-worker at first sight. The ranking calculated by the system isnt always relevant for the user, but its also important for them to get their own picture of a person when selecting him/her as a co-worker for their project. The next steps will include the improvement of actions, which were unclear to our tested persons. This includes giving the creator of a project more and better structured information on persons with their qualifications, when searching for co-workers. After finishing the improvements resulted by our test prototype, we will test these important functions of our platform again, to ensure a high standard of usability. Testing such major functions with possible users will help us finishing the platform even more efficient.

from all over to world or nearby. The platform provides them with valuable information to organize, plan and realize their projects. By testing the various functions of our platform with test persons we are able to ensure a functional system to help setting up projects in a short and efficient time. The user shall only receive information that he/she really needs for his/her project to run and not get distracted by unnecessary features. We as a team of media designers with different interests and qualifications think that our friendshelp.com concept could help students to realize different kinds of projects, which they couldnt accomplish by themselves. It is a great opportunity to get together groups of people with different backgrounds to work on a common project, which couldnt be managed to realize by one.

Summary and Conclusion

Our concept of friendshelp.com offers students a platform to realize team projects with other students who have different interests and qualifications. Students with different fields of studies are able to find project partners