Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week II

For this second week of the design planning, we were able to meet together where we were able to brainstorm and discuss many issues. Some of the things that were were able to talk about were: which dorms would be the best suited for a dorm energy competition (Frear vs. Freshmen dorms), features of the site, different metrics for research and competition purposes, and overall design of the competition. This was very productive and I think that we were able to make important decisions which will help us to progress through the design phase.

I went through each of the websites of other school's dorm energy competition. After going through each of the pages, I realize that the goals for our website will put itself much farther than any other dorm energy competition website out there. The vast majority of sites that exist now don't have real time data, are static, give very few updates as to the progress of the competition, and don't allow for social interaction between students. They did however have events and tips for the students to increase their energy literacy.

For next week, we will create our first mockups and go through the actual design of the website and the features that should/shouldn't be included. We will incorporate what we learned by looking at the other websites to design a site which will hopefully result in the most effective was to make our dorm energy competition as successful as it can be.

Kukui Cup Competition Design

In my ICS 414 course, as a class we will be implementing a site for the upcoming dorm energy competition in the Fall semester this year. For the first few weeks of this semester, myself along with John, Kelli, Scott, Wing, and Shanah, will be working together to design the overall competition and create a mockup version of the site using Balsamic, a tool used to create mockups of websites.
We began with creating a list of tasks that we would need to complete in order to meets the goals of the project. We all looked resources which would help us to decide which tasks would be important when we are trying to make the competition as effective as it can be to reducing energy usage. This is a list of tasks that I thought would be necessary to achieve the goals of our subproject.

- continue research to so that we can figure out what is the most effective ways to get students to reduce their energy use
- look at what methods are the most effective for educating the students about energy conservation
- find the best ways to provide energy data to the students which would be meaningful to them and help them to see the results of their changes
- make a list of rules for the competition
- create a point system or another system which would be the basis of the competition
- design a system where students can make pledges to make certain
- create a list of incentives which would encourage the students
- research into extending the system into other sites/social networks such as Twitter and Facebook
- create mockups of the site, using Balsamic, which would include all the features necessary to make it successful
- research what should be in the site through research and looking at other school's programs

Link to page with resources.