It’s here, it’s here!!
We’re all a bit excited today at Curatr HQ – it’s here!!!
After a year or so of development, we’re very pleased to announce today that we’ve officially launched our new platform to power Social Learning – Curatr.
Check our new website at www.curatr.co.uk and have a look see our flashy video:
Or if you want a slightly more long-winded version (with a dog asleep in the background):
You can’t ban Facebook
I just thought I’d write a quick note on Facebook and its presence in the workplace. As an advocate of all things social, you can imagine my stance on this topic – I believe no organisation should be blacklisting sites like Facebook. But of course many do.
They need to stop, now. Here’s why:
1. Facebook isn’t a website, its a platform. If you’ve ever tapped into the Facebook Developer tools you’d be well aware of the universe that exists behind Facebook in what is known as the Social Graph. The Social Graph is everything about you; from your name to your picture, to your interests to your friends. Facebook allows developers to tap into this information from websites that aren’t Facebook.
At its simplest this manifests as a “like” or “recommend” button on a webpage. Next time you hit a button like this on a website, go check out your profile afterwards. Most good implementations of the Open Graph Protocol will be sending information back to your profile when you hit a “like” button. You could well find the item you just liked as a part of your Likes and Interests. From here it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to your complete viewing habits being listed as a part of your Social Graph.
Put simply, Facebook will be reaching its claws into the overwhelming majority of websites you visit over the coming months and years. It’s already on many – for example the BBC News website just overhauled to include elements of this. At what point does a website become so integrated with Facebook that you need to block that too? It’s happening.
2. Facebook isn’t just on a computer and it doesn’t always look like Facebook. Building on the above point, because Facebook is a platform it can come in many flavours. For instance, you can block Facebook on workstations, but you can’t block it on people’s phones. I’ve been playing with the incredible new app “Flipboard” on my iPad. It takes my Facebook and makes it into a fantastic looking magazine style layout. It makes my friends look like publishing geniuses.
My Twitter looks even better…
This is just taken directly from my feeds; I’ve done nothing to get it looking like this.
Facebook Zero was brought to my attention a couple weeks ago as being *very* big in parts of Asia. Facebook Zero is a cut-down version of the site, available on mobile phones. But significantly a number of network operators, such as SingTel, offer access to the site free-of-charge – without the need for a data plan. This is a significant driver of business for SingTel and puts Facebook in everyone’s hands.
When Facebook stops looking like Facebook, stops being accessed through Facebook and is available on every screen in the building, how will you ban it?
3. If your people are wasting time on Facebook it is a symptom of a wider problem. Spend your time addressing this problem instead of attempting to treat the symptom. It will become increasingly difficult to police and restrictive to other operations – you will spend a fortune trying to block Facebook in the coming years.
You can’t ban Facebook. That extends to any of the emerging platforms for communication. Don’t bother trying. Look at the opportunities that these Platforms present and work to exploit the benefits, because most anything negative is a symptom of a wider issue; one much bigger than a social networking website.
Harry Potter and the future of the Textbook
The Daily Prophet is the newspaper of choice for the discerning witch or wizard, this much we all know. With moving pictures and articles on every topic of interest, the Prophet is a fine advance on the offerings afforded to us muggles.
Or is it? You see I’m increasingly of the opinion that JK Rowling aimed too low with her imagination on this part. She couldn’t foresee the way in which things like newspapers and textbooks would really be consumed if the magic (read: technology) was widely available.
To take you further in to the future of textbooks, I first have to take you back, way back…
Socrates, he of Ancient Greek persuasion, was said to have lamented the adoption of the written word for scholarly activities. So much did he lament it that his student Plato wrote it down, presumably without his master’s permission (the first data protection violation in recorded history perhaps?). Socrates claim was that true knowledge was built-up in memory through the use of spoken stories and fables.
Fast forward to the 1400’s and the emergence of one Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. Gutenburg, as his mates called him, is widely regarded as the inventor of the Printing Press. His invention was the technology that enabled textbooks to exist.
Schools had already been around in documented history for some time (my own secondary school was founded in 1440) but they were places that followed Socrates’ techniques more than those methods we use today. Teachers were in possession of the tacit knowledge of the world and they used the classroom to impart their knowledge to students. Increasingly however, the need for more explicit knowledge was emerging. Specifically the need for standardised, explicit knowledge which would help to classify our world and aid both learning and teaching.
This could perhaps be termed the problem that textbooks were originally designed to solve: The increasing demand for explicit knowledge in an unstructured world. It took centuries for books to move from Gutenburg’s invention to the classrooms of the world, but the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast-forward to today and its easy to suggest that the problems that led to the invention of the textbook aren’t necessarily ones that we face today. Explicit knowledge is in abundance. Many might suggest that too many people have started writing their thoughts down for others to read. Our knowledge of the world today is highly structured and organised – a place for everything and everything in its place.
It’s fair to say that E-textbooks haven’t really taken off yet. In fact, anecdotal research like that carried out by Esther Wojcicki is telling us that some proportion of the population is stuck in Socrates mode. They are lamenting the onslaught of the E-textbook before it’s even really begun to arrive.
Mostly they have no good reason; it strikes me as being quite a defensive and vitriolic response which belies a true understanding of the change they see before them. Like JK Rowling, these students have failed to appreciate the shape and the size of the change that is coming.
To find out more about the future of the textbook it is useful to draw analogies to the music industry. Previously we all brought our music on CDs – I hear there used to be things called cassettes and before that, vinyl, but it sounds like a far-fetched story to me. CDs still exist of course but the demand for them has fallen considerably thanks to rise of platforms like iTunes. This allows us to purchase music with greater granularity than before (no more ‘B-sides’) and gave us an easy method to process micro-payments.
But now we are on the verge of another breakthrough change in the music industry; on-demand.
Music services like Spotify are changing the way in which people consume music. Previously we liked the tangible asset we got when we brought a CD. ITunes took away that physical object and introduced us to the idea of buying something that was digital. Spotify takes this a step further; if we aren’t going to physically own anything, then why buy it?
Surely it would be better to ‘rent’ it for the period of time you want it? Spotify, we7 and mFlow are just some of the names that are working from this principle. They give you access to a world of music whenever you want for a price (sometimes that price is free, with adverts, but most will push you towards a Premium Service for a monthly subscription).
The future of textbooks
This, I believe is the future of Textbooks.
E-books have a place. Specifically they work fairly well for books with a distinctive narrative that need to be read one page after another. That simply isn’t the case with Textbooks. In most cases you don’t need to read Chapter 3 before you read Chapter 17. In fact many Textbooks go out of their way to interrupt your flow of reading, introducing shout-out boxes with examples etc…
Publishers have spent the last 10 years building a huge amount of content that backs-up the printed book in the form of additional digital assets. Like record companies before them, Publishers have a massive back catalogue of content that they would love to make more money from. This is the opportunity to open up this mountain of content to the masses.
In my scenario I wouldn’t envisage readers really ever downloading a complete book; how iTunes broke up the album, I expect Publishers to break down their written content to smaller and smaller grains.
If the platform were to be social at the same time, then we’d generate a situation where users could curate learning content for their own use and publish these collections as guides for their follower’s to use. Over the life of a subscription a user would build up a very rich resource of content which they found useful; a guide to how they learnt everything they needed for a 3 year course at university for example.
It goes without saying that this platform would need to be delivered via mobile and, right now, the best candidate to make that happen is the iPad. This is the only device I have seen that is both portable and rich enough to deliver this experience so far. I’m sure many more will follow suit as the advantages of the device make themselves clearer and it defines its place in the hardware marketplace. But as it stands, this is the only way I would deliver written, visual, audio and cloud-based content to a handheld device.
In terms of the software to make it happen… Well that would be Curatr of course!
The Spotify model has attractive financial implications for both Publishers and Consumers of textbooks. It’s no great secret that the way in which the textbook marketplace operates is somewhat broken market. Students today are spending an average of £1,200 on books over the length of a university degree course. Publishers are searching for more and more ways to unlock the revenue streams that could exist for their back catalogue. Right now they make a substantial amount of their money from a tiny minority of their lists.
Of course money was never a problem for Harry Potter. But you can imagine the savings the Weasley family could have made over the lifetime of their children’s studies…
Curatr Beta Update – July!
Well we’ve been busy in the last month, working to get Curatr up to what we want it to be for launch, which I pleased to say is rather imminent now. We are now signing up launch partners to trial Curatr commercially in the coming weeks and months; if you would like to know more about these opportunities then please do just send me a message.
Update Details:
Added Peer View, which allows you to:
View all participants in a museum
View all participants that you are following
View all participants that are following you
Search all participants
View user profiles
View users according to rank, experience, influence or activity
Added Comments system, which allows you to:
Comment on any object
Reply to comments in a threaded view
Added Alerts system, which allows you to:
Receive email and in-game alerts of updates to Objects, People and Comments
Update your privacy settings as required
Added Similar Objects, which allows you to:
See Objects that are like the Object you are currently viewing, throughout all Users uploads.
Updated User Profiles, which now allow you to:
Upload pictures and further information
View statistics on your own performance, tracked over time.
Plus, lots of tweaks:
Every algorithm in the system has been updated thanks to user feedback on how we were working.
Graphics improved
Load times halved
Add Object refined further
As always, if you want to get involved in the Beta testing then please head over to Curatr and use the little signup box from the top right corner!
Ben
Curatr will get you laid!
John Nash sits awkwardly and alone, surrounded by papers and a half-drunk beer in a smoky 1940’s bar. His peers gather around him, captivated by the blonde woman who just walked in. They sit; smoking and drinking whilst pontificating on which one of them will bag the blonde. Each agrees that the others have no chance with her, but they are willing to back themselves. Nash sits quietly, pencil twiddling in his hands. His pondering on game theory reminds him of the competition for the blonde he is witnessing. A smile creases across his face as a magical moment of connection occurs in his mind.
“If we all go for the blonde and block each other, not a single one of us is going to get her” starts Nash. “So then we go for her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because no one likes to be second choice”. Heads nod in agreement; we’ve all been there before. Nash continues, “But what if none of us goes for the blonde? We won’t get in each other’s way and we won’t insult the other girls. It’s the only way to win. It’s the only way we all get laid”.
Nash’s friends look sceptical at best. It’s a nice idea, but competition is competition; even Adam Smith said the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself.
“Incomplete!” Nash blurts out, his excitement no longer containable within his mind alone. “Incomplete, okay? Because the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself and the group”.
Such is the story of John Nash’s foundations for his “Nash Equilibrium”, as re-told by the 2001 Ron Howard film, A Beautiful Mind. Supposedly it was this realisation that lead Nash to the concept that something as fundamental as Adam Smith’s principles were actually incomplete.
Simplistically speaking, Adam Smith’s notion that players in a market will do entirely what is best for themselves was refuted. Nash proved that it would be a better result, mathematically, if they all did what was best for themselves AND the group.
Recently I’ve been working on the notion of cooperation and competition in education for our new Social Learning platform, Curatr. Cooperation is a fundamental concept in the field of Social Learning; that if the actors in a piece think and work collectively they will gain benefit above and beyond working in isolation. There’s a lot of support for this approach in online learning, not least because it fixes some of the stuff we broke when we left the classroom for E-learning.
On the other hand, competition is a hotly disputed concept in education. Traditional education systems are set for competition throughout their framework, with grade scores and attainment being at the pinnacle of this system. But the true benefits of such a system are disputed strongly by researchers like Alfie Kohn. His work is well documented and well argued, but for me the most obvious principle is that, in any competition, you will have a winner and whole lot of losers. It’s this kind of thinking that leads us to believe that competition is inherently bad. This is Adam Smith style competition however; everyone wants to be the best, so they further themselves but only one person emerges victorious in the end. This sort of behaviour is typical of Zero-Sum games and what Game Theorists might call Strictly Competitive behaviour. This can be changed in a Non-Zero-Sum environment however.
Cooperating in Non-Cooperative Games:
It might sound like a misnomer, but it isn’t. In Game Theory the idea of “non-cooperative” is very specific – it indicates that players make decisions independent of each other. In Curatr we have an environment in which each player is free to pursue the strategy they wish to.
Game Theorists have a method for plotting and calculating the best strategies for a given situation in what they would call a pay-off matrix. Below is a simplified version of the pay-off matrix for going home with the blonde, where the possible strategies between two players are going for the blonde first, or going to the friends.
Pay Off Matrix - the Blonde in the Bar
If every player in the group goes for the blonde, they all strike-out, as they block each other. As soon as Player 1 escalates his strategy to get the Blonde, the others are forced to follow suit, after all, why would you let your friend go after the Blonde, she is the best possible outcome of acting alone. But you are not acting alone, you are in a group and of course now everyone blocks each other and the Blonde’s friends subsequently tell them to “Go to Hell!”
Because of the nature of the game, where you act as a part of a non-cooperative group, the best possible outcome of acting alone isn’t open to you. The group will respond to your strategy, so going that way is a recipe for disaster. You must adopt the best strategy for you AND the group, which in this case is the bottom right cell, Everyone Gets Lucky.
Now let’s make a leap into the world of Curatr, which is a competitive environment where it is possible for you to “win”; to come first. Coming first will be the result of contributing, sharing and viewing more than anyone else, which will take quite a lot of hard work to achieve. In our payoff matrix we will list two possible strategies – “First” to represent the strategy of coming first and “In The Pack” to represent a strategy of contributing about as much as everyone else in the group. Note that we eliminate a 3rd possibility, contributing nothing, because without contribution you cannot progress through the game at all.
Pay Off Matrix - Curatr
As soon as a player decides to adopt the “First” strategy, the others in the group go with them (“Go To Hell if you’re coming first!”), all adopting the same strategy so as to avoid being left way behind in a race to the top – the desire to win still exists. But by adopting this strategy there is a constant one-upmanship, which grows the content exponentially. Here “Information Overload” occurs and the players block each on the route to success.
The best strategy for themselves AND the group is actually the bottom right, seeking to contribute enough to be “In The Pack”, but never seeking the glory of coming first.
OK, so what?!
Curatr is a game-like environment because we believe that elements of games and gaming are absolutely key in promoting user engagement (see the book, Total Engagement, for others working in this area). We allow users to compete with each other, but significantly, coming first is not the goal of this competition. The best strategy for playing Curatr is to cooperate with your peers in order to maximise the outcome, without any single person stealing the glory.
If the hot blonde in the bar is the best possible outcome for a single player, then we have created a system that encourages players to go for the friend, which is the best possible outcome for the individual AND the group.
So there you have it. Curatr will get you laid.
The beginning of the end for Apple?
I know what you’re thinking, I must be a complete idiot to think Apple is in trouble. Perhaps I am. But the recent fall out from the iPhone 4 release and the Apple response (or more specifically, the Steve Jobs response) strikes me as something symptomatic of a wider issue.
For those of you unaware, the new iPhone 4 has got some issues with signal reception when you hold it in a certain place. That certain place just happens to be an area which a lot of people will be holding the phone – you kinda have to in order to make a call. Now there is clearly a process failure in the testing procedure for this release; it’s a pretty fundamental mistake to make. I actually flashed back to the story of the iPhone 4 that was found in a bar; it had a special case on it which made it look like an iPhone 3GS. This case would have also prevented the problem from occurring, so it seems likely that despite thorough field testing, the problem didn’t surface.
Jobs’ reaction to the problem is key here. Reportedly he said “just avoid holding it in that way”. Arrogance aside, this is symptomatic of the way Apple used to do business. Apple users, specifically Mac users, have been used to their devices not fitting in very well with the rest of the world. Typically, you’re average Mac user is more technically savvy than your average PC user, or at least that used to be the case. As such, they have no problem in working their way around these little glitches, using the approach Jobs dictates. Working around the glitches is the price you pay for a perceived better experience (often manifesting itself as a cloud of smug, but that’s another story).
Now Apple is going mainstream with devices that increasingly replicate and supersede the function of the desktop PC. They are moving from an audience with above average technical ability towards the mass-market. These are the people who don’t do workarounds, they do returns. They lack brand loyalty when faced with technical glitches.
My question is, now that they are producing computing devices with mass-market appeal, does Apple have the ability to adapt to its new market demands? Top of this list of demands is Customer Service and from this episode it would appear to not be a part of the Apple culture. We all know that Culture is difficult to change, especially when you are lead by an enigmatic and charismatic leader like Jobs. Monkey see, monkey do.
Apple could see this as an opportunity to redefine service in the tech industry, which has been historically poor. The very presence of 3rd party companies offering technical help as a middle-man suggests that this much is true – the Geek Squad wouldn’t exist in a market place where tech suppliers excelled at customer service. Amazons recent acquisition of Zappos.com, whose competency lies in its brilliant service, could be seen as a signal of intent. They are aware of the need to improve and are willing (in theory) to radically alter the way they do business in order to achieve this.
For me this could be the beginning of the end for Apple. If they fail to service their mainstream audience then their products brand appeal will suffer. Without the brand appeal I wonder how Apple will continue to differentiate themselves in a world which is increasingly innovative and increasingly design orientated.
Flow and the England Football Team
Last Friday I watched as my beloved England put together the single worst performance I have ever seen the team play. My talents as a scribe will not even stretch close to an accurate depiction of just how awful we were; just take my word for it, it was bad. The weekend’s papers have been full of debate since that fateful night; just what is it that is making this team perform so badly? Like all real England fans, I alone know the answer to this most mercurial of problems. Well, me and a 75 year-old Hungarian Psychologist.
If you haven’t heard the name Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the last year or so consider yourself lucky. First stop on our journey of Hungarian Psychology is the name itself; Csikszentmihalyi. I’ve been reliably informed that the best method of pronouncing the name in my lazy English tongue is to utter the phrase “Chicks-Send-Me-High”. I’m pretty sure that was a joke when it was told to me, but I keep saying it and getting away with it, so in the absence of something better I will stick with it.
Csikszentmihalyi wrote his seminal work on the concept of Flow and it has grown in popularity almost exponentially in the last year or two. Csikszentmihalyi described Flow as the moment of perfect relationship between what an individual has to do and what they can do. The challenge of the task is enough to stretch the mind, but close enough to grasp and succeed. Whilst in Flow participants are almost completely consumed by the task, to the detriment of everything else.
Fast-forward to 2010 and the author Daniel Pink. In his book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, Pink is highly influenced by the work of Csikszentmihalyi. Pink tells us that for creative tasks extrinsic motivators, like money, simply don’t work. These types of motivators close the mind to the solutions that a creative endeavour requires of a participant. The most compelling demonstration of this is certainly the Candle Problem – check it out if you haven’t already seen it.
Let us assume that Pink is right (well, more specifically, the psychologists he references are right) and that for creative endeavours Intrinsic Motivators are required. Pink offers up his take on the 3 “legs” of the intrinsic motivation tripod (his words not mine): Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Autonomy is the ability to work to your own schedule, to self-motivate and not be micro-managed. Purpose is the concept that you are working towards a higher ideal than your own personal achievements could allow. And Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters. The concept of Flow, sustained over time (Gladwell might assert 10,000 hours), brings us to Mastery.
Csikszentmihalyi actually studied football players for his original work, but you don’t need to be a prominent Hungarian chap with an amusing beard to realise that the England were not in Flow last Friday. When Wayne Rooney, England’s chief protagonist, failed to control a long ball down England’s left flank by clumsily knocking it straight off his shin and into the path of an opposition player, it hit me. England, both as individuals and as a team, were not in Flow.
This was a team in the midst of a chore. They were supposed to be forgetting themselves; these guys don’t need to think about things like controlling a ball, it just happens. But as they slipped further away from Flow, so they were required to think ever more actively about the routine moves they had to make. And whilst they are busy over-thinking these basic functions, the capacity to be creative diminishes to almost nothing.
Flow is a set of circumstances that exists between being pushed too far and not being pushed far enough. You would be hard pushed to justify that a game against the relative minnows from Algeria was an exercise in being pushed too far. As such we are left to conclude that the England players were bored. This tally’s with what was being asked of them; to play disciplined football in a mundane formation. Capello should ask more of his players; they ARE talented, they ARE capable, but they need the freedom to be expressive, to be creative and to play how they want, not how the manager dictates.
Right now, the England players probably don’t feel like they are being challenged in training and in matches. At club level these guys are the stars. Training and games are almost certainly organised around them. Tasks are tailored to fit with their requirements and to put them into Flow. Playing for England might well be the ultimate honour, but it probably doesn’t add much to a players overall Mastery of the game. In fact, it probably knocks them down a peg or two. They are constrained to work in a system where it isn’t all about them. When they get together for the odd-one off match pre-tournament, like a qualifying match, they probably don’t have enough time to be knocked from their Flow position. But give them an extended period, a training camp and six weeks together and this soon disappears.
Getting back to Flow won’t be easy. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if we failed to achieve it and progress. But if we do manage to beat the Slovenians of this world, it’ll be interesting to see how well we “Flow” on the pitch.
All this does have a big bearing on Learning and Technology, but I’ll save that treat for another week 
Curatr Beta – new version
For those of you lucky enough to be on the Curatr Beta (hint: click this link to emulate their success) we’ve just released a new version. Because we’re imaginative we’ve called this version “0.2″. Here’s a small video to celebrate that:
Headlines:
- We got some great data from our experiments – thanks for taking part.
- All of you are now on the same platform, with all the features we’ve made available so far turned on.
- The biggest changes are in the navigation (old one was too confusing) and the social aspects.
- Now each user has their own “canvas” on to which they can share objects or add new.
- You can then choose to follow new users to help give a different perspective on the learning.
- Everyone now has their own classroom, of which they are the administrator.
- You can use the admin link (check your emails) to invite up to 20 people to view your Curatr Classroom.
As always, the more feedback the better. We’ve still got a way to go before we’ve showcased the full functionality of Curatr, but we’re getting there!
Ben
Curatr Beta Update: Getting Social
A couple of weeks ago we launched our first versions of the Curatr Beta trial. We placed our testers into 8 groups and offered different features for them to play around with. The initial findings of these tests look to be quite compelling and we’ll be sharing them just as soon as we can.
We also got lots of great user feedback from this first round of testing and we’ve made a few changes in response to this. Screen casts like that from Noah Sparks were invaluable in showing us how people started to use our system and where it was falling short.
So, what’s new in version 0.2?
Your own playground:
Those of you on the beta will know that so far you’ve all been playing in a single large sandpit. This is great for a quick experience of what the product offers but it doesn’t help you to start realising your own use of Curatr. So for this next version everyone will get a sandpit of their own to play in as well. Here you will be able to upload objects, define collections, levels and guides and to enrol other users to participate in your testing.
We’ve been spending a good deal of time designing the flow of information in our “Add an Object” section; it was released pretty raw and whilst a lot of people had a great go at it, filling it out wasn’t easy. The modifications we make here should make this process significantly easier and much more robust.
We’re getting social:
In our first version we presented users with an object-centric view of the world. You could highlight individual contributions, but we hadn’t yet implemented proper “follower” features or sharing. This is all about to change.
Now when you enter into a Curatr Classroom you will notice a Peer is at the centre of the Objects. The Objects on the page are those which that Peer has shared. By following new Peers you can get access to other people’s home screens, collections and guides.
The experts view of the objects will remain the default selected and from this point going forward this person is known as the “Curatr”. As you go and browse through the Curatr’s Objects you can share objects you like by hitting the “share” button. This object will then become a part of your home page.
Finding new followers is something which we will be implementing over both this version and the next. We’ve got something pretty good in-store for organising your peers but we can’t fully implement that in this next version, so it will have to wait!
New Navigation and Search:
I was over the moon when a Twitter user picked up on the fact that previous navigation bar “looks like the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”; my constant source of inspiration. But despite this, it had clear flaws. It was slow in places, was poor for filtering guides and a complete pain for us to code. It had to go.
So we’ve gone back to basics now, simple being best. Our navigation now makes it very straightforward to select Collections, Sub-Collections and Guides at any stage of your viewing. It also enabled us to implement a fantastic search capability which alters the canvas in real-time given your input; check out the screen shot.
That’s it for now!
Version 0.2 should hit sometime next week if our internal testing goes well and we hope you’ll continue to give us your feedback and your opinion on what we’re doing.
-Ben
A quick note on the forthcoming Curatr private beta
Firstly, let me say that we’ve been overwhelmed by the level of enthusiasm we’ve seen for our idea in the last week or so – truly. Thus far our private beta has had signups from around 150 different organisations, covering 28 countries from all over the globe. We’re seeing interest at every level of education, from schools to corporates. So thank you to all who have taken the time to view our website and signup; you will make this experience a whole lot better for your time and effort.
To the business of what we intend to do…
Well first of all, this won’t be quite like a normal beta test. Because we’ve got academic interests in the outcome of this testing, we’ll be splitting participants into one of a few different groups to try out the software. Each group will have a slightly different experience, be that the features on offer, the other people you interact with or the subject matter.
Initially we are going to get participants to test in collective areas. This means you won’t be “getting” your own Curatr to do as you want with right away. Testing social software in isolation isn’t really a test!
We’re going to be collecting feedback as we go and we’ll then be looking to iterate quickly, adding features and fixing bugs on the fly. At the moment we’ve scheduled 5 feature releases, taking us from Beta 0.1 initially, up to 0.6.
Right now we’re modifying Curatr as a result of internal testing. I expect this to last a week or so, then we’ll launch the beta.
We’re going to leave the private beta signup live for this time, so its not too late to get involved if you still want to. Please visit www.curatr.co.uk and fill out the little form in the lightbox window.
- Ben
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