How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Blog » beacon

Global Services for Local Good

cameron — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:39:05 +0000

Bridge into Beacon is an application to encourage economic growth in Downtown Beacon by providing context to visitors and tourists. I began the project with a post about resilient communities, and an intention to create an app that promotes resilience.

From the beginning, I’ve tried to keep the application simple, not just for the end users, but also for administrators. I’ve done this by using third party API’s to offload data storage and administration to those sites. It means that if you or a customer hasn’t already added your business to Yelp or Yahoo! Local, you can add yourself and show up in Bridge into Beacon.

This approach leverages high connectivity and remote resources to ease the burden on administrators, which increases the initial viability of the application. However, it seems antithetical to the idea of resilience and sustainability. I wonder, in using third party APIs to promote resilience, is Bridge into Beacon past the threshold between local production and global services? What are the tradeoffs, and are they worth it? It seems to me these are some of the same issues facing resilient community advocates. Hope some of you will weight in.

Impulsive and on-the-go

cameron — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:24:37 +0000

I had a meeting at BEAHIVE in Beacon, NY last week to present my ideas for a “digital bridge into Beacon” and got some great feedback. Based on the conversation and subsequent consideration, I’ve decided to focus most heavily on the mobile web component. BEAHIVE member Chris Joslyn highlighted the importance of knowing the user’s state of mind when they discover the app and use it for the first time. I realized that most users will be visiting the app on the go, probably immediately following their visit to the Dia Beacon. It’s also clear that this is a one time or very intermittent use application that is highly rooted in impulse, so it will have to be extremely simple and intuitive. There is no room for a learning curve.

With these points in mind, I plan to make the home screen a list and simple map with markers showing all locations, with three filter tabs: Food, Arts, and Shops. Each tab will narrow the map markers and the list to that category. If the user taps a marker or list item, they will see a details page with the location name, subcategory (i.e “cafe” or “gallery”), address and phone number, and directions from their current location in list form. Preview to come.