Two weeks ago I started my internship @ Mediamatic Travel. Since then I've been helping change/build and destroy the website. Let me start by saying it's very dynamic and interesting work, very challenging. I'll explain why.
First of all you're dealing with two sides and sometimes even three sides of the Mediamatic foundation. On the one hand we have developers, designers and computergenii. These are the technical staff. They want a nice design and cutting edge technology. On the other hand we have the communication and pr people, they want the website to look cool, appealing and representative. Third, and most important maybe, we have the people, the mass, the buyers. They want everything the first two want without spending a lot of time nor money on it. What they want is efficiency & satisfaction: usability.
Having a balance between these three groups means a lovely website in the future.
Now our website has a few challenges that make this balance hard to establish. I'll cite an ex-co-worker, Michele Champagne, when we were discussing the website. She said:
"We're dealing here with a four-headed beast. The first head consists of the old members, who are used to providing info, not participating on the website. Also we helped them a lot building their site. They have had to deal with the ever-changing concept of the website, because of that lacking faith in the project.
The second head of the beast is the new member. He's to participate and go figure it out himself. We're not building his website, just coaching him through the process. Still this member isn't familiar with the website and lacks motivation to improve it.
The third and fourth head of the beast is the difference between being a participant or a consumer. Some people really want to get involved, being an active member or a guide. Others just want to browse the site. How to make it for both of them an equally interesting website to visit by letting them apply their own level of participation? Do we actually allow that to happen?"
That's a very important thing to think about: Do we allow for 'newbies' to go and make errors, not be motivated and make 'crapsites' and in the meantime have an open network for everybody? Or do we want a small elite of people that have got high involvement and make beautiful sites, but in that way making it a closed network with less people and high barriers for entry?
As you can see there is still a lot to work on
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