Joseph Bulger IV

This is really sad, but it’s true. I have evidence!

Just FYI, my wife is very wise.  I had her look over the design I came up for the reputation system.  She thought it would be easier if the user could just check off the things they wanted.

Sometimes its just better to get a second opinion!

This is the new concept.  Not much has changed visually, but the behavior will definitely be different.

So the behavior will be by checking off one of the items from the search you’ll be informing the owner that you’re interested in that item.  What happens after that point I’m still working out, but that basically wraps up the behavior for this side.  What we have left to do is get the behavior done for the owner’s side.

Now my problem is I need to design a checkbox that will go on the side so people can just to click on.

So far I’ve come up with this, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it.  The coloring won’t really get nailed down until we put it up on the site and tweak it to make the color scheme, but you get the idea.

Any suggestions?

Google Voice is a message management system that was originally called  Grand Central, but got bought out by Google.  I was a real fan even before Google got it, but all the lines had been bought out so I couldn’t get into it.  I recently received an email that they had opened up some more lines, so I jumped.

Now I have google voice, and there are some things that I think are really cool about it.  When someone leaves you a voicemail, it transcribes the recording for you so you can read it online.  Also, all texts that are sent to you are viewable online as well.  One other awesome feature is that you can add a call widget to your web site (I have one on the right hand side) that allows people to call you without giving out your phone number.  It’s great if you have a portfolio online, and want people to contact you about freelance jobs or something, but you don’t want to give out your number.

Check it out!

I’m throwing this out there because I heard something a while ago that caught my attention.  I don’t honestly care all too much about 16 year olds being able to vote, but there is one very interesting caveat to all of this.

There is a deep seeded understanding in America that it is unconstitutional for there to be no taxation without representation. So having said that, which one should it be?  Should 16 year olds be allowed to vote?  Or should 16 year olds be exempt from all taxation?  You decide…

I’m working on a reputation system for a site I’ve been recently working on (http://www.serveandtrade.com).  I’m going through some ideas so I thought I’d post them on here and see what people think.

Let’s start buy throwing up what we currently have so we can see where we’re trying to go.  Here’s a mockup of what a user will see when they search for trades right now.

I have a couple problems with how it works right now.

1. I don’t like that it’s in a grid/table format.  I have to fix that first.  I’m moving more towards something like a list layout.
2. There are some things missing that I would like to be able to do.  For instance, if I just searched for “can of soup”, and I see that Michelle has the one I want, I would like to have a button/link/something to click on that says “I want that!”  Right now the only thing you can do is go look at the trade, or ask a question.
3. Clicking on the owner’s link takes you to their profile, but it doesn’t show you what other trades they have, or trades they are looking for.  That information could really be useful.

I’m sure there are other things I could think of, but for now I’m going to start focusing on these three and build some mockups to illustrate these workflows.

First, getting rid of the grid.

This search list looks a lot better I think.  There are some more features on here then the other one, but we’ll go over those in subsequent posts.

So at this point I’m looking for any feedback.  ANY feedback, good or bad… I’ll take it all.  I really haven’t made up my mind at this point yet, but I think I’m heading in the right direction.

Next post will be about the “I want it!” feature.  Stay tuned!