First Release

On Friday 8 April, we launched the Data Miner app on facebook.
The app can be found on http://apps.facebook.com/datamineralpha/.

Only the core feature was available at that time.
Users could mine using the mouse or keyboard and could read articles once mined.
Till now these articles were selected from a predefined set of articles.

Also included in the application was a link to a google form.
This form can be found on link.
It is based on the CSUQ test.

With the questionnaire, we hoped to find out how much users like the application and if it is interesting enough.
Of course the app isn't that interesting right now, because we use dummy articles.
Also the reward system isn't there yet, so it is quite difficult to attract people day after day.
After a full week and active pushing friends and family to the app, we got 10 responses on the questionnaire.

We conclude the following after this first iteration:
- The users weren't pleased with the graphics.
- The icons were to small.
- Users with Safari can see through the article making it very difficult to read.
- Users asked for a legend for the different materials.

+ Most users are medium satisfied with the application and hope to see more soon.
+ Most users find it simple to use the app.
- Because there aren't that many different social news games, it was difficult for most users to compare it with something else.
Also they didn't know if it had all the functionalities they expect it to have, cause they didn't expect that much.
- We score neutral on the effectiveness of our app. This because we still use dummy articles. The test users know what we want to do and think this can be effective, but right now they rather watch the monkey out of the tree. (English with hair on it)
+ Except for the Safari 5 tester, all other testers felt comfortable with the app.
+/- The opinions about the concept are divided.

We also noticed that most users reach their articles within an acceptable amount of clicks or keystrokes. Some users also try to dig as much ground as possible without getting to an article. This is not really the point of the application, but as long as they like doing it, it's fine for us. We can't ban them for doing it. We will have to find some way of removing these users from the usage statistics, as they raise the average amount of clicks/buttons pressed by a large amount.

That's it for right now.
During the second iteration we will:
+ Update the graphics for a more pleasant experience.
+ We will add the reward system to lure users back to the app.
+ We will widen our test group.

On hold:
- The Safari problem.
- The legenda.

Till next time!

Team AnarCHI