tagged as: digital and collaborative, HFG Schwäbisch Gmünd, Interaktionsgestaltung, ronald the, web, wiki,

Visual Design: Benedikt Groß
Information Architecture: Ronald The and Benedikt Groß
Projekt Managment: Ronald The
Plone Programming: Zettwerk

One of my main “side” projects running in 2008 was the conception and coordination for the new wiki of the department “Interaktionsgestaltung” (interaction design) at the HFG Schwäbisch Gmünd. Starting point was an analysis of all possible needs for the upcoming wiki:

• internal
  • project timeline and archive
  • documentation / course materials
  • stop the brain-drain (graduated students leave the school every semester)
    • project documentations
    • howtos
  • easy and comfortable transfer of knowledge
    • professor to student
    • student to student
  • collaborative working
    • research
    • process documentation -> blogs
• external
  • uncover whats going on at the HfG -> applicants
  • constant flow of attractive content for the “outside world”
  • project timeline and archive
  • establish the site as a professional problem solving site -> howto

This outline (shortened) was our basis for the final realisation.

We recognized that most of problems and needs can be categorized into these two main categories: internal and external. These two points are reflected in two slightly different views of the site. For instance the landing pages, the two right side menus, post-it box etc. change according to the user “role”. All students, faculty members etc. have an internal user role and the rest of the world an external one.

The benefit of using a wiki is to get very easy a comprehensive and permanent collection of knowledge, over all topics related to the department Interaktionsgestaltung like project documentations, technical howtos or course materials. This collaborative approach has furthermore the advantage to fulfil the internal communication need of sharing and distributing knowledge and at the same time being very attractive to an external public.

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Screencast “Basic Overview” in german spoken by myself, including a funny southern accent. yeah!

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