Thesis: Response to in-class feedback

Last week, Heather (my thesis adviser) had us switch thesis presentations with another person in the class. Tim Haynes did a great job presenting my thesis idea–far better than I would have done. Sitting back and listening to his version of my presentation gave me the opportunity to think about my proposal’s shortcomings. I’d like to address a few of the questions and thoughts that came up during the feedback session.

Q. Is this just a social network or will it actually help me find a job?
A. Neither. First, this is not a job hunting site. I don’t think the world needs another version of monster.com, indeed.com, jobs.com etc, etc. I want to keep it as separate from the actual job search process as possible. It’s not used to apply for jobs–it’s used to track progress and make applying for jobs more enjoyable. That said, I’m hesitant to call the project a social network. I think that term has a lot of baggage (expected type of interactions, privacy, “profiles,” and a link to a real identity). Moreover, this is not linkedin. Whatever “networking” a user does on the site will be entirely unrelated to the networking that goes on in order to secure a job. I’m not sure what term I’ll choose in the end (or even how social network-ey the final product will be), but I’m leaning toward “social application”–something that employs social interactions to achieve a particular effect. More to come on this later.

Q. What about privacy? How public is this data? I don’t want people to know I’m unemployed/have been looking for a job for months.
A. This goes back to the no networking for the sake of job hunting concept. I don’t want actual identities to be revealed anywhere on the site. This is a safe space–you can be confident that your gripes about unemployment and the job hunt will not be heard by potential employers. As I begin to develop the design and tone of the site, it will be important to find ways to make the user feel secure.

Ideas (from group feedback):
- reward more than just job hunt-related activities

• volunteering
• classes/skills
• museum visits
• getting out of the house
• adventurous activities

- turn the process on its head

• pity points for bombing interviews
• reward lack of achievement

Thoughts (also from group feedback):
- personality is key
- should rewards be tangible?
- a site like this will (ideally) have a high churn rate
- art piece v. utility