Leslie Njamen Tita : Designing For The Social Network Case Study : “Camerborn”

Leslie Njamen Tita : "Social Networking is becoming such big trend nowadays, we can see new ones popping everyday, and very lately, a Cameroonian social networking site was launched by  Mambe Churchill and  Papa Qube, called Camerborn, in the effort to answer the needs of the local population which sites likeFacebook, Hi5 and Myspace haven’t, I wouldn’t dare say these sites haven’t radically changed the way we communicate today, but rather what I’m saying is these networks aren’t adapted to the local cultures, Lets see a practical example,Facebook today enables a Cameroonian teenager to chat with his friend from India, see the photos of his girlfriend who lives in Britain and read the status of his brother studying in the US and also its enables him to spend countless hours playing CafeWorld and FrontierVille, But what it doesn’t enable him to do, is to prepare for his upcoming  GCE or BAC examinations, it doesn’t enable him share his homework with his classmate who is in Nkoukolou and also, it doesn’t enable him to find other students like him who have difficulties in Maths and are looking for ways to fix that and people to share that with. Camerborn was created to enable that.  I was greatly privileged to be part of the project, and thus i took upon the task to  redesign the present UI (User Interface) to something more COOL, and I thought it will be easy to do, but little did i know, that designing for the Social Media could be very challenging.

That challenge definitely made it more interesting, and thus I discovered like many before me that UIs for social sites have nothing to do with the UIs for traditional websites, because in a social networking, you have to think like the user and not like a designer, you also have the obligation to design what will be pleasant and usable for the users and not what pleases you, you must be guided by the principles of usability, user experience and  user interaction, but the most challenging aspect, is that of designing a product that will be simple enough for the millions of Cameroonians with its 3.9% internet penetration and over 176 660 Facebook users but also be mature enough for the other visitors from around the world, so i was inspired in a first run by a concept an Australian designer Barton Smith developed “Facebook Facelift”, actually he took upon himself to redesign Facebook.

 

So after days and days of brainstorming and prototyping on paper and in my mind, I came up with what I would call the profile page design, I know you might ask yourself “Why did he first design the profile page before the home page” , I have no answer to that, so the designs goes as thus, at the top the logo and menu items. Below that the share section and profile picture and immediately below that, the different post and profile menu items



From the above design its was pretty easy to do the Home page, surprisingly after that ideas simply just flowed in, and I changed tons of things, finally came up with this as the landing page,



After consultations with team members, it was decided the background be changed back to Black, which I clearly didn’t like but as I earlier said, you aren’t designing for yourself and the founders also decided it would be better we change the Camerborn UI gradually and not to do a complete redesign, Good Decision or Not, only the future can tell. I also decided to play around with the interface for mobile web and also a co-worker  William Takor adapted the design for iPhone.



So while waiting for Camerborn to become bigger than the “The Social Network”, we shall still keep the present design and progressively aim towards something better.

I will be posting the PSD files i used in these designs shortly for your private and public use.

Leslie Njamen Tita : Is Africa Sleeping ? No its Not !

By now you should be aware that Africa hosted for the very first time a memorable event, the FIFA world cup, i can still remember the excitement on the faces of people when it was first announced . But my question remains, why did it take so long for the African continent to host the World  Cup, or better why do we give the impression that Africa isn’t ready to take part in large events, some may say, its due to a lack of infrastructure,  poverty, or corrupt governments and so on and so forth. But after seeing what South Africa offered, today i think as many others, that’s its time Africa shows its self in big style to the rest of the world, let it be in the Arts, Design, Technology or Architecture Field. We need to promote our products and ideas and also show how they are positively affecting our nations and the world. Being a avid reader of TechCrunch blog, and I’m amazed by the beauty by which they promote Start-ups and give the impression that Silicon Valley is Unique place that can not be reproduced elsewhere, Guess What, they are African starts up that are changing the lives of millions of people too, like the open source project Ushahidi which was developed in the aim to report violence in Kenya after the elections, but today is been used in numerous different countries as an alert system, and it was put to test recently during Haiti 2010 earthquake . Other Start-ups like Ringo who after 2 years of operation increased the number of Cameroonian internet users from 200,000 in 2009 to 750 000 users and now Cameroon can boast of  a humbling 176 000 Facebook Users.

Via AfricanDigitalart

Africa also has rich digital community like African Digital Art which references a wide range multimedia productions artist from around the African globe headed by a talented digital artist Jepchumba. Now over to social networking sites, i know the question you ask yourself is “Do we need another Social Network”, but the right question to ask is “Does the actual 500 million  social network benefit the local African community ?”,  ”has it reduced poverty ?” or “has it increased the level of literacy “, ” has it enable the truck pusher business to promote his services” NO… that’s why entrepreneurs like Mambe Churchill and Papa Qube Launched naijaborn and camerborn in the effort to answer those questions. How are this networks doing you may ask? pretty well, they don’t have 500 millions like Facebook, and neither to they have enemies Also Africa has nothing to do with the film  Blood Diamond or  Hotel Rwanda as African American friend once told me, or lets better say at least its as bad as the racism problems in the US, so nothing serious. The Diary Of African Designer would be place where i will share my experiences, thoughts, tutorials and stories and also those of  African professionals across the Globe. If you have questions, please ask me below in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.