Fan Factor

Fan-Factor was my final project to obtain my Master's degree. In order to complete my thesis work, I had to develop a design from scratch using the fundamental principles of the field derived from the coursework of the graduate program.

Fan-Factor is an application for smart phones that allows for fans of a particular sporting community to discuss issues with one another and to formulate an overall opinion. This generated consensus then goes through a particular algorithm that identifies which subject matters are deemed important by the organization's constituency. If a particular subject is found to be important, the arguments of the fans are then relayed to organizational administrators for consideration in daily operations.

Process

I came up with the idea for Fan-Factor after doing some initial research in Medical Informatics. I originally wanted to develop a more elaborate system within Electronic Medical Records (EHR's) for better communication between patients and physicians. Creating a portal for patients to maintain an updated list of symptoms and to ask medical staff questions proved to be too invasive of governmental regulations, like HIPAA, and EHR dynamics, since each discipline within medicine had their own fundamental system.

The dynamics found between patients and physicians are not unique. The physician gains more insight into a medical diagnosis and treatment options as he or she is able to examine and interview the patient.

A similar relationship can be found within bureaucratic organizations that serve a particular constituency. Sporting organizations exist because of an underlying fan population that they represent and entertain. For my project, I decided to create a digital device that would allow fans to generate a consensus on real issues within the sporting organization and to deliver it to administrators. This empowers the fans to be more involved with the organization's daily operations.

I needed to identify constraints that would protect the integrity of the organization. At the same time, I needed to develop a method to allow for users to comfortably control the flow of the discussion rhetoric so that conceptual thought and heated debate could be incubated in a supportive environment. The ability to mesh these two features would ultimately determine the overall success of the design.

In short, developing a holistic experience would allow for people with a common interest to cultivate a specific argument or understanding in order to fundamentally change the way that the current process works. Sending a cohesive and concise message to organization administrators is far more effective than the alternative.

The Design

Fan-Factor took the form of an iPhone application that was built to resemble a collaborative workspace. Within this space, there are multiple ways to attain information and discuss opinion. Statistics, real-time updates and message boards are all a vital part of this application in order to foster a holistic understanding of the discussion.

The message boards primarily help users to determine important issues to relay to administrators. Using a democratic system, it determines the importance of a particular topic by utilizing multiple methods of rating popularity. The topic's popularity is determined through an algorithm that can be set by the administration based on number of views, voting ratio, comparative ratings and things of that nature. When the topic subject surpasses this algorithm's threshold, the administration is notified and is prompted to review the users' discussion. Comments left by users are rated on a 5-point system. An average rating helps the community determine importance and an ability individuals to view comments with more perceived value first.

In order to protect the integrity of the organization, the application would only be released to a representative user population that had both a strong knowledge of the organization and an innate interest for it to succeed. For instance, if this were a sports team, fans from rival teams may try to negatively influence the progress in hopes to create some competitive edge. A sports team may only release this application to their season ticket holders, or some variation of that group. This provides both an incentive and prerogative to become more involved with the community.