People
Requirements Engineer, Software Engineer, Usability Analyst
2007 — 2008
Description
People is a cross-generational social networking platform developed for the Aerospace Corporation under the terms of the year-long informatics senior project. People is a project in knowledge management and is intended to promote the dissemination of knowledge through the formation of new interdepartmental connections. Employees maintain a public presence through their own profile, which features tags, contact information, and awareness information. Employees are able to manage colleague relationships, interact with Aerospace Corporation communities, organize new events, tag People profiles, and view awareness information through a iPhone/iPod Touch interface.
One aspect of People that sets it apart from other social networks is its public nature. There is no concept of private information in People; all information on the network is public and available for everyone to see. Some information, like tags, is publically editable, as well. Anyone can add a tag and tag comment to any profile on People. Because People is a professional social network, we expect that employees of Aerospace Corporation will practice self-censorship and recognize what content and behaviour is appropriate for this environment.
Employees can tag profiles and vote on whether or not a given tag is relevant.
Roles and Responsibilities
People was developeded by a team of 3 senior informatics students, myself included. We went through the entire software development process, which includes requirements engineering, software design, implementation, testing, deployment, and evaluation. Our team also maintained a set of internal roles that were swapped each quarter. By the end of the process, I served my team not only as a high-level software engineer, but as an internal relations manager, customer relations manager, and scheduling manager.
Technologies
People is a web application developeded entirely in Ruby on Rails.