Coliibri Idea Sharing

When James and Barbara first approached with a set of spec's for a bold, creative concept for a web application, we were almost taken aback by the newness (and coolness) of the concept. That is, they wanted to create an online community where idea makers could share, collaborate, inherit, contribute, and build upon each-other's concepts. They were adament that the actions on the site, the idea creations -- and collaborations -- all be visible, viewable, and explorable in a compelling graphical visualization. The visualizations should highlight the relationships and history of the ideas as they evolved and bifurcated over time. They wanted to make the site easy to join, and minimize the effort of creating yet another site account. 

No mean feat, nor set of requirements, but we took on the challenge with relish and curiosity. Once we fleshed out a set of wire-frames, we set to work on the design working with our ace UX partner, Matt Wood.  With iteration we came up with a design that all were excited about, and proceeded on to the significant task of building the system out in the client's preferred open source technology -- Drupal. While the development of the main portal was interesting enough, replete with features -- project details, work-flows related to the creation and contribution to project, registration using not only Drupal's core membership model, but also via Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail API's -- the most daunting aspect of the project was the development of the so-called "Idea Navigator". The idea visualization tool. 

James had initially had us consider using an open source PHP-based geneology package known as phpgedview. And while there was some discussion on the Drupal boards about integrating this tool-set, our feeling was that the technically compelling part wasn't so much the server-side structures, but the front-end look-and-feel, and interactivity. Thus our exploration shifted towards various JavaScript based tree diagram and hierarchy visualization tools. The first model we looked into was called Arbor.js, which while we are still in love with, turned out to have major IE compatability issues, and so needed to be abandoned for this project. Fortunately, a more cross-browser compatible, and ultimately more appropriate visualization code base came to light: the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit or JIT. Following design modeling and customization, based on the "SpaceTree" mode, we were able to build the exact concept that James and Barbara had originally approached us with. 

Since the site launched, it has already been warmly received, with many users already creating and collaborating on ideas. We are excited to see the concept come to life, and are looking forward to seeing the site grow and evolve.