After much deliberation in deciding which topic to pick, Team Wintermute decided to create a social network based off a strong common interest of the majority of the group members. Wintermute decided on to create a Calvin and Hobbes Ning social network because of a zealous allegiance to the famous 1985-1995 comic strip by Bill Watterson. After the topic was decided on, the initial discussion revolved around choosing a purpose for having the network (aside from the mandatory assignment) and determining what attributes would consider to the fabric of the social network.
Team Wintermute met in 209 IST to utilize the Dell monitor in a team effort to build the Calvin and Hobbes social networking site. Many options were available during the process of designing the Calvin and Hobbes social network site on Ning. When Wintermute first logged on to Ning to create their site, the first order of business was to decide on a name and a tagline. They decided to name the social networking site based on the same style that the Calvin and Hobbes books are named after. A creative and catchy title was conceived in this manner, resulting in: Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons. Next, Wintermute wrote questions that new members were required to enter in order for them to join the site. New members were asked to enter in their favorite Calvin and Hobbes character and book. This information would be displayed on their profile pages.
After coming up with the social network name and member profile information, Wintermute designed the appearance of the site. True to the design of Watterson’s comic strip, a simplistic and minimalist theme emphasized by warm, contrasting colours were given to the site. Color saturation and hue plays a huge role in the attitude the reader gets from the comic- Wintermute decided it was absolutely necessary to reflect those same attitudes in the design of the networking site. The team decided on a black and white professional looking background with orange titles and a picture of Hobbes appearing to crawl onto the top of the page. The team wanted a simple appearance that shared the same familiar colors that Calvin and Hobbes fans are used to.
The layout of Wintermute’s site is designed to emphasize and focus on multimedia reflecting the ideologies of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, since the topic of the social network is a cartoon. There are video and photo functions are at the top and center of the network’s main page, emphasizing its relevance. Links near the top left hand part of the network are stressed and encouraging the viewer’s eye. They tempt the viewers to further their knowledge in the quest for Calvin and Hobbes information. An embeddable widget that gives daily Calvin and Hobbes comics was located and placed in the center of the site. Members can have discussions in the forums and on each others’ walls. Groups are available for members to join and further their own social network with Calvin and Hobbes Ning network.
The usages of these functions are the most effective ways for members to absorb information from the site. In every cartoon, the position and flow of each caption is decided with exact precision to maximize motifs. Bill Watterson utilized his skills in these subjects to direct reader’s eyes and minds. Wintermute attested to Watterson’s style by implementing these same concepts in social network site.
Visitors can use the scrolls that are built in to the widget to view the strip of the day. Users can also look back at strips from past days. Another feature of the widget is its allowance for users to click on the comic strip and view it in full screen. Below the video, picture, and widget boxes are the forum and blog post. Similar to the default design of Facebook and MySpace, we put the features where visitors view posts or discussions at the bottom so that the aesthetics of the site encourage visitors to look at multimedia first. The member and group features were placed on the left side of the main page accordingly. The recent activity feature was put on the right side.
Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip run in newspapers nationwide for ten years, ending over twelve years ago. Young fans who grew up with Calvin and Hobbes as children have usually fervently read multiple books and compilations. A charismatic simplicity lies beneath the sarcastic strokes of Watterson’s pen, and within the characters’ moral struggle for purpose and meaning. In an article from The Washington Post written about the ending of the series of Calvin and Hobbes, the following section was written. It attests to the discussion amongst critics of the relation between the comic and its timeless socio analysis and critique of philosophy, society, government, human nature and life:
Much has been written about contemporary society's sensory overload, its ability to fracture and disenfranchise people from their families, their values, their selves. More and more, we feel naked against a world that goes only faster and harder, louder and emptier. We ache for a frame of reference. It is why we are not surprised to find ourselves, when nobody else is around, pulling out a worn copy of Dr. Seuss and reading it aloud, simply to find the lovely, warm place it takes us: "I do not like green eggs and ham/ I do not like them, Sam-I-Am." We are in our cocoon. We are safe.
Outside, everything is too fast, too hyper. Our reservoir of wonder has been tapped dry. People want to race snowmobiles, not build snowmen. We grow steroid tomatoes year-round, reveling in the convenience, diluting the perfection of a single, smallish tomato plucked right from the vine in late summer.
What's left? You can no longer even discover a fundamental force of nature. There are only four and they've all been found. Physicists are on the brink of coming up with a "Theory of Everything," meaning a final theory that, once installed, explains everything, and all the physicists can then go home.
Hope takes a beating as the years go by. We look about us and we see so few successes -- so few loving marriages, well-adjusted children, singularly happy people -- that we realize that success seems, at least, a highly improbable alignment of skill, forbearance, hard work, blind luck and Prov i dence. We see how many opportunities life gives us to buckle at the knees. We wonder if life's default mode is failure. We become tired.
Calvin never, ever became tired. And he never lost hope because he never lost imagination. (Ahrens)
The established purpose of the networking site was to create a haven for all things Calvin and Hobbes, unite fans by creating a social networking website that members want to participate in, discuss favorite strips, relive nostalgic memoirs, and discuss the impact of Calvin & Hobbes in our lives- to generate an active online legion of fans. While regular fan sites simply lay out information for fans, there is usually no way for fans to connect. In the Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons Ning social network, the site is first a social networking site, and secondly a fan site. The anonymity that exists in a fan site which usually entails a one way informational relationship extending from the site author(s) to the site user doesn’t foster any interaction between users. In theory, Wintermute’s social networking site wanted to counter-act the anonymity usually found by intentionally fostering interaction and relationships between its members.
When first creating the page, Ning was very easy to use. Editing the page’s output display became increasingly tedious because of the way the Ning’s manage page is laid out. A preview button would have been very helpful. With the limited Wintermute’s HTML experience, the potential for the manipulation of the site’s design became greater. A great deal of effort was dedicated towards seemingly simple tasks, such as the location of a widget, whether an activity monitor was necessary and would users want to see all the multimedia displayed boldly on the opening page. Concepts and ideas from successful sites were applied in the creation of content.
RSS feeds were strongly considered being placed on the main page, but were decided against because they require a constant flow of new content in order. Since the Calvin and Hobbes hasn’t been published in over twelve years, it was determined that it would be highly unlikely that enough news could be generated to create worthwhile RSS feeds.
After the Calvin and Hobbes social network website had been finalized and invitations set out, Wintermute was pleased as much as could be expected from the Ning site. Frustrations mounted during the site building process due to Ning’s lack of user friendly options in the implementation portion for the network’s administrators. While Wintermute attempted to engage its members as a social network, the only members that became active in the social network were members of the team and one non-team user. The issues Wintermute had with the site did not lie with the design or concept, but rather with the fundamental site design by Ning.
Unlike other social networking sites that allow its members to tag, have site wide user memberships (in Ning’s case, one for all Ning subcategories: ie. Each social network would be a subgroup of the overall Ning site and didn’t have to create a new member profile for each “network” joined. If there were a Ning-wide user membership database, other members could see what networks each belonged to. This would encourage more Ning interaction and create a bigger-picture social network rather than the highly isolated, individualized sites that it offers currently.) Wintermute is content with the functionality of the website as a fan site with limited mobility.
According to a Ning search for “Calvin and Hobbes”, Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged, Mutant Social Network is the second site listed, is the most used and has the most content of all sites that turned up in the hit.
All members of Team Wintermute contributed greatly to the completion of the project. Eric implemented the data found on the comic and found related media. Matt and Paul led the group in designing the site and the conceptualization process, as well as finding Calvin and Hobbes comics online and media. Martha helped with the conceptualization process and put the paper together.
