Introduction

ECO/ECN have been asked to design a system that would facilitate communication and collaboration between members of multi-disciplinary research communities within the College of Engineering.

Possible solutions that are being discussed include building a stand-alone system, building the system within the engineering intranet, or a hybrid of the two, where the system would be separate, but it would be tied into the intranet to one degree or another.

Brian Brinegar has created a requirements document that offers a detailed breakdown of how a stand-alone system might be structured.

This document is less structured than Brian's – more of a hand-waving, informal exploration of how I imagine a community system might work. It's based partly on Brian's specs, partly on discussions with other interested parties, and partly on my own ideas and preferences.

I'll describe it as if everything is part of the intranet, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the features would all be built as part of the existing intranet structure. They might be separate elements that share the look and feel of the intranet and which communicate and interlink with it. Alternatively, it might evolve into a redesign of the intranet, with the existing structure reworked to make everything follow the lead of the research communities.

My personal preference would be to redesign the intranet, so I'll include ideas about how to make the intranet better along with things that are specific to the research communites.

This should be seen as a starting point that's intended to spark further discussion, not a well-thought-out specs document.

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