BuddyAbroad: mobile app for exchange students!

An enthusiastic project group of undergraduate students User-Interface Design of Tilburg University in the Netherlands designed a mobile application for exchange students who are going to study in the Netherlands. There are some similar products in the market, but this app contains all the features that students want to have and need.

The application is divided into two main parts, "information before going to the Netherlands" and "information during their stay in the Netherlands". These two components form the basic elements of all the experiences, tips and tricks which are contributed by other exchange students. Topics such as housing, travelling, public transport and medical services are examples of this great application with interesting features. 

Students can add "spots" to show where they are, and connect with friends easily. Below you can see some screenshots of this application. 

Students can choose in a simple interface in which country they are going to study

The menu gives a nice overview of the subjects of the features and content. 

 forum-liked interface with photos and other images makes the application pleasant to use. 

The project group at Tilburg University , is now challenging the possibilities of taking the product into production. You will read it here if and also when the product is going out on the market. Keep in touch!

Which perspective is better, Lost or Liberated?

Not many years ago, communication was mainly conducted face to face or via telephone, but since the internet was introduced, most of the communication is transferred digitally. Online communication is one of the fastdeveloping industries at the moment. Examples of this new forms of communication are e-mail, chat (messenger), Social network Sites, Skype (a video calling program) and SMS.

Scientists are situated in a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of this digital development. These two perspectives are standing right in front of each other. What is the effect of this development? Does it have a positive or negative effect on relations and communication? The theory describes two different perspectives to look at this phenomenon, the lost perspective and the liberated perspective. The lost perspective declares that new media does not play a role in the development, in contrary to the liberated perspective which declares that new media has had an enormous impact on the media landscape nowadays.

Lost perspective

Social presence
The social presence theory is based on the fact that if there are fewer visual cues, this results in less social presence. Less social presence results in more task-orientated communication and less relation orientated communication. Face to face conversation has high social presence and computer mediated communication has low social presence.

Media richness
The second lost theory is the media richness theory. Media Richness is a framework to describe a communications medium by its ability to reproduce the information sent over it. It suggests that CMC has a narrower bandwidth and less information richness than FTF communication. They argue that different communication channels have different capabilities of processing information; "rich" media is more suitable than "lean" media for socially sensitive or intellectually difficult information, and for persuading, or getting to know someone.

Liberated perspective

Social Information Processing Theory
The Social Information Processing (SIP) Theory is an interpersonal communication theory that suggests that online interpersonal relationship development might require more time to develop than traditional face-to-face relationships. This will not result in lack of cues.

Hyper personal framework
The hyperpersonal framework suggests that computer mediated communication is more friendly, more social, more personal and more intimate than face-to-face communication. We are curious about the methods which are used in this type of research.

For more bakcground information on this intresting topic, please take a look at the following video. Enjoy!