Innovation
The CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
Big ideas, they might just happen.
It's all about Innovation. Rock your ideas with a Ginsu knife and let the neurons roll.
Contents |
Types of ideas
A great idea never comes alone. There are many ways to make couchsurfing even more interesting, easier and safer. The big new ideas end up in here, small improvements can be handled through Issue Tracking.
- Classification
Profiles can currently be searched by location, couch availability, etc. You can join one or several groups. What about other ways to classify people?
- Profile matching
Maybe you are looking couchsurfers that play the violin/snowboard/...? Maybe you are looking for your Japanese soulmate? Maybe you would like to find people that are on the same path in life? How can we match profiles in new ways?
- Safety
You can already get verified and/or vouched for. You can leave references. But every system has it's flaws, so how can we make things even better?
- Self-improvement
Surely, you know who you are, at least, you think so. But couchsurfing is as much about getting to know yourself as it is about meeting people from all over the world. How can we help you find yourself? How can you improve your life through couchsurfing?
- Visualisation
There are many ways to look at information. You've seen the maps, the pictures, so what else can we visualize?
Proposals
Here's what we've come up with so far. This is a Wiki, so you can add what you like, but please keep a few things in mind:
- Make the proposal practical. This means we can actually do it or program it without a ton of further discussion/details.
- Make it easy to understand for everyone. Be as specific as possible.
- Try to avoid extremely controversial ideas. As a simple test, talk about it with a few CSers before you add it and check if they understood it and if they think it would be a useful feature.
In-depth reference
(self-improvement + profile matching)
This is an idea that came out of the requirements for the Emotional Tracking System. In short, it's a double-blind exploration of interpersonal perception. If that doesn't make sense, here's how it would work:
- When you enter a reference, there will be a new self-exploration option. This option is a series of questions about both yourself and your host or guest. So there are two parts to it, but they cover the same kind of topics. You are not required at all to do this self-exploration thing.
- These topics/questions would center around how you perceive the other person and how you think he or she perceived you. It could be easy questions like: "Is he/she an introvert or an extravert? - Are you an introvert or extravert?". Some questions will be more intimate than others, anything psychology/philosphy/emotional could be possible. It is an in-depth evaluation of the other CSer and of oneself.
- It's a "double-blind" system, so both the host and the guest get the exact same questions, but neither of them gets to see what the other person answered. Let's repeat this: you would never get to see what somebody else wrote about you.
- After three or more entries, the system could start giving actual feedback. By averaging the different results, we ensure anonymity. First of all it could give you indication of "problems of perception", for instance: "People perceive you as funnier than you think you are." This is obviously the first step towards self-exploration.
- Secondly, it would allow for blind profile matching, based on the same data. Even though the system would not tell you why, it can point out people that think/feel the same as you.
Teach Learn Share
(self-improvement)
What about creating a Teach Learn Share feature that would work like the meetings?
When a CSer wants to teach something he would give the following information
- Date
- Location
- Prerequisite skills
- Detailed description of the class
- Possible homework
- Link with other classes taught by other CSers
- Max number of students
We could have teams of teachers doing the same type of classes all over the world.
CSers would sign up for the classes (as people sign up for meetings
CouchSearch: friends' friends feature
(profile matching)
When in a city, a CSer might want to meet his friends' friends. What about a search feature entitled 'My friends connections' that would list all of our second, third or fourth degree friends?
Profile tagging
(profile matching + visualization)
By looking at the keywords on a user profiles, we could make so called Tag clouds, also know as folksonomies. It would be possible to see the most used/least used words, and see (for instance) all the profiles that have the word "snowboard" in there. See this example (Technorati).
This can also be used for profile matching, by listing profiles that have more or less the same tags as yours. See this example (LibraryThing).
Innactive Profiles Reminders
(Classification)
As Lewis suggested in the Quality vs. Quantity group, we could send a friendly reminder to innactive accounts, reminding them their login, and giving them the latest CS news. There could also be a link to delete their accounts if they don't want to join anymore.
CouchSearch and Innactive Profiles
(Classification)
We could add a 'last login' feature for CouchSearch to filter innactive accounts.
Birthdays
- Members' age could be updated automatically
- A reminder of member's birthdays could be sent to their friends.
- People could display their birthday to their friends (above a user selectable level)
