Group Blog Evaluation

LDNY - A good plan, but unrealistic?

I felt that the idea behind LDNY was good. It was interesting, it had a specific target market who we could identify and write to, and it was focused so we knew how to go about it.

However, in reality, it may not have been attainable in the long run. Based on geography alone, it became difficult to recommend and review places that we could not physically experience. In addition, in the long term, I feel we may have began to struggle to find events/activities/places to recommend/review. Especially if we limit ourselves to just recommendations. If we were reviewing, we could look at the good, as well as the mediocre and the truly awful. We would have had more scope.

Furthermore, with most of the topics, because we could not experience the subject that we were talking about, we had to read reviews. This inevitably meant that to an extent we were repeating what others said and potentially just reviewing reviews.

In terms of the target audience, although it was clearly defined so we knew who we were writing to, no one in our group is a part of that target (the target being 25-40 business travellers who frequented New York and London).

When it came to the actual reviews/recommendations, I had difficulty reviewing art exhibitions effectively when I couldn't see them. I could see a few of the images, but when it comes to viewing art, it depends on so much more (scale, context, surroundings, atmosphere, etc.). I felt my best review was 'Family Pictures' - The Guggenheim, purely because it was a focused photographic exhibition (which is where my 'art' knowledge is more focused and in depth), and I had seen a few of the photographs before. Even the photographs I couldn't view, I knew the photographers in depth and could still comment on their style and give what I felt would have been a much more accurate review.

In addition, I felt that 200 words are too few to accurately review art. By the time I had explained the concept behind the work and given details as to its location, I had very few words left to be able to describe the work and give my personal interpretation.

I think the lack of personal interpretation led to the site feeling more like an advert than a review/recommendation resource.

The layout of the site led to its purpose being unclear. We never actually mentioned on the site who it was for, or directly commented on what would be discussed. The labels helped, but it was still unclear. The template may have been a poor choice. We couldn't change part of the colour scheme and the title size was stuck, potentially too small. With the layout of the posts, it became more helpful once labels were clicked on and the posts filtered. As a group of posts, the topics were jumbled and confusing. The labels helped, but may have been too inconspicuous.

With images, I felt some could have been bigger. We were trying to maintain a style and layout, but I think for some topics a large image would have been more appropriate, specifically art and potentially food/restaurants as well.

This seems incredibly negative, but we had some strengths as well.

I felt we all wrote well and to a consistent style. Our comments when we incorporated personal opinion were interesting and helpful. I think the idea was ambitious, and although we 'grumbled' about it at times, most of us managed to post once a day and were able to discuss things as a group and work well together.