CHARACTERISATION OF THE PUBLISHING APPLICATION

• from content production intentions to idea sketching
• from gathering of visual material to examining such
• from writing to dexterious styling with a wide range of additions
• from improving a work to considering linkage with other works
• from refining and enhancing what has already achived to identifying the usefulness of experimental features

KotvaWrite Stories is primarily an application for web-based publishing, but its experimental features include e.g. the ability to create a PDF version at the click of a button. It is the willingness of one versatile person to use his software engineering skills, which is reflected in the fact that some of the features and usability of this publishing application are somewhat stable, but all sorts of new features are constantly under development.

The example images depict what kind of works can be produced using this publishing application. The user interface, which is divided in to just under twenty different screen because of abundance of features and usability reasons including navigability, is presented in the work that explains in detail what the KotvaWrite Stories is about, which also serves as a kind of guide. Example works can be found in the developer's own instance of the publishing application, under the username kwstories.

It is not a content management software wherein one could do "anything" and there is not even a possibility of installing themes or plug-ins, but there's plenty of adjustments that allow range of variability in styling writings, "cover pages" of works etc. A customer or a test user does not have to install anything himself as it is done for him.

For the content-producing user, the important criteria have been fluent usage, easy styling of the final products and the absence of cognitive load during use, except reasons caused by other affecting factors than the user interface itself. The usability and functionality of this publishing application has been extensively tested and is used by its developer for the production and publishing of his own works. Changes to a work or works can be communicated in the works themselves or through other communication channels.

With regard to some visual and usability aspects, it has been identified that some users may have preferences that, even after a while, are not fully compatible with the usability of this publishing application, and it is hoped that there will be user feedback that can be taken into account.

Usability is best when used on a large monitor, with a physical keyboard, a mouse having a wheel and a browser that supports mouse gestures, but the interface will also adapt to different screen and browser window sizes. Thus, this publishing application can also be used meaningfully on e.g. a tablet device with a physical keyboard. In addition, one of the many special features is the possibility for multi-device support, e.g. keeping a user interface screen open on one device to browse images while doing content creation on another device. Plenty of other features are presented and explained in the work presenting the application, available via the link above (screenshots of the user interfaces are not always from the latest product version).

GENERALLY SUITABLE USE CASES

When the purpose is in producing content for others to read/experience:

• an expression of a deep interest in an academic or everyday subject
• live coverage of an ongoing situation
• demonstration of skills and abilities
• a place to find audiovisual, visual and audio works
• a periodically published work
• a long-term travelogue in blog format
• a finalised telling about a place or experience
• an occasionally improved explanation about one's health
• a compilation of previous works published in different places
• opinion pieces on topical issues
• structured reporting within a defined target subject
• a better explanation of what can be understood almost as such
• fresh view points and insights with assisting images, figures etc.
• a call to action using a wide range of arguments
• writings having a conversational tone without any specific objectives

Privately the publishing application can be used e.g. for preparation of writings to be published elsewhere (e.g. online or in a print publication), for storing online coursework assignment responses and associated images, for planning what to write to email contacts, for coordinating online discussions on forums etc. For the organisation and browsing of images, there are several user interface screen where their usefulness can be put to test etc. In addition, as a largely separate view from a "publishing process", there is one for gathering ideas, writing down thoughts and for other things that don't necessarily have to be dealt soon.

REFLECTIONS ON USE CASES WHERE THE NEED FOR CHANGE IS SOUGHT

People's participation in decision making would benefit if anyone could produce a public work that initializes discussion, where all the relevant material is easily glancable and intriguely presented and which can then be utilized on a discussion platform like, say, Facebook.

Individuals can also be catalysed into action on topics and issues that are not immediately comprehensible and for which journalism, TV series, etc. have not provided much visual material - perhaps some assumptions are so badly distorted that the damage should be repaired first, so that new food for thought can be offered.

Campaigns of some kind might have to start from the assumption that many people have a limited vocabulary on the subject, rather few personally related memories, low amount of associations with the rest of their lives, and longing for easily remembered anecdotal descriptions might be high.

People find it easier to participate, go along, follow instructions or further develop something that easily conjures up an image of what kind of role-holder they could be in relation to the issue and what the sufficiently likely consequences, effects or benefits etc. there might be. Environmental sustainability and climate change have been so much talked about, and in so many contexts, that it is easy for many people to imagine how other people see those, who attribute such interests to their personality, which contributes to decisions about what they want the next few years of their lives to consist of, how they want to be thought of etc. or maybe he just wants to do something that he feels is a virtue and does it in his apartment without advertising it to anyone, knowing that what appealed to him will appeal to many others and that something will come out of it.

Ideation processes related to fixing structural or methodological flaws in health care could be jump-started if people, while being aware of each other's similar interests, were willing to delve into making better decisions about their own health. Not everything could be resolved by focusing on health care alone, as environmental factors and information technology (e.g. information security) may have some influence on individual well-being in ways that were not taken into account by diagnostic classifications 20 years ago and still aren't.

What if a seed of change were to take root in the minds of many different socio-economically diverse people, gain a lot of thought space there, and remain in their minds for a long period of time, so that the users of those minds were more likely to encounter people who also have had, in their own way, and still have thoughts that have developed from same ingredients? This would bring us much closer to the possibility that those who would take on some kind of democratic leadership, together or separately with other wannabe-leaders, with or without knowing them, would be much quicker to initiate initiatives, process ideas and other plans leading to lasting change.

The KotvaWrite Stories publishing application is not a discussion platform, so any interactive exchange of opinions, and perhaps arguing, will happen elsewhere. Respectability as a content producer should effectively discourage many commenters from being criticised by those who might otherwise disparage or imply that they do not want to hear his or her opinions and views, as smart dissenters do not want remember themselves acting counter to their personality. Then there are those who are "not impressed by anything said" and those whose interests are so at odds with the content producer that schisms, confrontations, etc. may arise.

Content producer could ne the one who first contacts an expert and incorporates his or her views into the work. This could in turn be part of some kind of facilitation of discussion for those who could be concerned about an issue and who would otherwise feel too lay to engage in a discussion on an issue that lacks an "expert basis".

By using the publishing app in a versatile way, one can create an impression of him-/herself as a person and creator in a very different way than anywhere else. On social media platforms the possibilities are largely limited to having a news feed, followers, some pictures, possibly lists of interests, and not much else.

To the surprise of readers, they may find that, after simply visiting a page of a work, there is e.g. additional content about author's published books, research on the production of a book in progress, extracts from books already published, supplemented by reviews originally published elsewhere and links to webstores, more frequently updated content by the author e.g. in the form of blogs or online magazines, online-only issues, personal data, separate works on niche topics, reports from around the world on topics that authors tend to write about etc. and something else too, together with different kind of additional elements like video, audio, image gallery, interactive visualisations etc.

The basic features of the publishing application include the possibility to share the editing rights of selected projects with selected other users, so a kind of co-editing is also possible, which means giving almost the entire project CRUD rights to another user (Create, Read, Update, Delete). Other kind of multi-user support is under development.

OTHER NICETIES

For the customer/test user, there is already an extensive product presentation available, as there are bilingual works for this purpose, which also serve largely as a guide and memory refresher. It is complemented by e.g. separate example works, but it has been identified that a user producing content would also benefit from e.g. video tutorials. However, such have not yet been produced, nor are they even planned, but some people may have access to video tutorials before others.

The customer/test user will receive personalised advice and guidance, provided that he forms a well-worded and concise email message for the purpose.

There are no visual cues about the availability of many features in the user interface screens of the application, and although their existence and enablement is mentioned in the kind of guide, the first-time user will benefit from the printable cheatsheet available only to customers/test users, listing all the key combinations and special keys, drag'n'drop areas, etc., the use of which will make it easier to understand what contributes to making this publishing application so intuitive to use.

The works can include e.g. publicly available files that are accessible to users through a CDN service, where from they could be quickly downloaded (for local use or to be read/heard/experienced in the work itself). E.g. one might want to make a Photoshop file having a template, to be used for something, available to others, which they can modify for their own use, or there might be need to make several variations of a file type available. Files can also be saved privately to a project containing a work or works, which also means that they will be included when the project is backupped.

If it seems practical, a single click of a button can be used to generate a PDF file of the work on A4 size), where the separate sections of the work, such as the cover page, table of contents, writing collections and special pages, are conveniently separated for readability. In this way, all the images etc. in the text of the writings may not be placed optimally except by luck, so a better end result in terms of printability can be achieved by exporting the work for use in a desktop editing software, where separate scripts (for InDesign) can be used to assist with pre-layout. Features related to secondary use are, in many respects, some of the experimental features that can be enabled through user-specific settings.

COST TO THE CUSTOMER, BUSINESS MODEL AND PRODUCT SUPPORT

At a later stage, once a business is actually established, the business idea would be, in its most limited sense, "to develop, sell and maintain an online publishing application, installed on per a customer basis, that can be used for, among other things, content production, content management and reading of published works" (or experiencing, as content can be more than just images and text).

A good and plentiful minimum virtual server resources costs around 8 euros per month. Hourly billing is used. Many variations in resources and network topology. Hosted by Hetzner, with a data center in e.g. Finland.

Domain name is to be purchased from Hetzner as part of its web hosting package, which includes one free web address (assuming a rather common extension such as .net, .com or .org is selected) for a monthly fee of 2 euros at minimum. This package includes an initial fee of around 10 euros.

Connection should be secure, for which it is most convenient to Symantec Basic SSL Certificate, which is included in Hetzner's web hosting package for free.

CDN service is required, as it makes the application operate so much smoother and thus it is an important part of the user experience. A separate user account is registered with the Bunny CDN for this purpose. CDN service's pricing is based on upfront fees, where a few euros may be sufficient to last for a long time. When it is fully used, the publishing application will continue to operate, but with a higher risk of server(s) getting overloaded.

At this stage, one installation costs the customer exactly what the cost of a single server would be, i.e. around 8 euros per month + some optional upfront costs. Even in a test deployment, the CDN service is required, as it makes the application operate so much smoother and thus it is an important part of the user experience. CDN service's pricing is based on upfront fees, where 10 euros can be enough for several years if data traffic is rather low. A domain name (starting at around 10 euros per year) can be purchased when it is needed, and one may want an SSL certificate for secure connections (10 euros per year).

A customer/test user can create new user accounts for himself and for others in the managing interface of the publishing application without any limitation, i.e. if he wants to buy the publishing application for more than one person or later decided that he wants to use more than one user role. However, it is worth noting that when one user is doing something that places a heavy load on the (virtual) server, this will be reflected in a momentary slowdown in usability when using usual resources and network topology.

As the publishing application is currently installed on a per a customer basis, the developer/seller of the publishing application thus avoids a wide range of financial risks that would arise if various resources and capacities had to be kept, as a precautionary measure, constantly high in case of a surge of visitors etc. Later on, the situation and opportunities may be different, so that also the slight initial trickery that customer/test user might have to face can be minimised or handle otherwise.

All questions about usability of the application, erronous situations, suggestions for ideas etc. will get answered with certainty by contacting by email (in Finnish or English). Answers will be given as soon as possible, which doesn't always mean "later today", but they are to be carefully thought out.

In an usual installation, the publishing application is installed on a single virtual server with sufficient resources, but if the customer/test user feels that a little more computing power should be targeted to the features that require the most performance, such as uploading images (which also does scaling of images to different sizes) or creating backups of projects, such changes can be made. Pricing will then be adjusted to reflect what the data centre charges for the use of its servers (hourly billing).

OUTLINE FOR A SERVICE CONTRACT

As the intention is to become more business-orientated at some point, there should be a service contract, but at this stage, those becoming customers/test users are asked to act only in the spirit of the service contract, as it has not been reviewed by a lawyer.

Although the developer of the publishing application has instructed himself not to write it in too narrative format, it still stretches to 16 pages. Structurally, it is reader-friendly, but from a legal point of view, its validity remain to be assessed.

All these listed below etc. can be found in the service contract (available in English and Finnish) by looking at the headings:

• payment methods (bank transfer, PayPal, etc.)
• initial trickeries (first payment, settings up the CDN service, getting a domain name, getting a optional SLL certificate)
• the duration of the contract, as decided by the customer
• costs for the customer consisting of server fees, CDN service, domain name and optional connection security (SSL certificate)
• grounds for termination of the contract (various reasons)
• server fees must be paid in advance and be paid on time
• resources and network topology that the publishing application utilizes can be changed
• on deployment, custoemr gets one managing user account (which can be used to create new user accounts, among other things) and one pre-created normal user account
• the installed publishing application is kept as up and running as well as possible, but the means for active maintenance are limited
• the publishing application is constantly evolving in terms of features
• the client and other users own their content etc.
• export/import for projects is always available and it is therefore useful to build up a habit of backing up projects
• the data centre has its own rules of use

A FEW TECHNICAL POINTS

(all new customers/test users can skip these, but some may be interested)

• one or more virtual or dedicated servers with some kind of network topology are always installed separately for a customer
• under no circumstances is the source code of the application intended to be modified or even viewed by the end user, unlike in open source applications
• the publishing application is installed on a Tomcat server running on a Linux-based operating system, for which the client does not receive a user account
• a customer also does not have access to the client-specific management interface of the data centre
• updates to the application may be made from time to time, including e.g changes to the database structure
• the installation and modification of the installation is semi-automated by Ansible, an "open-source software provisioning, configuration management and application-deployment tool"
• the application relies especially on Java technologies
• supporting measures may include the installation of APM software (Application Performance Monitoring) such as DataDog or New Relic
• additional services such as load balancing changes, implementing database server replication, configuration adjustments, implementing automatic backups etc. can be negotiated separately
• updates to the publishing application, server software, operating system are done without costs to a customer, but not necessarily regularly (more like "when the developer feels like to do so")

MANAGEMENT OF DEVELOPMENT IDEAS

The task management software JIRA provides a Kanban board, which has been used extensively in the development of KotvaWrite Stories.