--Aki Kobashi

Describe the setting and expectations for your project, taking a long range view. How will the world it lives in look by the time you graduate, or maybe 10 years hence? What sources will be available to serve and complement your project? What will your readers or customers expect? It should be suitable as a background page for your project.  If you have set up your website already, just send us a pointer to it.

Every summer, incoming freshmen chatter with their parents and peers about how to fill out the "Approaching Stanford" housing form.  They have many questions, such as "what is ethnic housing?" and "what exactly is FroSoCo?"  Of course, the answer is out there on the internet, hidden several clicks underneath the Undergraduate Academic Life homepage, but by no means easy to find.  In fact, the easiest solution at the moment is to just ask a friend who goes to Stanford, but not everybody has the luxury of doing so.

A similar situation exist for continuing students.  Every year as Spring Quarter rolls around, Stanford students start thinking about where to live next year.  In particular, freshman going into their sophomore year are especially concerned about their first experience with Stanford's Draw, an elaborate raffle of sorts designed to fairly assign students to the various dormitories on campus.  It sounds simple enough, but there are so many important details that it often leaves freshmen lost.  A quick look at the Stanford Housing website shows just how complicated this process is--there are so many different numbers, dates, and factors that affect the final assignment.  With so many choices and no single comprehensive source of information, freshman often end up consulting upper classmen for advice.

But this will be different in the future.  With the advent of Web 2.0 and students' reliance on the internet as the primary source of information, it is no surprise that the first place most Stanford students will turn to when looking into dormitories for the following year is the internet.  Within the next few years, there is no doubt that students will be rating their dormitories online, giving feedback on living conditions like noise level and bathroom cleanliness.  Just as students rate classes on sites like CourseRank, students will be rating and trading information on the various aspects of their dorms.  For most students, information in this form on the internet is much easier to access than hunting down rumors around campus.  This is especially true when students want to search for a dorm that fits their needs--for example, "fairly quiet, social, not many parties".  Furthermore, interested students will be able to schedule dorm tours online, allowing them to experience an "open house" to examine the various dormitories on campus.

The Stanford Housing Tutorial will not go quite that far, but will be the central website for everything related to Stanford's undergraduate housing.  Although the Stanford Housing website offers very detailed information regarding housing choices and procedures, it is not very user friendly.  The typical incoming freshman could go read the entire site and still think "so, what now?".  This site will have detailed explanations, as well as easy to follow tutorials on how to go about some of the most basic tasks, such as signing up for on-campus housing.

Even beyond Stanford, many real estate agencies will start relying heavily on online advertisements to draw people's attention towards various homes for sale.  More sites like Zillow.com will pop up, allowing users to conduct computerized searches on the various offerings by price, location, etc.  Eventually, these sites will start offering 3D virtual tours of homes so that potential buyers can really see the entire house, inside and out, without even leaving their computer!  The potential customer base is enormous too--according to statistics from Quantcast, Zillow.com has well over two million unique visitors every month and has jumped significantly since the American credit crisis in 2008.

Last edited April 10, 2009