The Observer, October 6, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 6
CaseLife improves communication
Robert Klayman, of Scheduler Jones fame, has come up with another way to help our campus keep schedules in order.
As part of his computer engineering senior thesis, he created CaseLife, a website with the main purpose of serving as a campus-wide communication hub.
Klayman incorporated seven main features into the system: event calendar; a spot for campus announcements; a public forum which features classifieds, Case blogs, and Case photos; a news feed with weather, stocks, national news, and anything the user marks as an area of interest; a campus guide for restaurants, attractions, and shopping; a GroupLife section where all the announcements, photos, blogs, and information about a particular group can be centralized; and useful links that are popular at Case as well as those customized by the user.
CaseLife was designed to post events automatically from all the separate campus calendars, like UPB and ESS.
Klayman inputs some of the information himself, mainly things off campus.
"I have Barking Spider's entire calendar," Klayman said.
But anyone can submit events or information. A user can choose to sign in and customize the site. They can choose which group's events will be most prominent, what kinds of news stories they want to see, and the style of website they prefer.
"Perhaps one of the best design features is the ability to customize exactly what "module" each user wants to see when they log into CaseLife, and even logging in is not a problem, through Case's single sign-on service," said Eric Chen.
"What draws me closer to CaseLife is the implementation of GroupLife. The benefit of having all of these groups in GroupLife is that there is one aggregate calendar shown on the main page of CaseLife, that shows (with color codes as set by whoever made the event) all the student organization events that are going on in the next few days, weeks, or even months."
While designing it, Klayman wanted it to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
"I took great pains to make sure it loaded quickly," Klayman said.
He ran focus groups and beta tests with groups of people to make sure it was user-friendly.
"I do use CaseLife as my homepage," said Kyle Niemeyer. "I like that is has the newest posts on the forums. The campus events listing is also a nice feature; it lets me see what's going on around campus."
The site has been publicized using fliers around campus with a memorable picture of a banana.
So far, Klayman is receiving around 150 to 200 unique hits per day, but he hopes for more. He thinks that it will help enrich campus life.
"I already have a job. I'm not trying to sell this. I want to make Case a better place to go to school. People need to know what's going on."
After college, Klayman will be working for Microsoft. His career launch was helped by his work on Scheduler Jones and CaseLife.
"If you're posting fliers, you should put it on CaseLife," Klayman said. "It's a richer experience than fliers."
CaseLife can be accessed at life.case.edu.
