Designed Team: Lynn Dombrowski, Matthew Obrakta, and Benjamin Serrette

Project Summary: The objective of this project was to create an unobtrusive, context sensitive RSS manager that allowed the user to read his or her blogs and other RSS subscriptions without having to switch between the manager and the browser.

We solved this problem by creating a subscription manager, rather than a true reader, which would allow the user to be notified and visit new posts directly in the browser, without the need to switch to a separate reader. The user could sign-in and out of the manager from any computer, allowing the user greater freedom.

To maximize screen real estate, the manager took the form of a small, unobtrusive tool bar at the bottom of the browser window.  From this tool bar, the user could see a brief overview of new posts,  expand “drop-ups” to get access to more detailed information about the subscriptions and to manage RSS subscriptions.