Registration Model

[Ivraj]

We have to figure out how we're gonna do registration. @reineydays mentioned that it might be simpler if we follow this model...

1. A person signs up as a user using a google account
2. The user then makes an org (an element in our db)
3. Within an org, the user can make projects.
4. The user can add profiles to projects as well as assign other users.

^I'm going to refer to this as the "user-centered" model. We, alternatively, could follow this model...

1. A person signs up as an org using an email
2. The org creates projects
3. Other people sign up as users with Google accounts
4. The org can add users to projects, and users will do data collection.

^I'm going to refer to this as the "org-centered" model.

Could we brainstorm some pros and cons to each model? Once we know what we're gonna go with, we can start fleshing out the platform.

[Ivraj]

I'm pretty split on it as of right now. My intuition tells me to go with the org-centered model because that's more of what I've seen, but Reine brought up Slack, which uses more of the user-centered model with success.

Here are some of my initial thoughts....

Arguments for org-centered model:

• The org-centered view better aligns with the structure of real organizations. Usually it's a small group of people leading studies or projects, and usually people use an email that represents the org or their positions.
• We don't have to deal with the edge cases of multiple admins.
• More inline with what people are used to from software design.

Arguments for user-centered model:

• Power isn't as centralized with one account.
• People can use the same account and be a part of multiple orgs.
• We don't have to create separate pages/infrastructure for admins or orgs.

Your guys thoughts?

[menaka-narayanan]

I kind of like the org centered model better, only because it seems unlikely that a potential admin would ever be in charge of multiple companies, and I prefer to cut unnecessary levels of complexity. It makes sense with Slack because it's a tool for people who are part of different organizations, but if we think about who our users are, I feel like they are organizations, and not individuals.

For the head of an NGO, I feel like the only need for multiple interfaces would be for the subbranches within the organization, this seems to be addressed by the Projects structure. Let's say that someone is in charge of both FXB and Teach for India or whatever. In this unlikely edge case, could they just have two different logins?

@reineydays what do you think?

Another thing to think about is the fact that people might not always have Google accounts. I know that my supervisors had yahoo.fr email addresses. There's also a lot of other things to talk about in terms of accessibility. Like wifi being spotty, people not being familiar with logging everything on their phone, our app being too English-centered and having users who speak other languages...