Doctoral student plans to launch Web site that could help restaurant, bar owners

If Christian Briggs has his way, “Why do I keep coming back here?” will never be uttered by frustrated restaurant and bar patrons again. \nBriggs plans to launch a Web site, http://www.bigtreetop.com/, in May. The site will breakdown the “barrier” between businesses and customers by essentially making the customers advisers to the business owners. Residents in a smaller community, such as Bloomington, can give advice to local businesses through a virtual suggestion box.\nThe site will cater to small businesses, but can be used by big companies as well. Also, non-competing businesses in the same city would be able to share notes and ideas to maximize their market potential. Briggs has already talked with some Bloomington business owners about the site.\n“The goal of the site is to make local, online communities and have businesses help each other out,” Briggs said. “We want to reinvigorate local economies.”\nBriggs, 35, is a doctoral student and associate instructor in the School of Informatics. Informatics, simply put, is the application of technology to problems, Briggs said. He focuses his studies on human-computer interactions, which ranges from ringing up a customer at the supermarket to social networking Web sites.\nOriginally from Boston, Briggs got his undergraduate degree in journalism at a small college in Providence, R.I. He has been an interactive designer and business consultant in the past, and he has also designed children’s video games.\n“So the next logical step of my career is to go back to school and study HCI!” Briggs joked.\nIn 10 years, Briggs hopes to be a college professor.\n“I love teaching and working with students,” Briggs said. “I don’t consider it to be a noble cause; it is just downright fun.”\nGood ideas are conceived when people with different perspectives and agendas sit down and talk, like a think-tank. That’s the mindset Briggs is applying to www.bigtreetop.com, and it’s how he is raising money for the University right now. \nBefore graduating he hopes to aid in “bridging the gap” between the University’s academic and business sides by introducing people from the private sector to researchers at IU.\n“The University has the smarts and the businesses have the money,” Briggs said. “Why not introduce them to each other?”