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| Tweak the Tweet was a (2nd place) winning hack from RHOK#0. The idea is that users of the Twitter platform can add special hashtags to their tweets that enable them to be automatically processed/filtered/categorized/mapped by simple computer programs.
The "problem" today is user testing for the Tweak the Tweet format/syntax. We want to simplify it, make it easier to adopt and use during a disaster. |
Originally Presented by: Kate Starbird and Jeannie Stamberger
RHOK#2 Problem Proposed by: Kate Starbird, University of Colorado
Contact: Kate Starbird, starbird(at)colorado(dot)edu, katestarbird30
Best way and times to contact during RHoK 2.0 Dec 4/5 2010: email, skype 11am-5pm EST (GMT+5)
Tweak the Tweet is an idea for utilizing the Twitter platform as a two-way communication channel for information during emergencies, crises, and disasters. Researchers in the area of crisis informatics have recognized that social media sites are places that people turn to during major events to both inform others and to get information from others. Tweak the Tweet seeks to formalize some of these communications to make the information shared more easily processed and redistributed back to the public.
The idea takes advantage of the public nature of Twitter as well as the availability of tools to filter and collect tweets. It also seeks to allow users to inform the public of disaster-related information within (or in a very similar way to) their normal Twitter communication patterns. And in near real-time.
A Tweak the Tweet campaign asks users to format their tweets with specific hashtags that allow computers to do a first round of processing on the information. This processing includes extracting location information, creating incident reports from tweets, and sorting these reports into different types of categories. The processed tweets can then be displayed on public web-pages in a variety of formats that allows users to view aggregate information. Examples include spreadsheets that can be sorted over report type and interactive maps that allow users to see where different types of information has been reported.
For this round of user testing, we would like to enlist volunteers to attempt to report information from a simulated event using the syntax - either a winter weather event, or an urban earthquake event. We will provide links to the current instructions, as well as links to spreadsheets and maps that will be aggregating the information tweeted in the format. We will also provide a list of info that each volunteer should try to report.
Our goal is to learn more about the usability issues of the syntax itself, the instructions, and the sense-making tools (spreadsheets and maps).
For FULL INSTRUCTIONS, please see (and print for yourself and/or members of your group) this document: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/TtT_RHOK_instructions.docx
If you're interesting in building better tools for capturing, processing, distributing, and/or mapping the info from these tweets, please contact me (Kate) - I'd love to talk about what the needs on that side of project are as well.
We are currently working on rewriting the code base into Ruby, and making it more decoupled and easier to test/develop with, in Toronto (others are welcome to join). Code at github: https://github.com/houshuang/Tweak-the-Tweet
We are hoping to get 3-15 volunteers. No technical skills are required. It would be ideal to have some volunteers with programming skills to evaluate some of the tools and methods for processing, as well as others along a spectrum of tech-challenged to tech-savvy. You will need to have or create a Twitter account to participate. You may want to create a special account just for this event, so you don't confuse your followers. You will need either a computer or a Twitter-connected mobile phone (either through a mobile client or Twitter's SMS service).
One thing that would be very helpful, is for those with mobile phones to do some mobile reporting - i.e. sending GPS-located tweets from different locations (could all be within 2 city blocks - or just from a coffee shop down the street).
If we have several volunteers or specific interest at a single site, it would be great to have a volunteer site coordinator to help organize volunteers and communicate back and forth with the project "owner" who will be remote.
We (at the University of Colorado) have been working with the Crisis Commons community as well as other volunteer communities for almost a year now, deploying TtT during different events. We have had collection software that feeds spreadsheets and maps up for the Oil Spill, Boulder Fire, San Francisco Giants celebration/riots, and several severe weather events. To view some of the resources from those events see:
Oil Spill Map: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/oilreport_map_by_event.html
Boulder Fire Map: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/boulderfire_map.html
Boulder Fire Spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkuhimfFYZrOdEE5U0VOWFpxdGRvSHpyb09jczVzSEE&hl=en_GB#gid=0
Seattle/Portland/Utah snowstorm Map: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/aux_map_2.html
Map for the RHOK User Test Event: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/aux_map.html
If you want to read more about the evolution of Tweak the Tweet, see: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/blog/
Toronto: Stian Haklev, Linda Ogbeide, Christine Crowley (crowley.christine@gmail.com), Katy Came, Jon Pipitone, with presentation and other help from Sandi Jones. Email shaklev@gmail.com if there are other groups who want to work on this, and we'll Skype/IRC/etc.
Feedback from the Toronto site of RHoK #2 RHoK_2.0_-_Toronto/Project/Tweak_the_Tweet_-_user_testing
If you want to help us clarify our instructions, rewrite the instructions/examples here.