CS160 :: Human Computer Interaction

Public Design Showcase :: Final Project

When: 12/6/17, 4-6pm
Where: Jacobs 310

schedule

3:30-4:00 Student setup in Jacobs 310
4:00-4:30 Class intro, 1-min team pitches
4:30-6:00 Open House - Posters and Demos

theme

The theme of this semester’s projects is Bursting Echo Chambers in Social Media. We developed web-based applications to enable people to encounter more diverse information through social media. Another aspect of our theme is to encourage more constructive conversation and interaction among differing perspectives through social media.

projects

Insight Insight is a web application that enables users to discuss controversial political issues, with the humanizing influence of face-to-face interaction. Users can read one of six featured news articles and video chat instantaneously with another user of opposing political leaning. [ta: christine]

News with Friends Share an article, react, and discuss! Get the opportunity to read news with your friends, where you and each one of your friends will all get the same article of a different political perspective. Highlight and react to sentences that you agree with, are upset by, disappointed in, or disagree with to let your friends know how you feel. View their reactions and engage in a discussion! [ta: christine]

FreeSwitch FreeSwitch is a website that comprises of controversial topics, where people can share and learn from the constructive comments of other sides. For each topic, a most upvoted comment of either left or right wing will be displayed at the top bar, and is forced to switch sides every hour. The user would first identify their stance on the issue to be liberal or conservative, and can only upvote those comments from opposite side and downvote their own side’s claims, so that the comments that receives the most upvotes are the most fruitful and thought-provoking ones from both sides. [ta: christine]

BirdsEye It can be hard to breach one’s personal sphere to learn about other perspectives, and feel motivated to do so. Our app, BirdsEye, aims to make it easy to find and participate in a variety of local events (talks, panels, discussions, etc.) that will not only deepen your understanding of important topics, but also allow you earn local discounts and prizes by earning points for each event you attend. Get more points for going to events you wouldn’t normally go to! [ta: christine]

Paperboy A Facebook chat bot that provides users with a convenient way to regularly access diverse opinions on the news. It will send the user a daily digest of news at a preset time, with articles arranged by political bias and broken into categories for them to further explore. [ta: christine]

NewsSwing NewsSwing is a news digest based on your personal preferences, and at the beginning, your political bias based off your Facebook likes. Catered news gradually changes bias over time. Gently expose readers to more and more divergent political views without them noticing - which prevents immediate dismissal of new content and makes readers more tolerant. [ta: christine]

Calmo A social media platform which allows users with different culture and background to learn about and discuss different news topics. Users are able to join chat rooms allocated specifically for the given topic. Each chat room is a safe and moderated environment where conflicts are controlled and users are made aware of their speech based on its level of offensiveness, meanings, and context, through sentiment analysis. [ta: daniel]

Discus Discus is a web app that connects people within a community through political discussions. Local political groups post question prompts that users discuss with other users. Users with diverse views are more likely to be grouped together, encouraging the sharing of different ideas. [ta: daniel]

Project Integrity With the rise of social media, circular reporting and echo chambers have become increasingly pervasive issues in news reporting. Project Integrity seeks to address this issue by aggregating news articles from a curated set of reputable sources. We hope that Project Integrity will enable readers to browse the news without fear of inaccurate or misleading information, and expose them to a more diverse perspective of the world while maintaining the integrity of the content they consume. [ta: daniel]

Stance Stance provides a balanced environment for individuals to share their views on important topics and stories. Users can join a focused forum and clearly describe their thoughts on the issue within a running time limit. Responses from fellow users are hidden until a submission is made to encourage independent reflection, and subsequently to allow for free exploration of other viewpoints. [ta: daniel]

Groups for Change Groups for Change is a web-based application that allows users to sign up for events in their area, answer questions regarding their social/political orientation in the process, and be paired with 6-7 other diverse users that have different viewpoints. Through use of our Pre/Live/Post view which dynamically changes in relation to the event schedule, users can learn about, chat with, and engage in a forum-esque discussion with the users in their group. The result is an inclusive measure that allows people with potentially opposing views to discuss their ideas without fear of reprisal. [ta: daniel]

Eventual Eventual is a web application that acts as a central source for all upcoming events in one’s area and a platform on which event attendees can actively participate in the discussion. Eventual, first and foremost, allows users to view upcoming events in their area, and the recurring event dates every Monday allow for an easy way to know when events are happening. Secondly, by providing a live feed of questions and arguments from the audience, Eventual empowers the speaker to be aware of and choose thoughts to engage with from the audience in addition to empowering the audience members to field questions and opinions while remaining anonymous, which allows everyone, regardless of how comfortable they are with public speaking, to contribute actively to the discussion. [ta: daniel]

Go Meet People Gomeetpeople is a place for engaging, social interactions that promotes the discussion of important events both with people in a common network and strangers who are not in a common network who have different political opinions in a gamified manner. Users are incentivized to use the app more consistently by progressing through the app by leveling up, and can receive badges for their continuous use. The goal of physical interactions is to reduce the prevalence of echo chambers caused by online disagreements, allowing users to meet in person (putting a face to the Username) encourages users to discuss topics in a civilized manner. [ta: emily]

Don’t Be Meme Don’t Be Meme provides a platform where people can view content and be exposed to opinions that is outside of their echo chambers, but at the same time retain a fun, instant-gratification aspect. This is inspired by BuzzFeed style polling quizzes and how people spend time on it while procrastinating. The idea is to get people to procrastinate on Don’t Be Meme and at the same time engage in controversial material [ta: emily]

Chat with Me Our chat website “Chat with Me”, allows two similar individuals to discuss differing opinions on a topic in a chat room in front of an audience. Users have the option of creating a new chat with the topic of their choice and specifying their stance, or they can join a chat either as a chatter or as audience member. This allows them to explore more diverse opinions in a comfortable space. [ta: emily]

Debatable Debatable allows users to learn and share new perspectives about controversial topics. We pride ourselves in creating a safe space by having a qualified mediator present in every conference to ensure lively, yet safe debates. [ta: emily]

Socratic Socratic is an online socratic seminar space where there are articles from different political backgrounds related to one event. Guided questions facilitate discussion and push readers to think critically with others. [ta: emily]

QuizMe QuizMe is a platform designed around helping readers grasp a better understanding of the content they are reading, while at the same time exposing them to facts from news sources outside of their traditional political sphere. [ta: paige]

Chatrow It’s an app that lets you invite and chat with your friends, conduct a poll, and then chat with the friends who disagree with you on certain topics [ta: paige]

ThoughtPop Our web application is made up of data represented visually as bubbles or within bubbles. The user is greeted with essentially a large map and sees a gray (boring) bubble that contains data from within their friend groups, but first they see topics on the outer bubble that contain data from strangers globally, bursting their bubble on first glance. The sizes of the “Likes” and “Dislikes” bubbles show the ratio and magnitude of these reactions to the article that can be clicked through the article image bubble. [ta: paige]

Down to Discuss Mobile application geared towards people who care about different perspectives. Meetup in person! Discuss fun and/or controversial topics, meet people with different perspectives. Gives users the ability to create and find meetups, has points system to encourage reusability. [ta: paige]

Bias Free Me A web application that motivates users to talk with others who hold different political opinions by keep track of their “Bias Score”. Users can view others who differ from them on trending political topics and engage in conversations. They can also browse news articles from diverse sources on the platform to balance their “Bias Score” [ta: paige]

Converse Converse is an app designed to match people of opposing political viewpoints with the goal of engaging in a conversation. Converse aims to foster understanding and dialogue and encourages users to explore a world outside of their political bubble. [ta: paige]