OurTraction

Ewoks was the codename of our Twitter display at last Saturday’s Podcamp London. The purpose of the application was to provide a fun interface to view tweets that pertained to the event throughout the day. The application provided event attendees with useful information and a new way to interact with others.

Features

• 3D isometric floor plan
• Current and Next session displayed for each room
• Use the Podcamp hashtag #pclo10 to have an avatar displayed in the lobby.
• Ability to “check in” to one of the session rooms by using the room name in a tweet.
• Unique avatar for each visitor.

Response

Attendees found this display to be very useful – they would see tweets of someone they know enjoying a session in one of the rooms, and they would make the decision to visit that session. Some users managed to find an “easter egg” built in – when a user uses the hash tag “#bye” their avatar would be beamed off the map with an animated laser.

Throughout the day people congregated in front of the display to check out what others were saying and what was coming up next, or to find directions.

Built on Code Igniter, the application made use of jQuery, CSS3 transformations (to achieve a 3-dimensional effect) and the Twitter Search API. Stay tuned for a more technical post on how some of the effects were achieved.

Lessons Learned

You can do amazing things with Javascript and CSS – Flash is no longer the only option for “cool”. Since this application was meant to run on a large display there was no need to worry about browser consistency which allowed for unbridled CSS3 greatness!

Seeing others interact with your work is very rewarding. Seeing large groups of people, mobile devices in hand, staring at the screen waiting for their tweet to show up or their character to blow up makes it all worthwhile.

If you have any questions or comments about Ewoks (the application, not the small furry creature indigenous to the forest moon of Endor), or if you have built your own supercool Twitter display, we’d love to hear from you!

gavinblair

As someone who loves to help others, Gavin is not easily ruffled. Poorly designed software is one of his few pet peeves, and we can count on Gavin to find solutions and make improvements in all kinds of applications. In his own words, he likes to "fight the good fight for quality code." He loves food and finding adventure in the kitchen, cooking with his wife. On one occasion, the combination of a white-hot skillet and no ventilation led to so much smoke they had to stop, drop and roll - but did end up eating "the best blackened catfish po'boy you can imagine."

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 9:03 am and is filed under OurTraction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.