Our team was heads down this week working towards the next prototype we want to get in front of new people.
The prototype builds on the account recommendation app from 2 weeks ago. That app was kinda cool, but didn’t do anything particularly useful. Sure, it shows interesting recommendations, but it doesn’t actually let you use them.
I spent my time this week working towards making those recommendations actionable and interactive. To do this, I started building out a new interface, coarsely shown here:
On the left are the same recommendations from the first version. On the right, is a feed of tweets that is updated based on the accounts that are selected from the list on the left. The idea behind this interface is to give you immediate feedback on how a feed will differ based on which accounts you choose.
For those interested, I shared a midweek update of the recommender in action on loom. It’s clearly not ready to be released, but the main technical functionality is implemented.
Meanwhile, Julian and Ricardo worked on hi-fidelity UI/UX mockups and dove deeper into the views and filters that will be most important in this prototype.
Some simple ideas for filters that could include for the generated feed are:
I will be able to share more about their thinking in following weeks as they further flesh their ideas!
While explaining the account recommendation app to Rhys this week, he asked an important question: “What does this have to do with streams?”
I thought the answer was obvious, but in retrospect, it is clearly not. So, what does account recommending have to with streams anyway?
To start, last week I wrote about zooming in and zooming out of different topics and communities on twitter. Zooming in is when you start with a vast array of options - in a sense, this is what everyone on twitter is doing - then filtering down the information you want to pay attention to.
On the other hand, zooming out is when you find a new account or topic you like and build more context around that account (who they talk to, what they are talk about, etc.). This is usually done by following more people related to that topic or initial account.
Twitter doesn’t make the zoom in or zoom out experience explicit. Tweetscape will.
The account recommendation app is the first step towards building a more deliberate zoom out experience.