Twitterspace: a co-developed display using Twitter to enhance community awareness

We describe the use of an ambient display called Twitterspace for promoting awareness of events and member activities within our community centers. Content for the display pulls from the social networking platform Twitter. Tweets, which are the recent posts from community members, move across large screens placed in public rooms. Through the concept of community-at-a-glance, we use these tweets to encourage enhanced community awareness and engagement. Although we are only in the beginning stages of our implementation, we have already seen changes in the way people behave with respect to their participation on Twitter. We have seen a surge of posting activity and a rise in the general awareness about the members of the community including remembering birthdays, having mini-conversations, and tracking which members are going to what events. With this participatory design project, we hope to further support general community awareness and allow members within our community to take ownership of the display both virtually and at their physical locations.