HereHere – a project that focuses on driving hyperlocal, real-world engagement to encourage civic discourse – makes its debut Monday in the Big Apple.
The project comes from Microsoft Research’s Future Social Experiences Labs (FUSE Labs). Kati London is a senior researcher and the lead for HereHere, which began in July 2013.
“HereHere NYC introduces daily neighborhood engagement with a light touch,” London says. “It takes neighborhood-specific public data, and it enables the neighborhoods to communicate how they’re doing — expressed through text and cartoonlike icons. People can receive the information via a daily email digest, neighborhood-specific Twitter feeds, or status updates on an online map. We want to understand how it changes or impacts the way people relate to their community when they can interact with data in this way.”
The project uses New York City’s 311 non-emergency data stream, which contains New York residents’ emails, phone calls and text messages sent to communicate issues to city authorities. Each day, HereHere pulls 311 data for each neighborhood and identifies the most compelling, important 311 request types, and the system generates cartoons and text that represent a neighborhood’s reactions.
Head over to Microsoft Research to find out much more information about HereHere.
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Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft News Center Staff