Developing a Microblogging Site from Twitter Feeds Case Study

General Overview

The popularity of “Microblogging” is on the rise for quite some time among online users. Users on a microblogging site may share their personal updates, thoughts, opinions, and even world news. The power and impact of microblogging cannot be overlooked in today’s world. A number of organisations are already using microblogging as a cost-effective way of communicating with customers, building online communities, product release information, updates, etc. Twitter is one such microblogging form that has a massive following (approximately a billion registered users). It allows registered users to post short messages (up to 140 characters) called tweets and reply to or even retweet other users’ tweets. One of Twitter’s key strengths is the number of third party applications that enable users to interact with the twitter service from a wide range platforms or services.

For this coursework, you will be required to design and develop a website based on the users’ twitter account feeds, and show what time of the day the user is most active. All the users registered to your website must possess a valid twitter handle from which his/her feeds will be retrieved – both his/her own tweets and the tweets of other users that he/she might be following. Based on the time of the user’s own tweet or his/her followed one’s tweet, you need to categorise them whether they are morning/noon/afternoon/evening/night persons (based on the time of their tweets). You are free to define your own categories (morning, noon, etc.), and what time of the day adheres to which category. Secondly, a particular user’s daily demographic activity should also be shown (based on the time of his/her tweets) from which one can have an idea when the user is most active in social networks. The motivation behind such design and implementation is to collage all the relevant information about a user’s activity demography in a meaningful and user friendly way.

Task 1: Analysis and Design

The web application is expected to be developed in user-centred design approach. The design process needs to be documented through appropriate design artefacts (e.g. Information Architecture, Personas, Task Analysis, Storyboarding, Prototypes, Evaluation) that show how the design has been conceived and which steps were taken to implement a user-centred design process. The student is expected to consider contemporary issues (e.g., responsive design, accessibility) in designing the web applications. He/she should also provide a clear rationale for his/her design decisions based on user research and best practices of user centred design. Furthermore, clear evidence and documentation should be shown that a user centred design process has been followed, and an analysis of the information design for the user interface has been carried out. Read about E-commerce Website Designing. 

Task 2: Interface Implementation

You are required to develop a user friendly web interface (to be run on current web browsers). You should make use of appropriate HTML and CSS coding techniques to achieve this. Use of templates and frameworks such as Bootstrap is encouraged but it must be referenced in the code and report. Be aware that marks can only be awarded for modifications to templates and frameworks, so please make sure you properly distinguish your own work/modifications in the report.

You must make sure that both interfaces meet usability and accessibility criteria and conform to design guidelines and theory. You also need to consider how the user will navigate between pages (if required). All of this must be documented in the report.

Task 3: System Implementation

The system must be hosted on the University of Greenwich IIS server (your CMS I: drive) or a similar collaborative college system.   All sources of code must be fully referenced.  Do not implement anything that you do not understand as you may have to explain all your code to a tutor at a demonstration. Read about System Development User Manual.

You are required to develop a prototype system in PHP and MySQL database with the following functionalities:

1. Every user registered into your system should possess a valid twitter handle. You should also create a twitter handle yourself before registering to your own system. The registered user is encouraged to follow other users so that relevant tweets can be retrieved from his/her account.
2. You should have a registration system in place for your system. You can assume that the twitter handle provided by the user during registration is valid – no error checking is required. Once registered, a user should be able to edit his/her own profile that contains a short biography, contact details, picture, etc.
3. You should start your system with some defined categories of the time of the day (e.g., morning, noon, etc.). You may (not a must) also provide provisions for updating these categories of your system.
4. Any user can create an account and can immediately start using your system.
5. A simple algorithm to categorise the retrieved tweets under the various categories for showing meaningfully in the website. For example, a user may have twitted 70% of the time in the morning, thereby, you may want to categorise him/her as a morning person. Furthermore, your system should be able to show a particular user’s activity demography (e.g., 70% active in the morning, 30% at night, etc.).

Task 4: Report

You are required to present a formal report, which must be uploaded by the due date.  The report is the basis for the marking and credit can only be given for work that is presented in the report. The report should not simply be a collection of screenshots, you must explain your design and development decisions and provide evidence to back them up either from the literature or your own studies. The report should include the following:

·         Table of Contents.

·         The URL of the prototype web site.

·         The key issues and findings of the report divided into Tasks 1, 2 and 3.

·         A section containing the evaluation and testing of the site.

The report should include code snippets (not the full code) and screen images. A ZIP of the code should also be uploaded along with the PDF of the report.

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