Sara Alloy

AN ADDITIONAL CHALLENGE

The interface was simple to design: import images from Facebook and let them inspire you. What do you want more of in life? Less? Enter as many words or phrases as you want to create your own Life Ticker. But behind this simple concept was a complex, custom designed social scraping algorithm. The ask was for more than just a superficial gimmick; the clients wanted something that would truly resonate with their group of passionate investors ("Bogleheads" after Vanguard CEO Jack Bogle).

Our team spent time understanding what might resonate more with users: would you be more inspired by a photo you hadn't seen in years, or something you posted last week? Were photos with more likes more important, or more comments? What about ones where you had commented versus where others had? And what about how long someone had been on Facebook, what could that tell us about demographics and what might be important to a user? And last but not least, how trustworthy was the social information we could gather? And what if someone had no inspiring photos at all?

To top it off, this kind of experience was unprecedented. We explored social scraping campaigns like Museum of Me, but in all previous examples, content was generalized in a way that it could be meaningful no matter what was scraped. 

UNDER THE HOOD