TweetBubble: A Twitter Extension Stimulates Exploratory Browsing

We extend the Twitter interface to stimulate exploratory browsing of social media and develop a method to establish its efficacy. In exploratory browsing, users seek and traverse diverse and novel information as they investigate a conceptual space. Social media has become a predominant source of information. Social media is characterized by rapidly evolving content and relationships. We need interface mechanisms to effectively and iteratively browse, search, and filter, i.e., explore vast social media networks.

We develop the TweetBubble browser extension, extending Twitter to enable expansion of social media associations @usernames and #hashtags in-context, with-out overwriting initial content. We build on a prior metadata type system, developing new presentation semantics, which enable a look and feel consistent with Twitter.

We identify exploratory browsing as a creative ideation process. We use prior ideation metrics as a basis for new ideation metrics of exploratory browsing. We conducted a study, with data from 54 participants, amidst the 2014 Academy Awards. Quantitative and qualitative findings validate the technique of in-context exploratory browsing interfaces for social media. Their consistency supports the validity of ideation metrics of exploratory browsing as an evaluation methodology for interactive systems designed to promote creative engagement.

This research impacts the design and evaluation of interfaces that stimulate intrapersonal creativity, and thereby mutual understanding, by supporting exploratory browsing of connected perspectives in a shared, structured, conceptual space.