“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
Herbert Simon (1971)

In the context of social media, Herbert Simon's "wealth of information" is the quantity and pace of information shared on social media, and the “poverty of attention” is represented by the tasks that should be in the foreground for a user. How can a user more strategically interact with social media while maintaining focus on a primary task? Can computation be used to solve a problem without introducing yet another screen?

Twila (twitter lamp) represents a calm technology artifact that empowers the user to strategically engage with social media thereby reducing overall screen time and minimizing the risk of social media addictive behaviors. Twila is programmed to alert the user of Twitter chatter using a preset hashtag search term. The Twila prototype is designed around hardware (Raspberry Pi Zero) that prioritizes affordability and size to allow for end-user customization (aesthetic preferences) as well as K-12 and higher education interdisciplinary educational opportunities that can seamlessly track between topics including computer programming, design thinking, biology, psychology, technology, ethics, and art.

Twila solves the challenge of notifying a user about a social media event without introducing another screen or inadvertently causing the user to needlessly check their phone for notifications. Twila listens to Twitter and blinks LEDs in response to a preset hashtag of the user’s choosing thereby accomplishing the overarching goal of peripherally signaling the user with a more strategic notification. The user can set Twila’s code to listen for any topic or community that has an affiliated hashtag.

Twila was designed around the idea of rallying people in support of or in opposition to specific local legislation. A common use of Twitter hashtags in the legislative realm is the binary YES or NO to a specific bill (e.g., the most recent immunization-related bill in Colorado was addressed with #YESonSB163 or #NOonSB163). If a user were interested in being alerted when activists opposed to the legislation were actively discussing the bill on Twitter and/or communicating with legislators, Twila could be set to that hashtag. In this form, Twila acts as a “bat signal” of sorts to rally legislative supporters to engage around the bill on social media.

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Colorado General Assembly was placed on hold. As such, Twila was unable to be user-tested with its original intent. However, the pandemic introduced a variety of timely hashtags that could be used to test Twila’s functionality and efficacy. The #COVID19 hashtag was a perfect test case for functionality as it ensured a constant state of notifications. Once Twila was operating as intended, it could be used to visually represent the popularity of more nuanced sociopolitical hashtags such as #FakeNews, #FireFauci, #FilmYourHospital, and #CoronaHoax. As scientific misinformation is its own form of a pandemic (i.e., infodemic), using Twila to alert a user about misinformation campaigns would be a potential application. If the code were set up to capture the tweets for further analysis, researchers could explore geographic clustering as well as overall sentiment analysis.

While the Twila prototype utilized light as a notification, the Raspberry pi hardware ecosystem creates the potential to solve a variety of accessibility issues. Twila could be designed to use sound or vibration as an alert mechanism.