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Graffpass: Your graffiti compass

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After pulling streetart and graffiti tagged pictures on Instagram, I quickly realized how unmanageable the pictures were becoming. I was gathering approximately 20,000 pictures a day and didn’t have an effective way of browsing them. There were too many pictures for the traditional ‘grid’ layout design. Since they were pictures, there weren’t too many other ways to show them in bulk.

Based on the sheer amount of data, I explored various ways of filtering the images to increase the percentage of getting an actual picture of graffiti (rather then of something else that was tagged streetart or graffiti). Once I started filtering pictures that were tagged with geo location, I quickly found an improvement in results.

Having more than 200,000 images in my database, I looked for ways to break the image set into smaller chunks. This is where I came up with the idea of using location. When I created the map app that reoriented itself every time a new graffiti picture was uploaded to Instagram with geolocation, I was surprised by the number of people who take pictures of graffiti around the world.

Instagram’s APIs dont allow users to make multi-dimensional queries. They have endpoints for hashtag, location, or user searches, but you can’t do them on top of each other. This prevents any searches that use two of the endpoints together. For example, you can’t search for all the hashtag results in a certain geographic area.

By pulling all of the streetart and graffiti pictures and referencing the results on my own server, I have been able to add additional dimensions of queries onto the hashtag search results. This allows me to do interesting things like find all the other pictures hash-tagged graffiti that are in the same area. In my current case, I can compare a user’s current location to the database of images. This allows me to surface search results that a user can actually go see/find themselves.

The basis of this project is the scraped data that I got through the past few weeks of experimentation. The next part is the mobile interface that makes the search result discovery process relevant to a person who is out and about.

I have a web interface that I can build using a user’s location api in the browser. This is useful, but my end goal is not the graffiti compass. I am simply going through the steps needed to develop a community of people who will document and share graffiti themselves. This is not something that I can start out doing from scratch. The existing Instagram pictures provide me with the astroturfed platform for people to willingly contribute to.

Rule: Dont start coding at 12:30am

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Incomplete prototype is live here: http://publicartfound.herokuapp.com

Code is here: https://github.com/rememberlenny/publicartfound

I talked with Nick today and decided to build out a graffiti game. This is a tool for encouraging people to build out the community’s content for the New Public Arts Foundation projects.

Im creating a system to encourage people to help identify the artists of the graffiti images I have. This is traditionally a tedious process that I dont want to do. I am creating a competitive platform for people who like graffiti to partake.

The game operates on a basic mechanic. Reward correct annotations, reward speed, and punish incorrect answers.

The mechanics of the game determine “correct” answers based on community’s majority.

Technically, I am leaning on existing code. I am using the Firebase service to store all my data. Im using poor jQuery and HTML for my single page web application magic. Basically, its spaghetti code. I don’t care.

I started with a basic To Do MVC project. I grabbed some Leaderboard code. And Im putting it all on a page.

Next, Ill add a randomized graffiti image. Ill also add the proper point system. Lastly, I create a chatroom, so people can talk shit.

Basic To do MVC thing:

The leaderboard code:

The basic framework + working leaderboard:

Using subreddits for user research

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I have been using Reddit.com’s subreddits to get feedback about my ideas. I tried to go through Google Adsense to set up a campaign, but realized I dont like the way they promise a ‘segment’. I also looked at Facebook, but I am afraid I misunderstand my potential constituents.

On Reddit, people collect in topic oriented sub-groups. The sub-groups are a collection of people who share links about a single topic. As a result of this, you can safely assume the preferences of the group. These are called subreddits.

The subreddits are great for experimenting with ideas. The total number of subreddit followers is public knowledge. At any one moment, the subreddits also show how many people are logged in. As a result, you can easily gain insight on how many people your links are reaching.

I have been experimenting with asking the graffiti oriented subreddits about my idea. Initially, I was targeting the /r/graffiti subreddit because it was the biggest. I have tried to use surveys to collect feedback and email addresses, but never got more than 10 responses.

Today, I decided to target the /r/streetart subreddit. I used the format of post title as a question and post description with instructions. The instructions say “upvote” if you agree with the question. This format is giving me a healthy balance of up and down votes.

/r/streetart is a significantly smaller group, but I am getting much more user feedback. /r/graffiti is approximately 55,000 subscribers and /r/streetart is about 17,000. I believe this is because I am competing less for visible real estate. I also believe this may be because people who like /r/streetart may be more receptive to my question.