Inspiration
We were originally inspired by the theme of #HackHarassment. We feel that online harassment, a very real problem in our own communities, is extremely critical to address. The seeming anonymity of the Internet allows harassers to take actions and make comments they normally would never do or say in person. This can cause the amount and severity of online harassment to be significantly worse than harassment one may face in person, leading to issues in the victim's freedom of expression, sense of dignity, and mental health.
When researching the problem and current proposed solutions of online harassment, we discovered that many times the hardest problems to address are the "borderline" issues where it is difficult for a computer algorithm or AI to discern harassment from friendly teasing. Therefore, we decided to focus on the area of online harassment that comes from acquaintances rather than strangers, since these interactions are usually the ones which are "borderline." In our research regarding possible solutions to stop online harassment, we found that many times online harassment can stem from social harassment, so we decided to have our project focus on combining both these issues.
Finally, we wanted a project that would focus on preventing online harassment by addressing its cause, rather than respond to harassment that has already occurred (e.g., detecting Facebook comments that may show signs of harassment.) We determined that the audience with the greatest potential to be prevented from harassing others online are everyday users who do not wish to cause others pain, but may yield to peer pressure and join in harassment online, not fully realizing the impact their actions can have.
What it does
We decided to pursue a project that would raise awareness on the grey areas involved in online harassment, as well as the subtle differences and connections between harassment online and harassment in real life. It is targeted towards first-time users of social media, but can also be used annually by companies to remind their users to remain aware about how their actions affect others.
We decided to split our team and do our project on two platforms. One portion of our project is a mobile game where users must play through various scenarios and select the option that they would realistically choose had these scenarios occurred in real life. The second portion of our project is a spinoff that uses the Microsoft Bot Framework to allow users to communicate with a chatbox, doing the same case-study exercise as in the mobile game.
The scenarios are designed to take users through a thought exercise to help them become more aware of the choices they make everyday. There are 4 questions about harassment in real-life, followed by 4 corresponding questions about online harassment. We hoped that this design would allow users to realize that provocative actions we hesitate to take in real life are not uncommon to witness online. The scenarios increase in difficulty and ambiguity as the game progresses, to increase the user's engagement with the exercise. While both platforms currently use female characters in the scenarios, we recognize that online harassment occurs for both genders and tried to make the code easy to customize to address male users as well.
How we built it
We used Android Studio to create the mobile game application. This is in the Git Repository.
The chatbot used Microsoft's Bot Framework, and was written in Javascript using NodeJS. Once the user types into the chatbot, they are prompted to begin the exercise. They answer a series of 8 questions, picking one of two options they would probably take in real life. At the end, they discover the result of their actions. If the user chose more options that could escalate into online harassment, they can click a button to go to the HackHarassment website to learn more about stopping online harassment. This is in the zip file.
Challenges we ran into
We are all first years attending a hackathon for the first time. Without prior experience, we didn't plan our time very well and spent a lot of time researching and trying to figure out what to make. While this meant many ideas we originally brainstormed changed after we discovered more about the challenges faced when addressing online harassment. However, this meant we did not have a lot of time to code our project. We originally planned to make the game using multiple chatbots, but realized we could not accomplish that given the time constraints and our limited skill set. We also originally planned to build the game on Unity with the recommendation of a mentor, but there were technical issues involved and we decided to switch to Android Studio instead.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
We were able to learn an incredible amount about online harassment, Microsoft Bot Framework and Android Studio in fewer than 48 hours. None of us have any Javascript experience, so it was a completely new language for us. Additionally, none of us had created an app in Android Studio, so although we know Java, there were many challenges creating the app that we were able to overcome. Due to the challenges we initially ran into getting Microsoft Bot Framework and Android Studio working, we did not actually begin our project until late into the evening, but we were still able to finish on time and get a decent amount of our envisioned project completed.
What we learned
We learned how to plan our time better as well as to not be afraid to seek out guidance when we get stuck instead of using a large amount of time trying to brainstorm and figure things out just by ourselves. Above all, we learned how to collaborate and put our minds together to build a project that represents our combined knowledge, both old and new. We really enjoyed the experience.
What's next for Project Spect
In order to educate users on social media, we plan to integrate the chatbot online, and then with social media platforms such as Messenger so that the chatbot will simulate a condensed version of the game and the user must pass this quiz version before being able to use the social media platform.
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