It’s called TuneTable. Students move coasters along the table’s projection surface to make a musical piece using elements of computer programming.  Then they tap the surface to play a series of beats, beeps and samples. The table will be installed at the Museum of Design Atlanta in early 2017 and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry in the summer.

The project addresses a national need to make major strides in computer programming literacy for K-12 students.

“It’s also about changing the attitude about computation and exposing it to people that might not have sought it out otherwise,” said project lead Brian Magerko, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “Hopefully some of them will think it is a cool, new way to express themselves.”

The table includes basic computing programming elements that people would use when learning programming formally for the first time, such as iteration and go-to statements.

TuneTable’s interactive surface uses computer vision to detect printed markers — officially they’re called fiducials —  on the coasters. Each coaster is assigned a sound or programming command, such as a splitter or repeater. People link them together to form a chain of electronic and hip hop sounds.  

“Manipulating notes, chords and rests requires a lot of music theory knowledge,” said Magerko, who also leads Georgia Tech’s Adaptive Digital Media lab. “Instead, we’re opting to manipulate music samples with code. And certain genres, such as electronic and hip hop, map very well computationally.”

Magerko said they’re also very appealing to underserved populations, such as women, African-Americans and Latinos. He and Georgia Tech College of Design Professor Jason Freeman learned that after designing a software program called EarSketch that teaches Python and Javascript at nearly 200 high schools across the country. EarSketch students use digital audio workstations and the programming languages to manipulate loops and compose music. TuneTable reimagines this experience within a museum exhibit.  

“The table allows us bring the basics of computer programming out of the classroom and into more informal settings such as museums,” said Freeman, a co-principal investigator on the NSF grant. “Kids can be playful and social, just by walking up and giving it a try.”

Once the exhibit arrives in museums, people will be able to create their own music and email it to themselves. They can continue tinkering with the code when they get home using EarSketch or a tablet version of the software, which is being designed by Northwestern’s Mike Horn. 

“We see the tablet app as a crucial connection point between what kids experience at the museum with TuneTable and what they learn in school with EarSketch,” said Horn. “We want it to give kids space and time to build up foundational computational literacy skills before the deep dive into learning Python or JavaScript.”

The project is supported in part by NSF grant AISL-1612644. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that politics are the great divider. People who think the majority of their friends have differing opinions than their own engage less on Facebook. For those who choose to stay logged in and politically active, the research found that most tend to stick in their own circles, ignore those on the other side and become more polarized.

At the same time, the study suggests a few design changes that could allow the social media platform to bridge political differences. By displaying shared interests between friends during their prickly conversations, Facebook could help diffuse possible arguments and alleviate tension. The research also notes that increasing exposure and engagement to weak ties could make people more resilient in the face of political disagreement.

“People are mainly friends with those who share similar values and interests. They tend to interact with them the most, a phenomenon called homophily,” said Catherine Grevet, the Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who led the study. “But that means they rarely interact with the few friends with differing opinions. As a result, they aren’t exposed to opposing viewpoints.”

Facebook’s algorithms don’t help the cause. Newsfeeds are filled with the friends a person most often interacts with, typically those with strong ties. Grevet suggests that the social media site should sprinkle in a few status updates on both sides of political issues. That would expose people to different opinions, which are typically held by weak ties.

“Designing social media toward nudging users to strengthen relationships with weak ties with different viewpoints could have beneficial consequences for the platform, users and society,” said Grevet.

The study surveyed more than 100 politically active Facebook users in the spring of 2013 amid debates about budgets cuts, gay marriage and gun control regulations. The majority of participants were liberal, female and under the age of 40, mirroring the traditional Facebook user. More than 70 percent said they don’t talk about politics with their friends with different opinions. When they saw something they didn’t agree with, 60 percent said they ignored it and didn’t comment. When they did, sometimes it made the person question the relationship and disassociate and from the friend.

“Even though people could simply unfriend someone with different opinions, and there were certainly those who did that, there were many relationships that were able to be maintained,” said Grevet. “Through a combination of behaviors on Facebook like hiding, tuning out, logging off or avoiding certain conversations, people negotiated around those differences to stay connected.”

That’s why she feels social media sites like Facebook could support those relationships better, for instance, by highlighting shared interests between acquaintances.

Grevet will present the study in February at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing conference in Baltimore. Her advisor is Eric Gilbert, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, who has recently studied office gossip and successful phrases on Kickstarter.

As part of their study of more than 45,000 projects on Kickstarter, Assistant Professor Eric Gilbert and doctoral candidate Tanushree Mitra reveal dozens of phrases that pay and a few dozen more that may signal the likely failure of a crowd-sourced effort. 

“Our research revealed that the phrases used in successful Kickstarter campaigns exhibited general persuasion principles,” said Gilbert, who runs the Comp. Social Lab at Georgia Tech. “For example, those campaigns that follow the concept of reciprocity – that is, offer a gift in return for a pledge – and the perceptions of social participation and authority, generated the greatest amount of funding.” 

While offering donors a gift may improve a campaign’s success, the study found the language project creators used to express the reward made the difference. For example, the phrases “also receive two,” “has pledged” and “project will be” strongly foretell that a project will reach funding status, while phrases such as “dressed up,” “not been able” and “trusting” are attached to unfunded projects. 

The researchers examined the success of Pebble, which is the most successful Kickstarter campaign to date with more than $10 million in pledges, and compared it to Ninja Baseball, a well-publicized PC game that only earned a third of its $10,000 goal. 

“The discrepancy in funding success between projects like Pebble and Ninja Baseball prompted us to consider why some projects meet funding goals and others do not,” Mitra said. “We found that the driving factors in crowdfunding ranged from social participation to encouragement to gifts – all of which are distinguished by the language used in the project description.” 

For their research, Gilbert and Mitra assembled a list of all Kickstarter projects launched as of June 2, 2012, and had reached their last date of fund collection. Of the more than 45,000 projects, 51.53 percent were successfully funded while 48.47 percent were not. 

After controlling for variables such as funding goals, video, social media connections, categories and pledge levels, the researchers focused on more than 20,000 phrases before compiling a dictionary of more than 100 phrases with predictive powers of success or failure. 

The research suggested that the language used by creators to pitch their project plays a major role in driving the project’s success, accounting for 58.56 percent of the variance around success. The language generally fit into the following categories: 

• Reciprocity or the tendency to return a favor after receiving one as evidenced by phrases such as “also receive two,” “pledged will” and “good karma and.” 

• Scarcity or attachment to something rare as shown with “option is” and “given the chance.” 

• Social Proof, which suggests that people depend on others for social cues on how to act as shown by the phrase “has pledged.” 

• Social Identity or the feeling of belonging to a specific social group. Phrases such as “to build this” and “accessible to the” fit this category. 

• Liking, which reflects the fact that people comply with people or products that appeal to them. 

• Authority, where people resort to expert opinions for making efficient and quick decisions as shown by phrases such as “we can afford” and “project will be.” 

The team’s findings are summarized in the paper “The Language that Gets People to Give: Phrases that Predict Success on Kickstarter.” The paper will be formally presented at the 17^th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2014) to be held in Baltimore, Md., from Feb. 15 to 19.