Thankfully, this thesis doesn’t officially start this week. It started about a year ago. I saw an interesting concept video on Youtube about a web browser where users can save multiple web sessions into different bookmark folders. I thought this was pretty neat. Not only because I too faced the issue of having multiple windows open, each with multiple tabs, and wished to save them all in an organized fashion. But also because such a small UI change actually creates a vastly different interface for users surfing the internet. After all, most people, especially on desktop machines, almost exclusively use only their web browser application.
I started working on creating a real version of this concept video, but with some significant changes. Over time, through a course on Human Centered Computing, a ISP, and a spring tutorial, this app’s design changed in major ways. It’s still a ‘web browser’ in the sense that technically people can explore any web page they choose. However, there’s also a curated timeline built into the browser.
The app will have two features: the ability to create folders of webpages, where each folder represents a certain subtopic/playlist (ex: ‘antitrust, its history and future’). But on top of this, in a different view, users can see featured ‘folders’ in various categories. The categories will be based off of the Dewey Classification System, so they will range from ‘Philosophy’ to ‘Language’ to ‘History’, etc.
In terms of progress so far, the first feature is about 80% complete. Users can currently create new folders and put as many webpages in them as possible. These folders are saved to disk, so users can exit the app and re-enter to see all their created content still there. The work left is largely design-driven. The animations for exiting and entering folders needs to be created. Furthermore, gestures need to be used to drive these transitions so the interface feels more smooth.
The second feature is about 10% complete. I’m currently reading a book called ‘Vapor for Swift’, which will help me create a RESTful API for the application (in Swift!). This way, I can have a back-end service that will hold the featured folders that the app can fetch. I’m hoping to have the API created by October. Then, from early October onwards, I will focus on creating the featured content that the API will be sending to the app.
Lastly, I’m reading a very interesting book for my thesis, titled “If...Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics”.
From Amazon: “This book is concerned with the ways in which informational infrastructure may be considered political in its capacity to shape social and cultural life. It looks specifically at the conditions of algorithmic life -- how algorithms work, both materially and discursively, to create the conditions for sociality and connectivity.”