[comment]: # (This presentation was made with markdown-slides) [comment]: # (Theme settings:) [comment]: # (reveal.js optional settings:) [comment]: # (markdown: { smartypants: true }) <style> .container{ display: flex; } .col{ flex: 1; } </style> ### MSc Project Demonstration Genevieve Clifford October 7, 2021 <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Hi Stuart and Peter, glad you could both be here for my demonstration today. Stuart is already intimately familiar with the project, so I assume Peter will find this of more use! </aside>

### Introduction - My name is Genevieve and my [pronoun.is/she/her](http://pronoun.is/she/her) - I've been working on this project for ~9 months - Started with preparatory work in February - Moved onto software development in late May - Dissertation in early August <aside class="data-markdown notes"> So, my name's Genevieve, and I use she/her pronouns. The project's been a long time in the making, and this is currently my ninth month, so there's been a lot of iteration and work! </aside>

### Notices - Want to look at these slides again? Go to [cyhoeddwn.gitlab.io/msc-demonstration](https://cyhoeddwn.gitlab.io/msc-demonstration) <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Just as a heads up, these slides are made in Reveal.js with a little custom tooling I've added using Python and GitLab CI/CD to get them on the internet. If you'd like to look at these again, here's the link: </aside>

### Rural Pervasive Display Networks - Displays connected together by internet - Serve content from a central source - Located in rural locations - Hosted by local stakeholders - Central management done by community members <aside class="data-markdown notes"> We'll start by defining the central theme in the project, that of rural pervasive display networks. These are sets of displays networked over the internet to a content management system. They display content in rural areas, which means they have rural stakeholders, and content management is performed by the community. I'm interested in the sustainability of these systems long-term. </aside>

### Challenges A review of contemporary projects reveals the following challenges to sustainability… - Burden of running system - Problems with democratic governance of system - Lack of interest/engagement - Precarity of system design <aside class="data-markdown notes"> So, looking into contemporary projects, I noticed a few challenges to long-term sustainability: administrative burden, problems with ongoing governance, lack of community engagement, and issues around project continuence if the developers of the system stop supporting it, in the case of Nicholson and Taylor, this was a university. </aside>

### Solutions From literature review and primary research… - Feminist HCI principles & cyclical value-sensitive approach in software engineering - Community-led technology project: - Maintenance - Hosting hardware, software, and guidance - Democratic decision-making - Social media-esque interface <aside class="data-markdown notes"> I then undertook a literature review and conducted interviews with a stakeholder in a RPDN to ascertain potential strategies to overcome this. To engage the with the community better, lessons were taken from the design of Archive of our Own and the Detroit Community Technology Project. Respectively these constitute: a cyclical and value-sensitive approach to software design, ensuring that software engineers don't just engage with the community, they form part of it. In AO3, the software and infrastructure belong to the community, that is the goal here too. In addition, the integration of communities into decision making across the board, ensuring they have a democratic say in governance and guidance. To reduce the burden of administrators, their responsibilities are spread amongst the community, who also vote democratically to ensure these actions are accountable. Research from a stakeholder showed that social media use is high in rural communities, with overlap in intended usage, so cues were taken from this to ensure familiarity and improve engagement. </aside>

### The software cyhoeddwn (_kəhɔɨðʊn_) - Welsh: first-person imperative plural conjugation of _cyhoeddi_ (to announce), i.e. "let's announce!" (also the name of some software that I wrote to display content in rural communities on pervasive displays) <aside class="data-markdown notes"> So, here's what I implemented. The software together is known as "cyhoeddwn", but comprises two components. </aside>

### What exactly is it? - 2 pieces of software - cyhoeddwn: the CMS - cyhoeddwn-guide: for documentation <aside class="data-markdown notes"> cyhoeddwn is the name of the content management system, which community members directly interact with to post content to displays. cyhoeddwn-guide is a static site that hosts democratically selected guidelines and rules for use of the system, it also serves as a user guide. I'll give you a brief overview of each. </aside>

### cyhoeddwn - Ruby on Rails web app - Users submit content (say an advertisement) - Content gets approved democratically for display - Content appears on displays in community <aside class="data-markdown notes"> cyhoeddwn's a Ruby on Rails content management system app based around the social media example given in Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. On the site, users submit text and/or images as content, which then gets reviewed by the community who either accept or reject it for display. If approved, the content appears on connected displays. </aside>

### Overview

### Signing up <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/account_creation.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Signing up is a self-launched process, you need an email to sign up. It takes a few seconds, and you have to confirm your account by clicking on the link in the account activation email. Emails are sent using SMTP from the app itself. You can change these details later by visiting the edit user form from the drop down. </aside>

### Following users <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/following_users.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> You can then follow users by finding them on the users index in the application. When you follow a user, you see their posts on your timeline and also on your display if they have been approved by the community. </aside>

### Adding a review <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/adding_review.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> You can accept or reject posts on cyhoeddwn by adding a review to the post. You obviously can't review your own posts, but you can review others. When you review a post, you have to add justification, if it's an approval you could just leave a nice message, but on a rejection, you'd have to let the user know why it's not suitable for display. You can delete a review from a post if you change your mind. </aside>

### Adding a post <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/adding_post.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> You can post content from the main feed of cyhoeddwn, each post can have up to 140 characters of text and an image. The image has to be in landscape and with minimum dimensions of 500px tall and 1000px wide. </aside>

### Writing on a talk page <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/leaving_talk_comment.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> You can send messages to other users by visiting their talk page, they'll get an email each time this happens. Talk messages are visible to all users on the site, similar to the talkpage system on Wikipedia. </aside>

### Watch notifications <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/watch_notification.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Watching a user is akin to "Tweet Notifications" on Twitter, if you watch a user, you'll get an email notification each time someone leaves a message on their talk page or they make a post. </aside>

### Post approved! <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/post_approved.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> When a post you've added has been approved, you'll get an email letting you know that this has happened. </aside>

### Closing an account <video width="720" height="576" controls data-autoplay> <source src="media/closing_account.mp4" type="video/mp4"> </video> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Administrators can close the accounts of users who consistently break rules, it's a last-resort action and should be taken following the community's guidelines for administrator intervention. </aside>

### Adding a display <iframe width="720" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fsy7kg2i0iU" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> In terms of hardware for cyhoeddwn, I've made this overview video that contains details regarding that. </aside>

### cyhoeddwn-guide - Jekyll (Ruby) static site - Hosts community guidelines etc. - Hosted on a fork of main repository - Updated through push to GitHub repo - Forum for community (GitHub Discussions) <aside class="data-markdown notes"> cyhoeddwn-guide is the place to store documentation, and also where communities can post their own guidelines and rules. It uses the Jekyll static site generator (written in Ruby) to transform Markdown documents into rendered webpages. The master repository is stored on GitLab, with a mirror on GitHub. Communities just need to create a fork and follow the documentation in the cyhoeddwn-guide wiki to get started. The website is hosted using GitHub Actions and GitHub Pages, but we'll touch on that in a second. </aside>

### Adding changes <div class="container"> <div class="col"> <img src="media/new_discussion.png"> </div> <div class="col"> <img src="media/adding_commit.png"> </div> </div> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Here you can see a community member making a suggestion using GitHub pages. Someone in the community will pick that up, provided there's enough interest for that to be added. They'll then author a change to the fork on GitHub, keeping the original poster and interested parties in the loop. </aside>

### Democratic process <div class="container"> <div class="col"> <img src="media/merge_pr.png"> </div> <div class="col"> <img src="media/site_post_edit.png"> </div> </div> <aside class="data-markdown notes"> Provided a number of people approved the previous commit, the commit is then merged into the master branch. When this happens, GitHub Actions triggers a continuous integration build. The main purpose of GitHub Actions is to run unit tests on code, but in this case it is used to trigger a build of the Jekyll site. The build artefacts are then copied to the appropriate folder, where they are then hosted using GitHub Pages. This whole workflow makes it possible for incremental changes to be made to a static site. Changes in documentation from the master repository can be integrated, keeping local changes, and not passing local changest to the master repository. </aside>

### A quick look [help.cyhoeddwn.wales](https://help.cyhoeddwn.wales) <aside class="data-markdown notes"> We'll take a little look at cyhoeddwn-guide. You can see: - Documentation that is maintained by cyhoeddwn maintainers (i.e. user guides) - Space here for the community to make their own guidelines and rules - The site's privacy policy </aside>

### Any questions? <aside class="data-markdown notes"> That should now be all of the features I think you'd like to see. If I've left anything off, let me know and I'll demo them now. If not, I am open to any questions you may have! </aside>