The University of Sydney
Individual Student Project
Background
Social media is used by many individuals and corporations across our modern society. As a result, vast amounts of data are being created every day from social media. This work looks at how this data can be used to create information visualisations to enhance events in real-time.
The influence of social media can be seen across event such as the Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW). Held annually, the City of Melbourne run events hosts a series of runways shows, catwalks, talks, film screenings and retail experiences showcasing the latest spring and summer collections from iconic and top Australian brands and designers.
Project Brief
The project brief was to develop a product that delivered an enhanced MSFW event experience enabled through social media data and mobile technology, focusing on using data-driven design, technology, and techniques. This was created by leveraging social media data and other publicly available datasets that could then be represented across a range of possible forms and contexts. 
Project Concept
The Social Runway is a large installation display, visualising social media data across Melbourne. It uses a collection of digital projections and LED displays located in and around various MSFW locations. Social media users post images to Twitter or Instagram by tagging posts with #SocialRunway and #MSFW or @MSFW. These images are captured and displayed at nearby Social Runway locations around Melbourne. The Social Runway also incorporates a social media competition, increasing awareness and encourage users to connect with The Social Runway online. In addition, data collection from Social Media will showcase an array of user-generated posts and sponsored content from MSFW and partner companies.
Final Design Prototype
The final prototype was created using the Processing programming language. It uses pre-refined lists of social media post which contain the web links to Instagram and twitter images as well as caption and user information. Data is feed from these CSV through a ‘Data Simulator’ App which then generates a working file CSV which is accesses from the main ‘The Social Runway’ sketch. This was done to show the ability for The Social Runway to take in real data as if it were running live at MSFW. In this case the data simulator would download post from twitter/Instagram and save these to the working CSV allowing for minimal code changes being made to the visualisations for future work on The Social Runway.
VIDEO SHOWING FINAL VISUALIZATION PROTOTYPE

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