BotViz: Data Visualizations for Collaborations With Bots and Volunteers

Carlos Toxtli, Claudia Flores-Saviaga, Flor Aguilar, Alejandra Monroy, Juan Flores, Jeerel Herrejón, Norma Elva Chávez, William Dai, Needa Almani, Shloka Desai, Saiph Savage

Abstract: Online bots are quickly becoming important collaborators with humans in tackling issues in healthcare, politics, and even activism. Recently, non-profits have used many bots in place of their human members to scaffold collaborations with citizens. However, this shift invites new challenges: it is difficult for outsiders to understand the joint effort that bots have now initiated with humans, limiting the goals reached collectively. To help non-profits coordinate the volunteers recruited by online bots, we propose BotViz. BotViz is a new online platform that via data visualizations provides outsiders a clear understanding of the interactions of bots with volunteers. Our data visualization presents two benefits related to traditional interfaces: 1) Diversity, wherein people can understand the diversity of the volunteers, especially their unique strengths; 2) Stalling, wherein people who may be delaying the collective effort triggered by bots can be easily identified by volunteers. Together, our data vi-sualizations point to a future where humans and online bots can better collaborate in order to have large scale impact.