I am extremely interested in ways that we can represent online social networks that are both informative and visually pleasing. I am currently writing an annotated bibliography of social visualization research as a reference for my own future research. Visualizations of online social activitiy is important for business, researchers, and technology experts. It helps to spot trends in networks and where trends are coming from next. I believe that as the web becomes ever present in our lives, we must continue to develop innovative ways to visualize how the web is affecting our lives.

Judith Donath is “an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she directs the Sociable Media research group. Her work focuses on the social side of computing, synthesizing knowledge from fields such as graphic design, urban studies and cognitive science to build innovative interfaces for online communities and virtual identities” (http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Bio.html).

Annotated Bibliography of Selected Work in Online Social Visualizations

Visualizing Conversations

Judith Donath, Karrie Karahalios, and Fernanda Viegas

Proceedings of HICSS-32, Maui, HI, January 5-8, 1999. (Also in .pdf)

Abstract

Although the archive of text generated by a persistent conversation (i.e. newsgroup, mailing list, recorded chat, etc.) is searchable, it is not very expressive of the underlying social patterns. In this paper we will discuss the design of graphical interfaces that reveal the social structure of the conversation by visualizing patterns such as bursts of activity, the arrival of new members, or the evolution of conversational topics. Our focus is on two projects: Chat Circles, a graphical interface for synchronous conversation and Loom, a visualization of threaded discussion. Through these examples we will explore key issues in the generation, design and use of graphical interfaces for persistent conversations.

My Comments:

I have always thought we need more innovative ways to visualize chat networks. When I switched to Mac OSX, I was welcomed by Ichat’s “Speach bubble” style instant messenger client. Why arnt there faster, easier, ways to express emotions accross chat networks? Further, how can we create visualizations of chat networks over merely making a standard node and edge graph? THese type of technologies will take web chatting from a web 1.0 concept to a web 2.0 concept.

Visual Who

J. Donath

Proceedings of ACM Multimedia ‘95 Nov 5-9, San Francisco, CA. (Also available in postscript)

Abstract

Visual Who is a tool for visualizing an electronic community. Using data such as mailing list subscriptions, it creates a spring based model of the patterns of affiliation within the community. By varying the groups chosen as anchor points, the user can interactively explore the underlying social and organizational structure. The resulting image of the community can be used as the basis for visualizing other data, such as the patterns of activity found in the record of login and idle times.

The goal of Visual Who is to make the social patterns of an electronic community visible. This paper discusses Visual Who within the context both of social interface design and of data visualization.

My Comments:

As mentioned above I am very interested in new ways of visualizing social networks. I am particularly interested in creating a model like this or like the pop sketch project ( http://structuredsound.net/popsketchseries/index.html) . I think it would help us enjoy visual complexity and learn how to translate visual data into meaningfulness.