Online Chat VisualizationOnline Chat Visualization

Mahesh B Mungara

Chatting With A “Purpose”Chatting With A “Purpose”

Lack of support for chatting with a purpose Three major requirements

-Need of Chat History-Importance of Establishing Common

ground-Anonymity and awareness issues

etc… Yahoo Monsters Inc. IMVironment example

Chat History in VSChat History in VS

Why Chat History becomes important in VS?

Puts the current chat in context Establishment of Common Ground Late joiners Help Teachers Evaluate students

Features Of The Current ToolFeatures Of The Current Tool

Transcribing the chat logs Use of scrollbar to visualize them Fisheye views-navigating through info

mural Topic searches and multiple searches Dynamic searches Sender information Overview of who spoke how much

Pros & ConsPros & Cons Overview+ detail Use of empty space in scrollbar Integration of chat history into the chat window Effective topic searches that help identify items of

interest in the chat history Dynamic searches that obviate the necessity of explicit

searching Encoding of sender information

Implementation issues Scale issues

Scale IssuesScale Issues

People scale-2 pixels per person Message scale(fares well)

• Each overlap accounts for 400 messages• With gray scale shading 256*400=102400• Average number of messages for 1 to 1 chat 3 messages per minute• So supports non-stop chatting for 20 days• Use of multi-level zooming techniques

Future WorkFuture Work

Dynamic searches based on topic databases

Dynamic building of topic databases Using length of lines to indicate message

importance Building topic threads basing on dynamic

searches Imposing semantic structure on the Chat

history Incorporating timing information

Many Thanks to Dr.McCrickard and Dr.North

Questions????????