Visualising Conversation

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Self Directed ProjectVisualising Conversation

Oliver Tomlinson - Summer term 2010


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Contents

Discovery phase

Transformation phase

Making phase

Introduction 4

Instant messaging 5

Micro blogging 8

Forums 10

Data visualisation 11

The data set 16

Visualisation concepts 19

Word clouds 24

Final visualisation 26

Potential interface 27

Forum growth 28


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Self Directed Project: Visualising Conversation 3

DISCOVERYTRANSFORMATIONMAKING

DISCOVERYTRANSF


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Introduction

This report aims to understand the elements of digitally based

conversation between a number of users, discovering current

methods, and applying a style to an existing chat thread

found on Mac Forums (www.mac-forums.com).

Real-time web conversation via instant messaging and

chat forums is a method of collaboration used by people

throughout the world. It can be used for collaboration and

knowledge share, providing instant feedback to users via a

Graphical User Interface (GUI).

As technologies develop, so does the power of digital

messaging, therefore GUIs need to become more advanced

to enable the users to understand all the information available

to them.

For this assignment, digital conversation and its graphical

representation has been organised into the following groups:

Instant messaging Micro blogging

Forums

Data visualisation


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Instant messaging

Messages sent in real time, often between just two

individuals, and can be accompanied by live video.

Depending on the platform, users can send les to each

other and personalise messages with emoticons - small

pictograms to add an emotion or feeling to text.

A screenshot of Skype used on a Mac

Panel showing current live

chats, one in this case

Chat history is shown in a linear format

with oldest at the top, and previous

conversations greyed out. The users

are dened by two colours and their

name in a bar. The next sentence is

typed in the lowest panel, made visible

by a slightly larger type size.

The video call can be used

instead of typing messages.

A red button shows its

active, and also represents

the hang up button.

The main Skype interface illustrates

which friends are online using colour and

pictograms. Users may also personalise

their ID photo and add a mood message.


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In addition to the standard emails the user

can receive, the user can start a Wave. AWave is a more interactive email chat thread,

allowing participants to engage at any stage

of the conversation. Instead of the linear, top-down approach

to illustrating a conversation, a user can

comment at any point and their message is

posted there.

The Reading University Book designers are

currently using the interface as a message

board, rather than a chat tool.

An interesting feature that is not found in

Skype, is the ability to see someone typing

in real time. In most instant messaging

situations the user will type the messageand press send, this interupts the ow of

conversation if its a long message.

Google Wave; this one is for the Book Designers

at Reading University.

Google claim that Wave is a revolutionised email

tool. Its been added to the instant messaging

section of this report as that is one of functions

designed into its interface.


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Conversation is between two people, dened

by their name in differing colours. GUI isvery similar to Skype, using a linear format,

text area at the bottom, and an icon to

show when each person is typing. Instead

of a coloured bar separating each entry,

Facebook chat uses a thin line.

Facebook has an instant messaging function,

allowing the user to see which friends are logged

into chat. Friends are shown with their individual

picture and a status icon, e.g. away.


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Micro blogging

For this project, mico blogging is dened as messages sent

to a larger community, either completely public or to a

smaller group. The messages are often published to a group

rather than individuals, and contain thoughts, news or links of

the originator.

Within Twitter the user follows others and, in

turn, can also be followed. When the user posts

a message it is displayed on all their followers

pages.

Messages are limited to 140 characters with

links shown in blue (as do all clickable elements).

Tweetie is a desk-top application for using

Twitter without opening a web browser. The

GUI is quite different, with Tweetie using more

icons to illustrate functions. The text ow is still

bottom-up as with Twitter, but user messages

are aligned right to dene them more from the

list . Tweetie also separates messages in speech

bubbles, a strong visual cue of conversation.

Like chat interfaces, users

personalise their prole with

pictures - this helps dene themin long lists. A big difference is

the ow of messages; blogging

seems to ow bottom-up with

new messages and posting space

at the top.


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Facebook News Feed for Oliver Tomlinson

The Facebook News Feed is bottom-up

messaging. Like Twitter, users can aim a

message at a particular person in the publicdomain, but its mostly used for wri ting news or

thoughts of the user.

Where Twitter replies to a blog/message are

always shown at the top, making it difcult to

follow a thread, Facebook will align replies under

the original.


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Forums

Forums cross over the features found in micro blogging

and instant messaging; they are a specialised conversation

focussing around a particular topic, whilst allowing a direct,

real-time response to individuals.

www.mac-forums.com, is a forum for Apple

enthusiasts. This is where the data will be found

for the visual designed in this project.

Users drill down into forum topicswhich are displayed most recent

at the top, after overall notices or

stickies in this case.

Once within a topic, a subscribing member can

post comments, which now ow top down.

When quoting an individual, messages

incorporate the quoted text within the new

message, unlike the Facebook micro blogging

method of placing the new message under the

original quote.

Layout is hindered by the excess user prole

information and various icons and logos.


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Data visualisation

Data visualisation of actual person to person conversation is

now used as a tool to label, categorise, link and nd trends in

speech or debate.

Capitol Words assess word frequency in the US

congressional record to produce word clouds

or tag clouds. These data graphics use typesize and colour to differentiate and highlight

commonly used words. The list view compares

frequency using a bar graph method.

When the user clicks a particular word they are

taken to a page illustrating trends of usage in a

line graph, and history on an interactive map.

Word clouds are a useful overview of large

amounts of conversation data or text, giving the

reader a summary of key topics and the ability to

drill down into the information.


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Visuals of the Conversation Clock taken from

a paper entitled, Seeing More: Visualizing Audio

Cues, by Tony Bergstrom and Karrie Karahalios.

As conversation around a table is recorded, a

visualisation is produced to illustrate levels of

input over time, with individuals colour coded.

However, as the conversation develops the lines

move away from the centre, increasing in size

and line weight due to perspective and therefore

not providing comparable data.

Another problem would be assessing which

conversation promoted a direct response,

as no links are shown. As a tool for overall

conversation dominance it may succeed by

showing a wash of one particular colour.


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The Worm is best described by Wikipedia:

The worm is a market research analysis

tool developed by Roy Morgan Research

(who called it The Reactor), with the

purpose of gauging an audiences reaction

to some visual stimuli over some time

period. The name worm describes its

visual appearance - as a line graph snaking

up or down.

The Worm portrays a continuous opinion

of the viewers. It would be interesting to

compare it with the actual text dialogue,highlighting who is talking at the time.

Obama and McCain average opinions during atelevised debate. This graphic would need to

be seen along-side more data to make a true

comparison, in its current format it is of little use.


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ERYTRANSFORMATIONMA


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The data set

The data set used for this report was found on the Mac

Forums website (www.mac-forums.com); it is a thread

relating to Apple rumours and reports, with the topic name

iPhone Leak: Police Seize Gizmodo Computers.

The following pages show the key text and information

provided by this online conversation thread. By analysing

the information given, it should be possible to produce

a visualisation that highlights themes and particular

interactions between the users.

Web link

Web links

The actual thread is shown in a l inear format,

with each message being posted under the

previous in time order. This spread shows web

links (red arrows) and quote links in blue.

The current format makes it difcult to see how

the conversation breaks into micro threads

under the start topic, and also which members

are talking to each other. Even though some

messages quote others, there are also links

made without direct quotes.


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End of thread


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Name: -FlyAuburn-

Joined: Feb 25, 2010Location: Unknown

Posts: 12

Name: bargsbeer

Joined: Oct 22, 2007

Location: Tampa , FL

Posts: 1,177

Name: lifeisabeach

Joined: Sep 30, 2007

Location: Unknown

Posts: 2,030

Name: MacEnVy

Joined: Nov 30, 2009

Location: Unknown

Posts: 7

Name: the8thark

Joined: Jan 27, 2007

Location: Brisbane

Posts: 2,774

Name: DriftNismo

Joined: Dec 26, 2008

Location: London, UK

Posts: 211

Name: Doug b

Joined: Jun 22, 2008

Location: Unknown

Posts: 851

Name: dtravis7

Joined: Jan 04, 2005Location: Modesto, Ca.

Posts: 17,142

Name: Horness

Joined: Jan 23, 2008

Location: Great Britain

Posts: 41

Name: Village Idiot

Joined: Apr 04, 2007

Location: Durtburg, WV

Posts: 2,283

Name: cwa107

Joined: Dec 21, 2006

Location: Middletown, PA

Posts: 16,558

Name: Zoolook

Joined: Sep 24, 2006

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Posts: 2,398

Name: NumberSix

Joined: May 01, 2008

Location: New York

Posts: 148

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Thread participants

The participants of this particular thread are shown below;

their input varies and is often aimed at particular people,

geographic location may have an impact on the time of day

they make comments.


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the8thark 05:54

DriNismo 07:03

DriNismo 07:25

Doug b 08:24

the8thark 08:34

the8thark 07:12

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This diagram shows a timescale for the thread, starting

from the top, and how threads are linked to each other and

back to the start. Participant input is shown on the left of

the timescale. Even though links are shown, the linear form

does not clearly illustrate tangents from the original thread;

however, increased participation can be seen along the

timeline towards the bottom.

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-FlyAuburn- 02:46

bargsbeer 03:04

lifeisabeach 03:30

MacEnvy 03:49

the8thark 05:54

DriNismo 07:03

DriNismo 07:25

Doug b 08:24

the8thark 08:34

dtravis7 09:14

the8thark 07:12

Horness 11:25

Village Idiot 12:31

cwa107 13:42bargsbeer 13:46Zoolock 13:48NumberSix 13:50Zoolock 13:52

Zoolock 14:39

NumberSix 14:02

bargsbeer 14:08

lifeisabeach 14:29

lifeisabeach 14:36lifeisabeach 14:38dtravis7 14:42

bargsbeer14:35

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Arcs on the right show links, either quoted or

back to the original topic. As the comments all

originate from the original topic, the large arcs

may not be required, or could be shown in a

different way.

Visualisation concepts


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IDEA: Conversation may not need to follow

a strict time frame. The user only requires

to know if a message came before or after

a point, and how it ts with the rest of the

conversation. Further concepts should remove

relative time scale and focus on what the user

wants to achieve from the visualisation, i.e. an

understanding of a chat thread, its key themes,

key participants, and chat micro threads.

Following from the previous diagram, this one starts from

the centre and works out using circles to dene the time. It

is easy to see how threads emerge from the original posting,

and then turn into separate threads. Even though web

viewing would allow a zoom capability, the sparse layout

would still cause legibility issues when trying to gain an

overall perspective of the conversation.

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To reduce the diagram sprawl over time, this concept uses

equal length joins between the thread entries, but to illustrate

the time, different thicknesses are used - the thicker the join

the less time between the entries, as if the link has been

squashed closer.

Halos around the comments indicate the length of

the entry based on its word count. Adding this factor

enables the reader to assess which entries are just

short comments, and which ones may contain a little

more information.

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IDEA: The joins are a little too strong and

do not show when the latest comment was

made, it may be worth fading old ones using a

transparency based on the time from the initial

comment. Links to external websites also need

to be highlighted.

A word cloud at the end of each long thread

may provide the user with quick reference to

where the conversation is headed.


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Oliver Tomlinson - Summer term 201024 Oliver Tomlinson - Spring term 2010

Word clouds are currently a popular method of illustrating key

words found in text extracts or conversation on the internet.

These clouds have been produced from a stripped-down

version of the thread, excluding quoted sections, using www.

wordle.net (settings: black and white colour, 50 word max,

Telephoto font, rounder edges and horizontal layout).

The top cloud uses all the text in the thread

excluding names, times, and quotations. The

lower cloud uses all mentions of names.

Word clouds


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RMATIONMAKING


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Final

visualisation

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NOTE: Circles represent individual

comments, with numbers relevant to

participants. The orange circle area

dimension is directly proportional to

the word count within the posting.

Age of post

< hour

< hour

- 2 hours

- 2 hours

2 - 4 hours

2 - 4 hours

4 - 8 hours

4 - 8 hours

> 8 hours

> 8 hours

Time delay from previous post


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09:0008:0007:0006:0005:00 10:00 11:00 12:00

14:42

iPhone Leak: Police seize

Gizmodo computers Started today at 02:4651 replies | 781 views | 13 participants

Mac-Forums.com > General Discussions > Apple Rumors and Reports

as they found out it was a real

prototype.

Today, 07:12

Participant 8: the8thark

yes they returned it only after pulling

it apart and posting pics of it all over

the internet.

Today, 07:25

Participant 6: DriftNismo

Quote:

Originally Posted by the8thark

yes they returned it only after pulling

it apart and posting pics of it all over

the internet.

Yes, but they can easily argue they

weren't sure whether it really was an

Apple prototype, seeing as there's so

many knock-offs around.

Today, 08:24

Participant 7: Doug b

Let's assume for a moment that it's

not a hoax, that they really had

nothing to do with the phone other

than looking it over for a proper

evaluation. Ya know where they'd be

absolutely wrong in all of this ?

Exactly. To post pics of it all over the

net, if it was indeed a real prototype

of a new iPhone. I mean, who would

be STUPID enough not to know what

repercussions would befall them after

tinkering with something which has

an incredible amount of NDA's put

upon it ?

Everybody, especially those in the

tech industry, knows to what extent

Apple gets their corporate legalsystem involved in where their NDA's

and such are concerned. And no one

would be fool enou h to tr and

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Potential interface

An interactive touch screen allows the user to drag along

a timescale and watch the forum thread developments asa graphic representation. Touching a post in the visual will

highlight the text on the right, and visa versa. The word cloud

could be linked to the whole text or up to a user dened spot.


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Visualising Conversation

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