Conversational lives

visualizing interpersonal online social interactions

Heng Chen

Aisling Kelliher

pp. 241-250

in: A. Ant Ozok, Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds), Online communities and social computing, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

The dynamic and distributed nature of interactions on popular social network platforms creates challenges in personally understanding the collective meaning and impact of this disparate activity over time. We propose the development of the Social Reflector application, a dynamic visualization interface for exploring individual social network activity over time. We discuss the design, implementation and evaluation of three visual strategies for representing key facets of social communication interactions - conversation potential, activity rhythms, and interpersonal communications. Findings and results from a preliminary user study with Facebook users are presented and promising future research directions introduced.