Visualizing social networks using matrices

Speaker: Nathalie Henry, http://insitu.lri.fr/~nhenry/
When: 02.00PM, Mon 15 May 2006
Venue: Axon-307
Host: Dr Ralf Muhlberger

Abstract: 

The human perception system is very effective to discern visual patterns in a picture. Information visualization exploits this  ability and consists in providing users representations to communicate their results or explore a new dataset. In the field of social networks analysis, visualization has mainly been used to communicate findings. Our perspective is different and aim at using information visualization to explore large social networks.

Focusing on visualization and interaction, we used participatory design with social networks researchers to create an intuitive system to explore their networks. This system relies on visual matrices to explore the data and node-link diagrams to communicate results. In this talk, we first present how to visualize social networks using matrices and how to evaluate their readability. Then, we focus on interaction and explain how to manipulate these visual representations.  Finally, we introduce how to guide users through the exploration and outline our issues to evaluate the exploration process.