History Flow Visualization Application
A tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors.
Date Posted: March 18, 2005
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Update: November 23, 2005
This release fixes a few bugs and improves the performance in some cases.
What is History Flow Visualization Application?
History Flow Visualization Application is a tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors. The application includes online help, as well as a plug-in for retrieving the history of a given page from any MoinMoin "wiki." ("Wikis" are Web sites that are freely editable by anyone who visits them. MoinMoin is an advanced, easily used, and extensible wiki engine.)
This technology runs on any JavaTM 1.4-enabled platform, including Windows®, Mac OS X, UNIX®, and Linux®.
How does it work? History Flow Visualization Application represents each document as a vertical line whose length corresponds to the length of the document. The technology then applies a standard "diff" algorithm to successive versions of a document, using periods and angle brackets to indicate changes. This level of detail is effective for free-form prose. After matching passages of successive versions have been identified, the matches are represented onscreen by a parallelogram connecting the appropriate sections of the document segments. Both segments and parallelograms are colored to indicate authorship.
History Flow Visualization Application has four main visualization modes that display the contents of the document being analyzed as it changes over different versions. Each one of these modes highlights different aspects of authorship and content changes as these evolve over time.
- Community view: This is the default mode and it shows all contributions from different authors, color-coding the text to indicate the author of each sentence.
- Individual author view: This mode highlights the contributions of a single author and it depicts the persistence of these contributions over time.
- Recent Changes View: This mode highlights the new content in each version of the Wiki page, independent of authorship. This view allow us to see what portions of the text have been edited the most over time.
- Age View: This mode has no colors representing authorship; instead, the focus is on the persistence of different contributions. A gray scale gradient goes from white (brand-new contribution) to dark gray (very old contribution).
The patterns revealed by History Flow Visualization Application show such information as spacing by date; occurrances of vandalism; authorship; growth; and persistence.
For further information and a description of the research surrounding this application, please visit this IBM Research site.
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| | About the technology author(s):
Martin Wattenberg is a mathematician whose research interests include information visualization and its application to collaborative computing, journalism, bioinformatics, and art. Before joining IBM, Dr. Wattenberg was the Director of Research and Development at SmartMoney.com, where he designed internet-based financial software. His work at SmartMoney included the groundbreaking Map of the Market, which visualizes live data on hundreds of publicly traded companies.
Dr. Wattenberg has also worked with a variety of nonfinancial data, such as email archives, DNA sequences, and more. In addition, he is well known for artistic data visualization, which involves visualizing such disparate information sources as music, museum collections, and Web searches. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at such places as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, and Ars Electronica. Dr. Wattenberg holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Fernanda Viegas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. Her research focuses on the visualization of the traces people leave as they interact online. Some of her projects explore email archives, newsgroup conversations, and the editing history of wiki pages.
Jonathan Feinberg joined CUE Research in September of 2003 as an Advisory Software Engineer on David Millen's Group Spaces team. Previously, he spent 15 months at netomat, inc., where he helped bring to market their innovative messaging application. He has worked closely with fellow CUE Research member Martin Wattenberg on several projects, including the award-winning "Map of the Market." Mr. Feinberg considers himself a generalist, with particular interest in "glue programming" -- tying together disparate and otherwise mutually agnostic systems. |
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