Summary:
This paper talks about a new visualization they’re presenting called “Themail”. This visualization portrays relationships using the interaction histories preserved in email archives. It uses this content to show a word that corresponds to a particular individual for the user and how that word changes over their relationship. These words would appear in a list with the more prominent words being of larger sizes and differing colors. For example, words that were used throughout the year were grey to show they weren’t very important while words that appeared throughout a particular month were separated into their own columns. Furthermore, selecting one of these words would also show more information on how that word was specifically used in the emails. There were also two modes for viewing information, haystack for a broad overview and needle for specific information.
Reflection:
Using a single word or few words to represent a whole month or year of communication with another person is an interesting way to try and represent what those communications have been like. Given that this visualization is used for email exclusively I would expect that most representations will have more of a business tone, as most people use email for business. The paper also touches on this a bit as they point out the flaws that come with using email and the nature of emails in general. Perhaps it would be useful to remember what specific business or work-related topics were being discussed heavily during a specific month. Overall it’s an interesting idea and may be useful for business applications.
Questions:
-What words do you think would appear in your own email contacts?
-What words are most common across all interactions at the monthly level? Yearly?
