Visualizing information spaces to enhance social interaction

Human beings are social animals. In real life, we are constantly in contact with others, whose activities help us decide where to go, what to see, and who to talk to. In information spaces like the World Wide Web (WWW), however, people cannot easily gain a sense of being with others, determine patterns of activities, nor find appropriate others to interact with. Our solution, LiveWeb, visualizes the underlying information structure and overlays the dynamic real-time presence of people. This live visualization serves as a basis for more effective interaction. LiveWeb has been deployed on a public Web site with over ten thousand hits a day. Experiments with real users of the system over several months have shown a strong preference for the presence display.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Xiong, Rebecca Wen Fei

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Randall Davis, Judith S. Donath and Albert R. Meyer.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9090

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9090