Tabletop community

Tabletop Community: Visualization of Real World Oriented Social Network Noriyuki Fujimura, Satoshi Fujiyoshi, Tom Hope and Takuichi Nishimura Information Technology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) 2-41-6 Aomi,Koto-ku,Tokyo 135-0064 JAPAN +81-3-3599-8294 {nori.fujimura, fujiyoshi-s, tom-hope, takuichi.nishimura}@aist.go.jp

ABSTRACT We have undertaken a research project that visualizes a community, especially for events such as academic conferences. As research progresses, we have noticed that small gatherings of a few persons happen during events as a vital component of forming a community. We call these happenings Social Interactions. Typical situations that foster Social Interactions include gathering around a table. Therefore, we think it is possible to visualize larger communities through obtaining and processing Social Interaction data via table-like interfaces. As one part of group research project, here we introduce an art piece, named “Tabletop Community”, that enables the visualization of Social Interactions around the table. Through this artwork system, users/participants easily record the state and atmosphere of each Interaction. The system visualizes the state of the entire community as an interactive network visualization. Here we introduce past results along with the current progress of the system.

Categories and Subject Descriptors J.5 [Computer Applications]: Arts and Humanities: Fine arts.

Figure.1 Table-like information terminal and acquired data of Social Interaction

General Terms Design

Data are collected via a table-like interface. The system behind the artwork consists of two parts: a sensor part to record Social Interactions and a display part, which shows the human network within the community out of accumulation of collected data over time. Figure1 shows an example of a table-like terminal. The terminal has several sensors such as a camera and microphones. Particularly in this implementation, we put an omni-directional camera at the center of the table and placed several RFID-IC card readers (ID readers) around it (Fig.2).

Keywords Social Network, Information Visualization, Real World Oriented Interface, Public Art, Community Art

1. INTRODUCTION “Tabletop Community” has as its ultimate goal the activation of communities of practice through triggering Social Interactions among audiences over time. We focus on the interactions occurring around a table. The system captures the atmosphere of each interaction as a panoramic photo along with audience’s rough location in the photo with their IDs. Then the system shows the state of the community to users/participants as collective data of these interactions.

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). MM'06, October 23-27, 2006, Santa Barbara, California, USA.

Figure.2 Sensors and a Display on the table (left) Social Interaction happens around the table (right)

ACM 1-59593-447-2/06/0010.

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Users/members of a Social Interaction are expected to submit their ID by putting their ID card onto a reader (Users are given their own ID card when they first use the system). Thereby they submit a panoramic photograph of themselves to the system. The system also detects where each user sits at the table. This information of rough location of users is also a key to larger community visualization. (Figure 1, bottom)

2. SYSTEM AND VISUALIZATION To visualize the accumulation of each Social Interaction into a large community, we use a graph-like human network figure with two geometric components, nodes and edges. Because there are always two or more users participating in a single Social Interaction, we use “User-Node” and “Scene-Node”, which correspond to each user/participant and each Social Interaction. An edge is created when a user participates in a Social Interaction as a line between the user (User-Node) and the record of Social Interaction (Scene-Node), as in the figure below (Fig.3).

Figure 4: An example of a larger community figure We have run the artwork and system at several academic conferences and details of visualization evolve as the artwork has occasions to be revised. Figure 4 shows an example of a large community figure taken at a conference; the example shows 11 participants and 21 Social Interactions via two table-like terminals. Figure.5 shows same community figure reacting to a user’s action of selecting one of participants of the community by mouse pointer. Photos rotate in order to make faces and hands in images face to the participant. Thus a user can go back and forth between an egocentric view and a view of the whole community interactively.

Figure.3: Simple diagram of how to create the community figure We applied a spring model to calculate the layout of the network figure. Additionally, in order to make the network figure easier to understand in intuitive ways, we use a rotating spring model to rotate a panoramic photograph. Because of the rotation, the user/participant’s figure in panoramic photos will face to the User-Node, which corresponds with the user/participant. The system also shows the records of Social Interactions in which all users around the table had participated when users submit photographs. Consequently, users can recall their past gatherings in the event.

Figure.5: Egocentric view of the community

4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research has been supported by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization)

REFERENCES

3. RELATED WORK AND TOWARDS FUTURE EVALUATION

[1] Viegas, F., Perry, E., Howe, E., Donath, J., 2004 Artifacts of the Presence Era: Using Information Visualization to Create an Evocative Souvenir, Infoviz 2004

We anticipated this cycle: participation and review of the past would help to activate and energize the community. However, to assess the effect of the system on the community requires further field experiments and evaluation. Several studies and artworks related to community visualization and collective memory already exist [1][2][3]. We must also consider these past works for future research.

[2] Paley, B., Han, J., TraceEncounters, Ars Electronica Festival 2004, http://www.traceencounters.org/ [3] Phillips Design, LivingMemory Project, Milan Furniture Fair 2001

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