Words as Landscape

Describes a design for a graphical landscape approach to creating a living archive for online conversation; discusses the questions this work addresses and the design approach taken. INTRODUCTION People think spatially (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Our basic orientation in the world – up, down, behind, in front – provides a foundation for our way of thinking; not only for how we think of space, but of abstract concepts as well. We can see this in the metaphors used to describe and organize online discussions: we call them conversation spaces or environments, there are chat rooms etc. Yet most conversation interfaces use space quite minimally and linearly, a legacy of the sequential necessity of the early ascii character display. Today there is no technological reason why online conversations should not be conducted within a more dimensional setting; it is only the force of habit that limits them to linear displays. This paper describes a design for a graphical interface for threaded conversation that uses space to enrich interaction. There are, of course, many possible solutions to this problem; the goal of this paper is to describe one such design as a starting point for understanding and critiquing spatial approaches to conversational interfaces. Real world landscapes and situations are complex and cluttered. We find order in the chaos, meaning through patterns. Most of today’s conversation interfaces are relatively minimalist; the look is clean, but sparse. One goal of the landscape approach is to allow for the organic and emergent development of complex yet legible patterns. Documents are subject to forces that cause the least read and lowest rated ones to shrink and sink, while the most useful – or interestingly provocative – ones remain prominent. The terrain of the information space is shaped by the activity of the users – their written contributions, their ratings, and their patterns of reading. The display thus provides a visceral sense of the history of the discussions, showing what topics have amassed deep discussions, which ones have spread by inspiring numerous related discussions. The geography of each section of the space is unique, shaped by its individual history. LANDSCAPE OF WORDS Imagine seeing a bird’s eye view of a varied and hilly terrain. As you move from place to place, the scenery changes – the dominant hues, the texture of the ground, and the height of the hills varies. Activity is visible in different areas, and one can see moving forms and bursts of light. Yet, this is not a geographical space; it is an information space, an interactive visualization of a large scale and persistent set of conversations. Like a real world scene, it is legible to the informed viewer. A traveler passing over geographic spaces can “read” the terrain – interpreting the visual patterns to mean oceans, cities, flat plains and high mountains. Similarly, here one can read the environment: dull areas indicate little fresh activity, brighter spots mean livelier places. Different hues and patterns mark the tone and content of discussion, showing distinct regions of technical exposition, emotional support, rabid disagreement, etc. a closer view Approaching the “ground”, one sees that it is composed of numerous text documents, of various sizes and tones. Some are pristine, while others have been marked and commented on by previous readers. Traversable threads connect most documents to others. Preceding documents are behind the current one, and postings from long ago may lie deep within a mountain (but travel through the layers is easy). The documents vary in their color, shape and size; these features are representative of its content, the reputation of its author, the comments and ratings given to it by readers, how recently it was read, etc. Brightness, for example, shows recentness, and thus one can see where there is current activity. There are bright flashes as new postings are added, and new documents are quite bright, slowly fading over hours or days.