Sense.us: Towards a more social ‘social visualization’

Abstract

The present research analyses the ‘social visualization’ tool Sense.us, a commercial interactive Web application in which U.S. Census data are being visualized. Sense.us was developed as a tool for social data exploration and interaction, in which it would be worthwhile to pay attention to the socio-cultural values that have driven the collection and categorization of the underlying U.S. Census datasets. It is argued that closer attention to value-driven U.S. Census statistics would greatly enhance the social appeal of Sense.us, and would be a logical next step in the development of online social visualization tools. In order to allow for explicit socio-cultural values of statistics in online visualizations, three strategies are offered: pro-active annotation; more attention to visual aesthetics; and, a tighter integration of user profiles and represented data.

Trace data visualisation enquiry: a methodological coupling for studying information practices in relation to information systems

“…As positivist approaches treats trace data as objective empirical data without problematizing materiality and social practices forming them, there is a need for complementary approaches to understanding these data. For the last decade, a growing tendency in information visualisation research is the emphasis on the social usage and online networks of data sets (Sluijs, 2008). Moreover, participatory visual and digital methods have been suggested to “produce rich multimodal and narrative data guided by participant interests and priorities, putting the methods literally in hands of the participants themselves” (Gubrium and Harper, 2016, p. 13).…”

“…By using visualisations as bases for interviews, the researcher can gain a topological understanding of previous activities, which can be more thoroughly investigated in the interview settings, as in the case of Charlotte (Figures 3 and 4). However, visualisations can also provide more detailed investigations, which the interviews can explain in a more overarching sense; investigating the trace data enables analyses of social aspects of information systems and data sets (Sluijs, 2008). This is visible in the case of Victoria and Alex (Figure 5), where annotations are thoroughly explored.…”