Chloe Ye-Eun Moon & Dario Rodighiero: Mapping as a Contemporary Instrument for Orientation in Conferences

It is very interesting that the language “signatures” of authors of conference articles can be used to find links between authors, rank the strength of these links, and finally use this information to create a spatial visualization of the authors. It seems pretty obvious to consider the individual authors as nodes which can connect with one another as a network, since we tend to use this model when describing interpersonal relationships with words such as “social networks”. However, I was surprised that an elevation map was created out of this data, since it seems to be a less obvious, more creative representation of it.

Dario Rodighiero: Printing Walkable Visualizations

I appreciate that Rodighiero thoroughly examines challenges that large-scale, walkable visualizations face, such as limits on zooming out and multiple-user interaction. In addition, he notes challenges that visualizations of interpersonal relationships in general face, which mainly stem from how the individuals represented in them respond to them. I agree with Rodighiero that walkable visualizations can be compelling and engaging in ways that no other forms can, due to the scale, the multi-user capability, and its public quality. However, it seems that the production of these require many significant considerations in terms of economics, user experience, and technology. I am curious to see how walkable visualizations can advance in the future, and how creators of visualizations involving human relationships tackle the challenge of how to effectively and sensitively represent them.