| The
left-hand panel in the interface is
the Display-panel, presenting a detailed
graphical display of a particular representation,
while the upper-right panel serves as
an Overview, providing a thumbprint
of the detailed display. A user can
select a portion of interest on the
Overview, prompting the interface to
display the selected part in detail
on the Display-panel. At the top of
both the Display-panel and the Overview
are four tabs. Clicking on one of these
will bring up one of the four types
of the interface: Content Summary, Interaction
Summary, Expert Indicator, and Behavior
Summary. Each type presents one graphical
representation displaying a certain
aspect of a CMC process on both the
Display-panel and the Overview. In addition,
Content Summary, Interaction Summary,
and Expert Indicator divide their display-panels
into sub-gardens based on the sub-topics
identified automatically. Thus each
sub-garden represents one subtopic.
Content Summary
describes the temporal change of each
sub-topic, where one green line means
there was one message posted on a
certain day for this sub-topic. While
the x-axis represents time, the vertical
thickness of each sub-topic indicates
how "hot" it is on a certain
day.
Interaction Summary depicts the liveliness
of discussion within each sub-topic,
where one flower is on thread. The
number of flower petals equals the
number of messages posted for that
thread, while the number of leaves
represents the number of persons who
participate in the discussion of this
thread. In addition, the height of
a flower indicates how long the thread
lasts.
Expert Indicator uses person flowers
to help users locate active persons
in each sub-topic, where one flower
represents one person. The number
of petals equals the number of messages
that person has posted. The number
of leaves indicates the number of
threads in which that person has participated,
and the height of the flower indicates
how long the person has stayed in
the community.
Behavior Summary describes the behavior
of each participant during the CMC
process. The same type of the person
flower is used here. A user may obtain
from the Behavior Summary valuable
information such as the attitude of
the participants toward the community
(indicated by the number of messages
each person posts and the length of
time each person stays in the community).
The lower-right panel is the Message
panel, which displays the list of
messages of interest that a user has
selected from the Display-panel. By
clicking on one message title will
bring up another window that displays
the content of the selected message.
|
