brainstorming the dimensions of relationship
15 september 2003

"We are embodied time, and so are our societies, made up of history." - Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society.

Before we ask the question of how to visualize social relationships in the online world, we should first ask what aspects of social relationships are important or interesting to a user? I've made a cursory list to brainstorm some possible dimensions below...

• Who is the person? Name, monikers

• How does this person want to be identified stylistically? icon, font, colors, sounds...

• What is the nature/categorization of our relationship? Business, friends, activity partners, romantic interests, long-time friends?

• How active is the person in his/her online messaging activities?

• How active is the person with me in his/her online messaging activities?

• What are his/her interests?

• What can be said about his/her lingo/discourse style and what does that say about his/her identity?

• How much do we know about them?

• Under which contexts have we interacted, and to what magnitude?

• Do we have overlapping social networks?

• Infrequent, long convos VS. short, frequently convos?

• When was our last contact?

• What is his/her reply time versus mine?

• Do we regularly share our latest news with each other?

• What is the depth versus breadth of our conversations?

• How superficial is our interaction?

• Do we have a common friend, or group, or topic of interest which we consistently refer to?

• What is the nature of our language and use of emoticons? Flirtatious, formal, etc.?

• Are we refer to shared events and activities that we've done outside of our online interactions?

• How does his/her relationship with me compare to that of her other friends, and similarly, how does my relationship with him/her compare to my relationship with other online buddies?

• What are some of our more memorable episodes?

• Who talks more and more often?

• Is there a pattern of interruption?

• How responsive or attentive is the person?

Colin Ware's Information Visualization: Perception for Design is a bible of information visualization through basic abstract color and spatial dimensions. One troubling realization is that to create an effective, at-a-glance visualization, a designer will likely have to constrain the number of communicated dimensions to just 3 or 4.