{"id":11271,"date":"2018-11-06T18:34:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T23:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/?p=11271"},"modified":"2019-01-10T23:55:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T04:55:21","slug":"how-do-your-interests-values-affect-your-social-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/labs\/how-do-your-interests-values-affect-your-social-network\/","title":{"rendered":"How do your interests\/values affect your social network?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s one of the classic small talk questions, coming up in such deep conversations as office team building exercises and low quality dates; and you are certain to have heard it before.\u00a0 “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be?”<\/p>\n

But what if we looked back throughout your life and asked you this question every year?\u00a0 In some sense, an overview of your interests, values and priorities may begin to emerge.\u00a0 Where does the importance we place on these characteristics stem from and where do they lead?\u00a0 Our social network is one of the most valuable aspects of our lives, sharing new ideas and views for us to consider and learn from.\u00a0 Can you learn anything about yourself from visualizing a representational version of your network’s interests, values, and priorities?<\/p>\n

Inspiration:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This project by Federica Fragapane is an example of building separate “nodes” as an image and dataset within itself; and then compiling these into a broader network (in her case, a timeline).\u00a0 The way she uses an aesthetically pleasing shape to convey the data brings the viewer in for a closer inspection.\u00a0 She could have chosen to simply use the size of a circle instead of lines, however, it is possible more people will engage seeing a more unfamiliar shape.\u00a0 Her work straddles the line between aesthetics and readability in a successful way.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.behance.net\/gallery\/70033395\/The-Most-Violent-Cities<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The question itself grew out of writing a personal bio.\u00a0 Trying to come up with a more interesting way of representing myself, I landed on this concept and from there, began to think about its implications and patterns that may exist across a social network.<\/p>\n

Materials and Methods:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Data collection:<\/p>\n

The data was collected through a poll of some family, close friends, and coworkers.\u00a0 They were asked the question, with no knowledge of how their answers would be interpreted.\u00a0 After all the answers had been collected from the 13 participants, themes were assigned to each dinner guest and then grouped together in order to establish the 18 nodes.\u00a0 See CSV files below to see how source and targets were established from these themes.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Creating radial diagrams:<\/p>\n

The individual node radial diagrams were created in\u00a0Gephi<\/a>\u00a0using the circular layout.\u00a0 Node colors were assigned by sector of theme, trying to group similar themes into similar hues.\u00a0 Their size was dictated by the degree to which the theme was on their list of dinner guests.\u00a0 Edge color was assigned by weight, which was age.\u00a0 Multiple iterations were made, as each individual created a new shape and the appearance characteristics of the template had to be adjusted to accommodate every individual in a uniform manner.<\/p>\n

Creating social network diagram:<\/p>\n

This was done in\u00a0Illustrator<\/a>\u00a0as the data set was limited with only 14 participants.\u00a0 This is certainly a process that would be conducted in Gephi with more individuals polled, and set up as an undirected network.<\/p>\n

Results and Interpretations:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This image explains the node layout and gives a case example (built from the dataset seen above).\u00a0 One of the challenges was maintaining the theme in the same area of the circle for each individual, while adjusting for the size of the node.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These are some of the possible individual shapes that emerged.\u00a0 While the eye is immediately drawn to the node location and size, the shape that is produced by the edges is perhaps even more representational of the individual.\u00a0 It is worth noting that this dataset is limited by age, everyone polled was between 22 and 34, so the edges shape is mostly normalized by this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here is a segment of my own social network, with my family, friends, and coworkers represented by their radial diagram.\u00a0 Note that these edges represent relationships, with their color using the same palate as the radial diagram themes.\u00a0 With a limited dataset, this is mostly just for interest, however, one could imagine the trends that may emerge over a larger polled population.<\/p>\n

The folks I polled enjoyed the process, an excuse to think and reflect on themselves and how they have changed over the years.\u00a0 They seemed excited receiving an odd shape sent back to them with the key.\u00a0 It is was a good process to go through to observe the interest people have when they become an individual within the dataset and this is able to be visualized.<\/p>\n

Reflections:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This lab introduced me to the basics of Gephi, and in some ways I am glad I started with a tiny data set for this process as changes were easier to understand and observe.\u00a0 That being said, it left many aspects of the software, such as filters, out for me in this lab and will need to return to those concepts later.<\/p>\n

To continue this lab, a Google Form is needed to collect the information from a larger audience, and the themes could be assigned from Wikipedia, however, this turned out to be difficult on the first test as family, etc. are not listed on Wiki.\u00a0 I think a better method would be in the poll itself.\u00a0 After everyone has answered the questions without an understanding of the theme “bins”, save these results, and then have the participant asked which theme to categorize the dinner guest under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction: It’s one of the classic small talk questions, coming up in such deep conversations as office team building exercises and low quality dates; and you are certain to have heard it before.\u00a0 “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be?” But what if we looked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":11352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,342],"tags":[206,284,39,285,125],"coauthors":[324],"class_list":["post-11271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-labs","category-networks","tag-gephi-network-visualization","tag-dinner-guest","tag-gephi","tag-interests","tag-social-network"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/11\/federica-fragapane.png?fit=1502%2C938&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paBdcV-2VN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11271"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11398,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271\/revisions\/11398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11271"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}