MAPPING CONVERSATIONS


Conversations As Maps / Part 1 a virtual roundtable featuring
Judith Donath, Mark Hansen, Valdis Krebs, Richard Rogers, Warren Sack, Marco Susani, and E/W editors Janet Abrams and Peter Hall

Gazetteer C: Conversation Maps

Conversations As Maps / Part 2 a virtual roundtable, continued.

Gazetteer D: Conversation Maps

Conversations With Maps by Janet Abrams, Andrea Moed and Alex Terzich

Gazetteer E: Conversation Maps

Holding Patterns Peter Hall talks to Paul Mijksenaar

No Mouse Required Janet Abrams on Applied Minds Inc.'s Touch Table

Locus Focus Janet Abrams on Civic Exchange

Gazetteer F: Conversation Maps

Conversations As Maps
Tools for visualizing group conversations—whether via email, in Internet chat rooms or on mobile phones—are proliferating. We invited six leading exponents of Conversation Mapping to discuss their experimental prototypes in an online roundtable held over several weeks by email, then in a two-hour Internet chat session that connected seven cities and four time zones. What are the limits of current online systems for collective conversation? How does Conversation Mapping affect participants’ behavior in the social networks depicted? Can techniques from cartographic mapping and face-to-face dialogue make up for the deficiencies of online discourse?

"A conversation mapping can construct a rendering of each participant from the history of that person's interactions in the environment. Such a depiction is meaningful: it can help make each person stand out as an individual. Persistent history is the information world's version of the body." (Donath, 73)

"When is it better not to create a map at all? And how canwe indicate that our map is of the indefinite and the inaccurate. Maps make data appear definitive. As makers of visualizations, we need to work on finding ways to indicate the reliability of the data." (Donath, 77)

"Providing a map that juxtaposes or clusters objects in a certain way can be a pretty powerful thing; the representation tends to take on a life of its own." (Hansen, 78)

"Different rules of conversation pertain to different social groups. In certain populations, not to interrupt one's interlocutor in conversation is rude because silence is taken to be lack of attention, whereas in other populations, 'waiting one's turn' is considered civil, and interruption is rude." (Sack, 77)

"I'm pushing toward maps that represent the interpretation of a phenomenon, rather than its actual reality. My interest has shifted to studying 'maps' like religious cosmogenies...that represent topologies where "DATA IS DEFINITELY NOT AVAILABLE - AND IS NOT THE POINT ANYWAY." (Susani, 79)

"Fuzzy diagrams help declare that sensorial perception is rich, profund, and intangible, and rational straight lines aren't. In my network maps, 'swirly' links are a way to represent the immateriality, frailty and ethereality of conversational links." (Susani, 79)

"I see maps as sense-making documents: when discussed, we all get smarter...or start asking better questions." (Krebs, 97)

"We're looking at fiery language and sticky issues, as oppposed to mapping the overall space." (Rogers, 96)

Conversations With Maps
Location technologies and digital displays have changed what maps look like, where we find them and what we do with them. On dynamic maps, cities and continents are set in motion, animated by data that changes at the speed of the network. Andrea Moed, Alex Terzich and Janet Abrams look at recent experimental interactive maps that demand iterative querying rather than mere reading, provoking the user into conversations with maps.

It was clear to these users that Urban Tapestries was no digital walking guide but, as one person put it, "a new, physically rooted web." The map and the Internet had met in a deep kiss; lives had become lenses onto land. (Moed, 107)

The in-car map shifts from being merely a more efificent means of navigation, to a container of personal impressions - a veritable for Baede-Kar for the flaneur behind the steering wheel. (Abrams, 111)

"Imagine if a community could make a rendering so they could understand what a proposed development would look like from their street corner, as opposed to the privileged point of view of the planners or developers. A less imperial gaze is what I'm looking for."(McGrath, 115)

Holding Patterns
Navigating through airports has become increasingly tricky, given the competing interests of security, commerce and efficient passenger flow. Peter Hall talks to Paul Mijksenaar, designer of exemplary wayfinding systems for schiphol in Amsterdam and New York’s three major airports, about the fine art of getting from gate A to Gate B.

"As a designer you are able to make things clear; you have some tools to do a good job and show, say, McDonald's and Manhattan at the same time. It's only when the client is stupid that you have a problem." ( Mijksenaar, 129)

"The requirements of human beings... can be mixed and contradictory. People have no single goal. Maps should reflect that." (Mijksenaar, 129)

No Mouse Required
A table-based interactive map responds to the hand of authority. Janet Abrams gets under its surface.

Merely by applying hand pressure to the table, deeper layers of data are drawn to the surface, giving the owner of that hand the impression that the sheer weight of their presence suffices to call forth the information. (Abrams, 130)

Locus Focus
Conceived as a gathering point for Lower Manhattan, Antenna Design’s Civic Exchange offers a glimpse of the next generation of intelligent street furniture—a hybrid of industrial, urban and interactive design with a multi-user map table at its heart. By Janet Abrams.

"People can pick any spot on the map, place an icon there, and say whatever they way to say...But it raises an interesting issue: if you create something for public space, how public do you allow it to be?" (Sigi Moeslinger,137)