flowerGarden

Visualizing social networking and discussion in a small community

Live Flash Demo (for as long as web browsers support it!)

FlowerGarden is an interactive visualization of social networking and concept sharing occurring within a small group (30-80 individuals). It was deployed at the Bodies in Play Summit, a conference held at the Banff New Media Institute in May of 2005. Set up as a projected installation in the event space, participants continually entered information about whom their conversations were with and what they discussed. Over the course of the event, the flowerGarden grew from a few sparse flowers to a lush garden as the number of participants (flowers) and conversations (flower petals) increased.

The Flash web application allows participants to input conversation information (grow mode) or navigate data (explore mode), visualized as an overlapping combination of a social network graph and a word cloud concept map. Each participant is represented as a flower with their initials in the centre and one petal for each conversation they have entered. A vine links participants who have had conversations. The frequency of concept entries is mapped to word size and position, showing commonly used terms in the center of the circle. The grow mode has now been disabled but visitors can explore the garden grown by participants at the original conference in 2005.