psych3)/psychnology_journal_cover_toc... · 221 editorial preface maps are visual depictions of a...

8

Upload: nguyentu

Post on 22-Mar-2019

214 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

218

PSYCHNOLOGY JOURNALThe Other Side of Technology

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Luciano GamberiniDepartment of General Psychology, Padova University, Italy.

Giuseppe RivaCatholic University of Milan, Italy.

Anna SpagnolliDepartment of General Psychology, Padova University, Italy.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Mariano Alcañiz Raya: Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. Valencia, Spain.Cristian Berrío Zapata: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Bogotà, Colombia.Rosa Baños: Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.David Benyon: Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.Cristina Botella: Univeritat Jaume I. Castellón, Spain.Antonella de Angeli: University of Manchester. United KingdomJonathan Freeman: Goldsmiths College, University of London. United Kingdom.Christine Hine: University of Surrey. Guildford, United Kingdom.Christian Heath: King's College. London, United Kingdom.Wijnand Ijsselsteijn: Eindhoven University of Technology. Eindhoven, The Netherlands.Giulio Jacucci: Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. Helsinki, Finland.David Kirsh: University of California. San Diego (CA), USA.Matthew Lombard: Temple University. Philadelphia (PA), USA.Albert "Skip" Rizzo: University of Southern California. Los Angeles (CA), USA.Ramakoti Sadananda: Rangsit University. Bangkok, Thailand.Angela Schorr: Universität Siegen. Siegen, Germany.Paul F.M.J. Verschure: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Barcelona, Spain.Alexander Voiskounsky: Moscow State University. Moscow, Russia.John A Waterworth: Umeå University. Umea, Sweden.Brenda K. Wiederhold: Interactive Media Institute-Europe. Brussels, Belgium.

CONSULTING EDITORS

Hans Christian Arnseth: University of Oslo. Olso, Norway.Marco Casarotti: University of Padova. Padova, Italy.Roy Davies: Lund University. Lund, Sweden.Andrea Gaggioli: Catholic University of Milan. Milan, Italy.Pietro Guardini: Padova University. Padova, Italy.Frode Guribye: University of Bergen. Bergen, Norway.Raquel Navarro-Prieto: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Castelldefels, Spain.Stephan Roy: Hospital Sainte Anne. Paris, France.Carlos Ruggeroni: National University of Rosario. Rosario, Argentina.

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Lisa Prontu: University of Padova. Padova, Italy.

PSYCHNOLOGY JOURNAL, PNJPUBLISHED ON-LINE SINCE SUMMER 2002

WEB SITE: HTTP://WWW.PSYCHNOLOGY.ORG

219

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Preface …………………............................................................ p. 221

SPECIAL ISSUE:

A Design Framework for Mapping Social Relationships…...................... p. 225Alistair Sutcliffe

Social Interaction through Map-based Wikis........................................... p. 247Andrea Marcante, Loredana Parasiliti Provenza

Nurturing Learners' Communities by Creating and Sharing Maps......... p. 269Sosuke Miura, Pamela Ravasio, Masanori Sugimoto

SIM: A dynamic multidimensional visualization method for socialnetworks…………………………………………………………………….... p. 291Maria Chiara Caschera , Fernando Ferri, Patrizia Grifoni

Other Contents

Applying a Cognitive Engineering Approach to Interface Design ofEnergy Management Systems……….................................................... p. 321Thomas Hoff , Andreas Hauser

220

221

Editorial Preface

Maps are visual depictions of asubject, highlighting relationshipscharacterizing the subject through aspace based representation. As notedby Kuhn1, “space is not just any domainof experience, but the most importantone, and as such uniquely qualified asa metaphor source.” Hence, mapspermit the communication and sharingof knowledge and are used asboundary objects for cooperativeactivities. Born as media forrepresenting, communicating andreasoning on geographic phenomena,maps evolved to represent knowledgeabout systems developing in space butalso abstract subjects, schematizingintangible relationships through a geo-graphical metaphor. Today, maps canalso be the expression of a generalsocial ‘mood’ of a part of theenvironment, bridging geographicalmetaphors with informationvisualization.

In the Web 2.0 age, maps becomenew media for knowledge creation,accumulation, distribution and sharing.They evolve to digital interactive andpro-active tools, whose contentdevelops in time and whose physicalappearance can be determined on thefly at use time. Users themselves maybe-come coauthors of the map, directlycontributing to its evolution.

Cooperative computing traditionallyhas been focused on collaboration forsolving specific tasks; social systemsextend the use of computer supportedcommunication and collaboration forpromoting friendship, forcommunicating thoughts and feelings topeople that share common interests,and for enhancing the exploration of thesocial environment.

1 Kuhn W. (1996, August). Handling DataSpatially: Spatializing User Interfaces.Presentation at the 7th Int. Symposium onSpatial Data Handling, SDH’96, Advancesin GIS Research II, IGU

In social networking maps can greatlyimprove the users’ perception of thesocial environment through the visualrepresentation of other people's socialfeatures and of the relations inside acommunity. Maps improve alsointeraction among users, who are ableto visually identify and relate each otherthrough the perception of location,distance and grouping. Maps areuseful as a real-time representation ofthe social environment dynamics, andfor localizing events such as meeting,entertainment, public places, that canaffect the virtual community evolution.

A large literature has addressedsocial networks and virtualcommunities. At our knowledge theirrepresentation with map metaphors hasonly be ad-dressed for displaypurposes, leaving interaction relatedissues a field still to be analyzed.

The MapIsNet workshop, Map BasedInteraction for Social Networks, washeld on September 10, 2007 at Rio deJaneiro, Brazil, in conjunction withINTERACT2007, 11th IFIP TC 13 Inter-national Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. It aimed atdiscussing the issues related to the useof maps as active mediators betweenthe users and the social environments,and among the users of a socialenvironment. Several open questionswere proposed and debated at theworkshop, here briefly recorded withhints for an answer.

How can a map representationcommunicate social parameters to theusers?

Social networks as seen through theWeb 2.0 applications do not exhibitformalized organization and structure.Free tagging and spontaneousconvergence of keywords seem tocharacterize several communitieswhose users are able to self-organizetheir vocabulary and to coordinatethemselves to gain a generalunderstanding of their interests. Maps

222

can provide a firm shared ground foranchoring information related to usersand coming from users, acting as acommon layer all the users can agreeupon for reasoning and for adding theirinterpretation.

How can individual parameters beintegrated and interpolated in a map tovisualize a social “mood” of the net-work?

Often the social or affective moodevaluation can be reached through acooperative evaluation process, for ex-ample by exploiting map annotationtechniques, through which users ex-press and compare their views,comment and ranks, summarized, forex-ample, by tags and emoticons.

How can a map facilitate the humanuse of the net?

Semantic web is aimed at obtainingmachine inter-operability of web re-sources, which must be translated intoa human manageable form to beconsumed by human users. However,human manageable forms are notunique, because signals are interpretedby humans according to their differentcultures, skills and situations. Throughlocalization, involving not only thelanguage of words but also thelanguages of symbols, layout andinteraction map based representationsmay become an intercultural way torepresent and share content.

Which is the role of maps in dealingwith people physical and emotionalneighborhood?

Social maps may have a directemotional impact on users, becausethey may precisely relate the presenceof humans, associated to informationsuch as their profile, to the territory. Theimpact is augmented whenever suchmaps are consulted on the field, e.g.,with a mobile device, in a situationwhere the physical limits of the user aredirectly related to the environment.

How can novel visualization andinteraction techniques improve the userperception of the social environment?

Interactive maps can offer to theusers the opportunity to have a real-time perception of the evolution of theirsocial environment, deriving from theirinput, from actions of other componentsof the social network, even fromexternal factors. Geographic interactivemaps add the awareness of thephysical locations of the social networkcomponents, permitting new interactionopportunities in the real world.

How is the development of context-aware and ubiquitous systemscontributing to improve the map basedinteraction to discover and accesssocial ser-vices?

Ubiquitous systems and contextawareness are tightly related since thedawn of this area. In context awaresystems, location has been consideredfor long time a privileged contextdescriptor, also due to the ease toacquire measures and compute spatialcoordinates and discrete locations. Thehuman ability to relate oneself to thesurrounding space and the space-based nature of most human activitieshas boosted location awareness to itsfull exploitation.

The four papers collected in thisspecial issue are extended versions ofselected papers presented at theMapIsNet workshop. They respond tothese questions from complementaryperspectives, exploring the themes ofsocial networks representation andinteraction through maps in differentapplication areas. Collectively theyprovide an ample coverage of the mainissue of the workshop: the ability ofmap based interaction to make clearand self evident the information relatedto social phenomena, services andmood.

The first paper “A Design Frameworkfor Mapping Social Relationships” byAlistair Sutcliffe describes a designframework for representing spatial data

223

related to social phenomena on mapsand diagrams, illustrating the designapproaches for social datarepresentation. In two case studies theauthor pro-poses map basedvisualizations to compareorganizational structures with socialrelationships and to interpret cause-effect relations in the analysis of healthcare data for a population.

The paper “Social Interaction throughMap-based Wikis” by Andrea Marcanteand Loredana Parasiliti Provenzaintroduces the notion of map-basedwiki, a collaboration metaphor thatallows users to interact each other andwith information through a digital mapby multimodal and localized digitalannotations. The authors face also theissue of affective knowledge,introducing a set of multi-modal signsthat are used for expressing theperception of the quality of theenvironment and that are localized ac-cording to different cultures.

The paper “Nurturing Learners’Communities by Creating and SharingMaps” by Sosuke Miura, PamelaRavasio and Masanori Sugimotopresents a system that integratesoutdoor and classroom activities relatedto the exploration of urban and natureenvironments with a map basedapproach to data creation, analysis andinteraction. The authors aim atpromoting, through maps, collaborativeactivities among the children, involvingalso teachers and parents ascomponents of learning communities.

Finally, the paper “SIM: A dynamicmultidimensional visualization methodfor social networks” by Maria ChiaraCaschera, Fernando Ferri and PatriziaGrifoni describes a method of socialnetworks visualization devoted not onlyto analyse individual and group socialrelationships, but also aimed tostimulate an active social participation.The authors analyze, in the context of aconference management scenario, theparticipants’ social relations alongseveral dimensions: the individualcharacterization, their social position,

the spatial location, the evolution alongtime, pro-viding information forinteraction between users, servicedesign and event planning.

Augusto CelentanoUniversità Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy

Piero MussioUniversità degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Fabio PittarelloUniversità Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy

In addition to the articles addressingthe topic of the special issue, PNJ 6(3)includes a paper by Thomas Hoff andAndreas Hauser, entitled “Applying aCognitive Engineering Approach toInterface Design of EnergyManagement Systems”. The authorsillustrate the ergonomic issues indesigning a grid management system,and organize the suggested constraintsaccording to the cognitive level involved(skill-, rules-, and knowledge-basedcontrol).

The Editors-in-Chief

224