Criteria for Creating User-Friendly Interactive Network Visualizations

As a newcomer to the Digital Humanities, I first encountered network visualizations in early January of 2012; given my near-total inexperience and ignorance, there are doubtlessly more qualified people to write about the positive and negative qualities of such visualizations. However, I may have something valuable to contribute, precisely because I have attempted to navigate and make sense of these visualizations as an outsider.

When I began examining interactive network visualizations, I often found the internal logic and criteria used to create them baffling or arbitrary; however, I also found some visualizations to be completely intuitive. In an attempt to put my finger on the differences between these two sets of visualizations, I composed a list of features without which I was invariably lost. Eventually, this list grew into a set of criteria for generating relatively transparent and user-friendly network visualizations. I hope this set of criteria can be of use to someone:

1. Consider the reason for everything (including the criteria for item selection and identity, significance of physical space and distance between nodes, nature of relationships suggested by lines connecting nodes, how values are assigned to nodes, etc.), define discrete criteria, and be consistent
2.  Explain the reasons for everything; a visualization can be useful to its creators without this step, but will not be useful (or worse still, will not be used correctly) by others unless the reasoning behind a visualization is clear; all visualizations should be accompanied by methodological explanations if they are to be of use to the wider community
3.  Beware the argument of false analogy: the reduction of real-world items to nodes connected by lines is intrinsically metaphorical and can lead to false conclusions when nodes are used in ways that do not fit with the definitions of the nodes themselves, the nature of the relationships between them as defined in a visualization, or both; each visualization is a metaphor, and errors occur when arguments are made that take any metaphor too far; this is a particular danger when inheriting visualizations or visualization frameworks
4.  There is a tendency for network visualizations to decrease in utility as they increase in size and complexity. However, there are ways to counter this:   
• A text search option (a must)
• Enabling the application of multiple filters (it is typically not enough to highlight items selected by certain criteria, and there should be a way to eliminate the other data in a refined visualization); ideally, an interactive visualization would combine predefined and user-generated filters
• The reasoning behind these filters should be made explicit, as per points 1-3 
• If necessary, minimize interconnectivity and network density (everything can connect to everything else, but if it does, relationships are probably defined too generally to be useful – or nodes are not defined discretely enough)
• In the case of 3D visualizations, the depth of visualizations ought to be considered carefully; particularly in spherical visualizations, field depth often makes it difficult to see anything but the nearest surface (to such a degree that the outer surface of such a visualization may as well be opaque, for all the good its transparency does); often, opacity would be preferable, in fact, as the background noise in a 3D visualization can be extremely distracting
5. Visualizations ought to be supplemented with a text version of the data that that is being represented (I have not yet found this, but it would be extremely useful); though unexpected patterns can sometimes “jump out” of visualizations – to use the preferred metaphor of many visualization proponents – they can also jump out of raw data
6.  Enable an ordered way of entering complex or chaotic visualizations; something as simple as an alphabetized list of nodes linked to the visualization could make it much easier to access a visualization for a specific purpose (creating an arbitrary demarcation point is undesirable for a variety of reasons, but this would be preferable to no demarcation point)

Here are a couple of visualizations to consider:

GE. “Healthymagination.” http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/network/.

This visualization does many things effectively. First, it provides two distinct layout options (Images 1.1 & 1.2); given the complexity of this network, the ability to change perspective is very useful.

Image 1.1

The circular mode of visualization (1.2) is particularly useful because of the lack of labels and greatly varied type size in the first mode of visualization – though the latter remains somewhat of an issue even in the second mode of visualization.

Image 1.2

Even in the first mode of visualization, steps are taken to offset the lack of visibility created by the field depth and network density. Most significantly, a text box appears with information about a given node when the mouse pointer is placed over that node (1.3).

Image 1.3

In addition, this visualization provides both a useful set of predetermined categories, which greatly reduce the displayed information when selected (1.4 & 1.5), and a functional search option.

Image 1.4

Image 1.5

Finally, while this visualization does not provide access to raw data outside of the visualization, it does provide some information (though nowhere near enough) about both the reasoning behind the visualization, and the associated data (1.6).

Image 1.6

Moebio. “Spheres: Spherical Surface of Dialogue.” http://moebio.com/esfera/sphere/esfera.htm.

There are several issues that severely limit the utility of “Spheres.” First, the visual depth of field greatly limits the ability to be able to identify a significant number of nodes simultaneously (2.1).

Image 2.1

Even though there is a “point of vue” option that allows one to zoom in (2.2), this option does little to improve the situation; the zoom is not variable, and the pre-set zoom does not move to a distance that improves overall visibility.

Image 2.2

Although dragging the mouse causes the sphere to rotate, a large percentage of the nodes remain difficult to perceive simply because such small a portion of the nodes appear within a readable range. An option that would either flatten the sphere into two dimensions or reduce the field depth would solve this problem. In addition, a text-box that appears when the mouse pointer is placed over a node (as is shown in 1.3) would make it possible to see the connections between points on opposite ends of the sphere. As the visualization exists now, it is extremely difficult to seek and select a specific node the rear half of the sphere; connecting nodes on opposite sides of the sphere is virtually impossible.

Furthermore, the explanations for network connectivity are often arbitrary, pointless, and baffling. For instance, when selecting “pleasure” and “a white tiger,” the explanation that appears is “VWYEHRIFN” (2.3).

Image 2.3

Though “VWYEHRIFN” may mean something to someone, it means nothing to me; as nothing appeared when I entered this into google, I suspect that others are likely to find this explanation equally perplexing.

The issue here seems to be that the relationships between items are generated by the users, who are able to define or refine the relationships between any items they select. While this seems to bring an element of democratic collaboration to “Spheres,” it has the potential to undermine both the legitimacy of the connections drawn and the consistency of the types of relationships defined by the lines connecting nodes. (Incidentally, before capturing Image 2.3, I had intended to connect “pleasure” with “desire,” but as the footprint of the “a white tiger” node was too large to allow items near it to be chosen, I inadvertently selected “a white tiger.” When I repositioned the sphere and successfully connected “pleasure” with “desire,” no relationship appeared.)

Manicules: post-publication discussion

I want to use the opening sentence from the ArchBook entry on Manicules by Voytek Bialkowski, Christine DeLuca, and Kalina Lafreniere as a starting point for some post-publication discussion.

“While a manicule (fig. 1) may vary in size, shape, and quality, ranging from the simple outline of a hand (fig. 2) to a more detailed sketch featuring ornate sleeves and cuffs (fig. 3), the unifying characteristic is that of an extended index finger pointing towards a specific selection of text.”

What is striking about images two and three referenced in the opening sentence above is how much they differ (see the entry for comparison). While ms. manicules were widely used for notetaking in books and manuscripts of the medieval and early modern periods, no two readers’ manicules ever look the same. Indeed, the manicule image shown below is particularly interesting in this regard.

Gualterus Burlaeus, Burleus super octo libros Phisicorum Venetijs, Impressa p[er] S. de Luere, iussu A. Torresani de Asula, 1501. sig. B4r. Image Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

While at first glance it would appear we are looking at the standard pointing finger, what we are actually looking at is a quill (and an active quill) that is indexing and underlining at once. This reminds me of how personalized handwritten annotation is as an activity, and it makes me wonder if we can say the same about annotation in digital environments? I can choose a bullet, a star and any number of symbols from Microsoft Word for annotating, listing and classifying material, but the key difference is that I didn’t actually design the symbol. Does it matter that we choose a symbol rather than design it when we annotate online? Another question: How global is the history of the manicule?

Standard Editions of Utopia

Thomas More’s Utopia, which is subject to constant editing and publication, has two modern critical editions regarded as standard by scholarly consensus: Surtz and Hexter’s 1965 Yale edition, and Logan, Adams, and Miller’s 1995 Cambridge edition. To differentiate their editions from those of other editors, justify the production of their versions, and assist readers, the editors of these two editions explain their editorial processes in relation to Utopia’s textual history. Their explanations may be regarded as exemplary because Utopia has a convoluted bibliographical lineage consisting of many variant editions. The Yale and Cambridge editorial teams provide sophisticated sets of introductory and annotative material, as well as addenda, to situate their editions.

As noted in its introduction, although it takes the March 1518 Latin edition of Utopia as its copy text, the Yale edition collates another 14 Latin versions dated from 1516 to 1936. In order to justify the choice of copy text, descriptive bibliographies identify and distinguish the earliest four editions of Utopia (Louvain, 1516; Paris, 1517; Basel, March and November 1518) on the basis of their textual variances (in orthography, punctuation, omissions, etc.). Because Utopia features supplementary letters sent between More and his associates, maps, sketches, a section on the Utopian alphabet, and so on, and because each edition organizes these ancillary materials differently, the Yale editors explain their inclusion and organization of such supplementary materials around the body of More’s main text. Expository comments on Utopia are placed as endnotes, while footnotes mark syntactic or lexical variants between the 14 variant editions (see fig. 1). The editors remark that their critical apparatus leaves out small textual differences deemed inconsequential, such as spellings considered interchangeable (ex. iusticia and iustitia), the multiplicity of forms in the abbreviation and capitalization of respublica, and so forth. There is a limit, then, to the extent of the apparatus’s inclusion of details about other editions of Utopia, although the assumption of the editors is that they have provided enough information to satisfy most readers by situating their edition relative to its precursors. The Yale editors’ measured consideration of 14 other editions to complement their Latin copy text, and the wealth of their insights in that regard, certainly attests to the value of engaged, careful bibliographic inquiry. Generally, substantive variants between editions are treated fully; accidental variants are classified as being either significant enough to be mentioned or not. In a section of the Yale edition’s appendix, the editors further discuss More’s vocabulary and diction and, in doing so, they validate their selection and revision of G. C. Richards’ 1923 translation of Utopia, which furnishes the English text that parallels the Latin. The editors also briefly explain their use and revision of Richards’ work in the introduction, but they do not include annotations to explain specific alterations to the translation. In this regard, the Yale edition lacks details of particular interest to other editors of English translations of Utopia, many of whom justify their versions by mentioning (but not explicitly citing) perceived shortcomings in Richards’ translation (see for example Clarence H. Miller, Utopia, 2001, esp. xxi–xxiii). A reader interested in studying variant English translations of Utopia would find little assistance in the editorial apparatuses available to them in the many scholarly and critical editions published since the Yale edition.

Fig. 1. Footnotes marking variants between editions

Logan, Adams, and Miller’s 1995 Cambridge edition is a revised and expanded version of Logan and Adams’ 1989 Utopia. A preface in the 1995 edition explains the scope and scale of its revisions. For example, it adds a redaction of the Latin text, a textual introduction, notes, and an appendix, and it corrects errors in the original edition’s translation. Like the editors of the Yale edition, Logan, Adams, and Miller take the March 1518 Utopia as their copy text; they justify their choice in an appendix which describes and compares the earliest 4 editions of More’s text. Their preface acknowledges their modernisation of the copy text on three counts: Latin spellings, paragraphs, and punctuation. Following the preface, a short section titled “Textual Practices” explains the editors’ references to secondary texts, spelling of the names of historic figures, choices around the use of gendered language in the English translation, and so forth (see fig. 2). The next section, the introduction, is organized into two parts: interpretive contexts and the Latin text. The first part is a thematic overview of the book, while the second relates the bibliographic details the editors took into account in their selection of a copy text. This latter section of the introduction also covers more explicitly matters of modernisation (breaks into paragraphs, spelling, punctuation) mentioned in the preface. For instance, the editors explain the method by which they standardize the spelling of various words that are used with variant spellings in early editions of Utopia. In contrast to the Yale edition, the Cambridge Utopia confines itself to the textual variants between the earliest 4 editions (instead of the Yale’s 14). Footnotes to the Latin text mark especially important variants (i.e. substantive variants) between the 4 editions, but, displaying more prejudice than the Yale version, the Cambridge editors “silently disregard” many accidental variants “when they contribute nothing to an understanding of the text” (xxxiv).

Fig. 2. Prefatory section on textual practices

The editors of these two standard editions of Utopia thus do much to situate their editions in relation to others and provide bibliographic information to readers. Much of the editorial apparatus of both books, in the prefaces, annotations, introductions, appendices and so on, details the specific choices of the editors to these ends (in their selection of a copy text, treatment of accidental and substantive variants, and so on). In light of the tendency of other, less well-known editions of Utopia to note the deviations that they make from the Yale and Cambridge versions, it seems that one of the key reasons why the Yale and Cambridge editions are regarded as standard is that their editors so thoroughly situate and explain their publications in their editorial apparatuses. The paratext of the Yale and Cambridge editions is thus exemplary. However, the editors of both editions remark on the limits of what they include in their apparatuses. Accidental variants between editions, for example, are regularly omitted, as are specific instances of modernisation. Although both editions take the March 1518 Utopia as the copy text for their translations, both omit, without notice or explanation, the extended sections of poems by More and Erasmus, the “Epigrammata Clarissimi Disertissimi,” which conclude the original. As thorough as the Yale and Cambridge editions are, then, and as much as they provide a valuable example of how to collate variant editions into a standard text, there are limits to their bibliographical comprehensiveness.


Works Cited

More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 4. Edited by E. Surtz, S. J. and J. H. Hexter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

---. Utopia. Edited by G. M. Logan, R. M. Adams, and C. H. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

---. Utopia. Edited by Clarence H. Miller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

An App Based Solely on _The Waste Land_: What's Next?

In keeping with Michael's introduction of interesting and informative apps, this app produced by TouchPress is a learning tool that delivers T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The app provides full published text and various readings of the poem by T.S. Eliot, Sir Alec Guinness, and others, as well as a filmed reading performed by Fiona Shaw. There is also commentary from notable scholars and writers that provides various impressions of the poem. The app is fully searchable, and allows one to jump back and forth between the text and the performed passages without skipping a beat. In addition, it contains the original manuscript pages of The Waste Land, complete with Ezra Pound's notes, and one can move back and forth between the published text and the handwritten original text. I can't do it justice here, so you can see for yourself:

At the very least, this is an interesting example of what is being produced currently in the way of learning tools, and, although my technological foresight is definitely not authoritative, it certainly seems to have the potential to turn into a larger, more comprehensive product.

Announcing an INKE Modelling/Prototyping Twitter Account

Last week, the INKE Modelling/Prototyping Team launched a Twitter account, @INKE_MP. It is our hope that this account will increase our online visibility, produce another way for the general public to discover us (we will be using the #INKE hashtag when providing links to content produced by the team), and provide us with a forum for sharing our discoveries with both other group members and the public.

For our team to develop relevant models and prototypes, it is quite simply a necessity to know what models exist and how they are being utilized; given the current state of digital publication, this task requires that we continually search for new models, devices, and applications. Though much of what we find deserves a great deal of discussion, much of it also seems self-explanatory, or does not appear to relate directly to modelling and prototyping. A Twitter account gives us a way to say, “You may find this interesting,” without having to comment further.

Consider, for instance, the subject of our first Tweet, a promotional video announcing a new iPad app, “Hebrew from Insight Out”:

This app is, in essence, a multimedia parallel edition of the The Book of Genesis, Bereshit that is aimed at teaching Hebrew to English speakers. Along with the Hebrew text come features that provide commentary on passages in both Hebrew and English, and a talking Hebrew/English dictionary. While “Hebrew from Insight Out” is an interesting example of the current state of digital publication, and while it provides some insight into the future of the book, it is nothing that I am capable of commenting on beyond suggesting that others involved with or curious about our project may find it interesting.

Be sure to follow us at @INKE_MP.

Visual Data Analysis: New Ways of Understanding and Interpreting Information in a Digital Format

Now that data analysis is task relegated to the everyday, the processes that serve particular functions related to this task must be simple despite their complexity. Because of the large quantities of data that are generated for any given project, techniques must be developed that allow researchers to “[interpret data] holistically, and to expose meaningful patterns and structure, trends and exceptions, and more”.

The 2010 Horizon Report examines the blending of visualization, data mining, and statistics that has produced the new field of visual data analysis. Essentially, visual data analysis allows data to be placed into any number of charts, maps, tag clouds, or any other graphical means through pattern-matching in relation to human interaction, and the making of meaning from various sets of information. The report draws on tools such as self-organizing maps that “create a grid of ‘neuronal units’ such that neighboring units recognize similar data, reinforcing important patterns so that they can be seen” to prove the usefulness of such a system for the common user.

Although visual data analysis is useful for everything from flow charts to word collages, it also may be a useful tool due to its ability to seek and find patterns within a given text. Another boon involves the ease with which data may be accessed from various sites. Thus, interactive visualizations of data can someday be widely available, which will add to the effectiveness of electronic books and journals, as these visualizations will allow users to draw on and visually map the most up-to-date data available. In this way, “graphical representations, in whatever form they take, will be expected to clarify the narrative in an environment that combines increasingly sophisticated multimedia presentation with ever-increasing amounts and types of data” (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7052.pdf).

For more information, the link to the 2010 Horizon Report is here: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/visual-data-analysis/. Here also is an example of visual data analysis at work from Gapminder World:

Scholarly Editions: The Facsimile Redux in the Digital Archive

The facsimile has made a comeback in the digital age.  The facsimile became a common variant of the scholarly edition in the late 1960's and 1970's, issued by such presses as Scolar [sic] Press (Menston, Engl.), Da Capo Press (Amsterdam), The Facsimile Society (Columbia UP), and Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints (Ann Arbor), and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Amsterdam).  Some editions included a fairly substantial introduction.  Others (like many of the Scolar editions) provided only a very brief, often single-paragraph, introduction.  I consider these “scholarly” because they present the text in a way that presents textual information that is of scholarly interest, albeit in a visual rather than an analytical form.  This new emphasis on the original form of the literary work coincided with a new emphasis on the materiality of the book (see e.g. Wilson). More recently, Randall McLeod has observed the power of the photo-facsimile to liberate the text from accumulated projections and interventions of meaning.

Fig. 1. This edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia presents an interesting double-remove from the original object.  The backside of the title page describe it as a "Facsimile reproduction of the 1891 photographic facsimile of the original 1590 edition published in a limited edition by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd., and edited by Oskar Sommer."

We see a similar emphasis on the facsimile in this incunable period of digital editing, but now the exemplar is commonly matched with a transcription, sometimes, but not always, marked-up in XML using the TEI schema.  This combination of image and text forms the basis of most Web-delivered digital archives. (See for examples the Donne Variorum facsimiles, or The Rossetti Archive).  Less commonly are these materials the basis for original textual scholarship and corresponding apparatus of the type one sees in the mature print facsimile exemplified in Jeanne Shami’s edition of a manuscript of John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon (with authorial corrections).  This edition presents its material in a form that is similar to the digital archive.  Taking advantage of the full, two-page opening, it presents on the left a page facsimile of the exemplar, and on the right, the corresponding transcription.  Interestingly, the lines in the transcription are numbered, just as they are in XML transcriptions to enable correlation between the facsimile and the transcription.  Along the foot of the page are the major variant readings of the only other witness, the printed text found in Fifty Sermons (1649).  So then, while the page arrangements are similar to those of the interface to a digital archive, the content presents more than the simple primary materials.  It includes, in addition to an extensive introduction to the manuscript, a textual apparatus comprising a record of variants, and, at the back, a summary table of Donne’s corrections and a section of paleographic commentary titled “Transcription Details.”

Fig. 2. An opening from Shami's edition of John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon.

Ernie Sullivan’s edition of The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts places the facsimile of the exemplar and the matching transcription side-by-side, but on the same page, rather than on facing pages.  Although the book is folio-sized, the page is not large enough, or not laid-out well enough, to give the reader a legible facsimile image.  There is also a great deal of wasted white space.  In contrast to the Kent State edition of Sidney's Arcadia, and other facsimiles common in the 1960s and 1970s, this one provides much of the supporting documentation that one would expect of a newly edited text.  It has a substantial introduction and note on the transcription at the front, and at the back, a section of explanatory notes, a section on "Manuscript and Print Locations of the Poems," a "Textual Apparatus," and an "Index" to the contents.  That is, this edition, like Shami’s, is the work of original textual scholarship.  The difference between these and other, similar editions, is the presence of page facsimiles of the original artifact (illegible though they may be).

Fig. 3. A page from Ernie Sullivan’s edition of The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts

Works Cited


McGann, Jerome, ed. The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Archive. http://www.rossettiarchive.org/index.html.

McLeod, Randall.  “UN Editing Shak-speare.” Sub-Stance no. 33/4 (1982): 37. 

Shami, Jeanne, ed. John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon: A Parallel-Text Edition. Language & literature series volume 22. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996.

Sidney, Philip. The Covntesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. Ed. Carl Dennis. [Kent, Ohio]: Kent State University Press, 1970.

Stringer, Gary, ed. DigitalDonne: the Online Variorum.  http://digitaldonne.tamu.edu/.

Sullivan, Ernest W. II., ed. The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts: Poems and Prose. Facs. ed. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988.

Wilson, F. P. Shakespeare and the New Bibliography. Rev. and ed. Helen Gardner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.