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Tang, C. (2003)
Capturing and Visualizing Histories of Multimedia-based Casual Interactions. Master’s thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta Canada, December.
Type: Masters thesis.
Note: Tang was under my supervision.

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Abstract.
Many groupware systems now allow people to converse and casually interact through their computers using multimedia—text, images, video and etc. A visualized history of these interactions can help group members reflect on their past interactions, and can help researchers investigate the nuances of online communities. In this thesis, I address the problem of how one can capture and visualize temporal histories of multimedia conversations. First, I built a tool to capture the conversations that occur on the Notification Collage, a computer-mediated communication system that lets people post multimedia items into a public communication space. Second, I built VisStreams, a system that lets people visualize and review past multimedia conversations. Third, I identified through end-user participation a taxonomy of tasks and visualizations. These become guidelines for developing visualization tools for multimedia histories of casual interaction. I evaluate VisStreams against this taxonomy to better understand its potential use and direct its future iterations.