Conversation thumbnails for large-scale discussions

  • Authors:
  • Martin Wattenberg;David Millen

  • Affiliations:
  • IBM Research, Cambridge, MA;IBM Research, Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

We present a new interface for large-scale online conversations. Our technique, the Conversation Thumbnail, differs from existing discussion interfaces in two respects. First, it employs a focus+context visualization technique that exploits message-level metadata to provide an easily navigable overview of a discussion. Second, it helps reduce conversational redundancy and improve coherence via a fast automatic search mechanism that highlights related messages during message composition. The Conversation Thumbnail Viewer is currently implemented as a Java applet that can be applied to a variety of discussion data sources.