Visualizing Social Patterns in Virtual Environments on a Local and Global Scale

Today a wide variety of virtual worlds, cities, gaming environments etc. exist and become part of life of their human inhabitants. However, our understanding on how technology influences the way people can use these virtual places to access information, expertise, to socialize, etc. is very limited. Previous work [1-3] introduced a tool set that generates visualizations of user interaction data to support social navigation, aid designers of virtual worlds in the evaluation and optimization of world content and layout as well as the selection of interaction possibilities, and enables researchers to monitor, study, and research virtual worlds and their evolving communities. This paper applies an advanced version of this tool set to visualize and analyze local and global usage patterns in a virtual learning environment called Linkworld.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: DIGITALCITIES
• Authors: Katy Börner, Shashikant Penumarthy, Bonnie Jean DeVarco, Carol Kerney
• Keywords: Applied Computing, DIGITALCITIES 2003, Research Virtual Worlds, Virtual Learning Environment, Virtual Worlds