i have finished a few new visualizations for the ctools data. i’ve been working on a python script that creates two different timelines for each site, one showing activity (events) broken down by user and the other activity broken down by file.
i recommend using Opera to view the files below (or Adobe Illustrator), and NOT Firefox. SVG support in Firefox is apparently still too beta. i switched to Opera a couple of days ago, because it renders the graphics much, much faster and it supports zooming in and out of images.
DSO ctools site: file timeline, user timeline, and activity scatterplot
PhD Program ctools site: file timeline, user timeline, and activity scatterplot
i’ve removed the usernames form the user timelines — if you want to know which line is you, send me mail and i can send you a personalized image file.
in the activity scatterplot, circle size represents how many users accessed that file, and the color represents how deep the file is in the resources hierarchy. for an interesting contrast, see the scatterplots and file timelines for two other sites: [ site a: timeline | scatterplot] and [site b: timeline | scatterplot]. i’ve removed the titles for privacy reasons. it is fairly obvious from these graphs that the activity patterns and hierarchy structure for these two sites are very different.
my script is designed to create timelines for specific site id’s, or for a random sample of sites having events in 2005-2007. i’ve run several random samples of 100 sites, and my main observation is that most of these sites do not get continuous use — many are used for only a few months and then never looked at again. of course, there were over 8000 sites active in 2007 alone, and there’s no way for me to look at visualizations for all of them. i need to narrow down the list before i start recruting for my field study. i believe i should be looking for sites with more than just 2 or 3 active users, and which seem to have steady activity for longer than one semester.
i should also mention that these visualizations were inspired by, although definitely not as beautiful as, those by Viegas [ MIT page | IBM page ].
