電子郵件資料中事件演進模式與人際互動關係之視覺化研究

EmailMap: Visualizing Event Evolution and Contact Interaction within Email Archives

黃莉婷(Li-Ting Huang)

指導教授 ： 陳炳宇

國立臺灣大學/電機資訊學院/資訊工程學研究所/碩士(2012年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2012.03236

摘要

電子郵件資料中有大量關於人們如何和連絡人互動，以及生活中的事件如何演進、發展的資訊。理解、組織這些資料可以幫助人們了解並且綜觀過去的生命經驗。儘管過去已有不少研究著力於電子郵件的視覺化，但大部分的研究主題仍集中在下列兩者之一：理解電子郵件中之事件發展、或人們和連絡人互動關係之變化，尚未有研究能提出完整的方式整合這兩項資訊。在本研究中，我們提出 EmailMap -- 一個將電子郵件視覺化的系統。在此系統中，我們整合事件發展、和連絡人互動關係的資訊至一個單一的系統介面，讓使用者能夠透過兩個互補的資訊，充分理解隱藏在大量電子郵件資料中的脈絡和資訊。我們設計了兩種視覺化元素來呈現這些資料：事件流（event flow）和聯絡人追蹤（contact tracks）：事件流以流線方式呈現過去事件之演變，幫助使用者理解資料較為全觀性的特徵與結構；聯絡人追蹤則用以呈現人們之間互動的情況。最後，我們透過質性使用者測試，驗證了 EmailMap 系統之有效性，說明此系統能幫助使用者整合過去事件之演變與人們互動關係之變化，提供更豐富的回想經驗。

關鍵字

電子郵件視覺化 ； 電子郵件資料 ； 事件發展 ； 聯絡人互動 ； 分群 ； 流向圖 ； 軌跡圖

並列摘要

Email archives contain rich information about how we interacted with different contacts and how events evolved throughout time. Making sense of the archived messages can be a good way to understand how things evolved and progressed in the past. Although much work has been devoted to email visualization, most work has focused on presenting one of the two aspects of email archives: discovering the evolution of emails and events, or the relationship between contacts and ego over time. Very few systems support an integration of both. In this paper, we present EmailMap, an email visualization which integrates the information of both events and contacts into a single view, enabling users to make sense of their email archives with complementary contextual information. Two visualization components are designed to portray complex information within the email archives: event flow and contact tracks. The event flow illustrates the evolution of past events, helping the users to grasp high-level pictures and patterns of their email archives. The contact tracks reveal the interaction between ego and the contacts. We also conducted a qualitative user study to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of EmailMap in helping users to integrate past life events with the interaction between people into a rich and meaningful reminiscence.

並列關鍵字

email visualization ； email archive ； event evolution ； contact interaction ； clustering ； flow ； track

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