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What is Group Persona Visualization?
Group Persona Visualization builds a foundation for analysis of group interactions. The service collects and interprets randomly distributed data from individuals to create a summary of a group's overall feelings, perceptions, and activities. Group Persona Visualization is intended to inspire communication and collaboration among groups in which status information is often fragmented across a wide variety of Web locations.
The service interprets the status and activities of groups by collecting data from a range of social networking sources. Users create groups on the Web site and put in the sources where they personally express their thoughts, feelings, and activities (blogs, twitter, instant messaging, etc.). The software then pulls information from those feeds, interprets it according to defined standards, and displays an overall conclusion of the group's status.
How does it work?
Group Persona Visualization is a simple Web application. Members join the Web site, create or join a group, and put in the sources where they update their ongoing status. The application (designed in Java™ Enterprise Edition and running on Tomcat) pulls feeds from these locations, stores the data in a database, and computes the data according to predefined standards. The outcome of the computation is presented as a clear, user-friendly Flash visualization that runs in the user's browser.
| About the technology authors |
 The interns who developed Group Persona Visualization are a 2008 U.K. Extreme Blue team located at IBM Hursley. The team comprises three technical students who were responsible for the development and the implementation of the technology. They are as follows:
Andrew Armstrong is a student in the Internet Computer Science Honours Programme at the University of St. Andrews. Mr. Armstrong co-developed the back-end of the software, including fetcher technology and database and standards calculations. He also designed the project's Web site.
Alice Bartlett is a student in the Computer Science Programme at the University of York. Ms. Bartlett created the Flash visualisations that portray group data. She also designed the Sametime plug-in "proof of concept."
Matthew Taylor is working toward an M.Sci. in natural sciences (physics) from the University of Cambridge. Mr. Taylor's responsibilities included co-development of the back-end of the technology and system architecture. He was most highly involved in determining the standards by which the technology calculates group data.
Andrew Burman is working toward an MBA in global management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Mr. Burman's work included scoping and project management, networking for stakeholder input, and executing the internal marketing strategy.
All members of the team were involved in high-level concept design. The development of this project would not have been possible without the help and contributions of the team's mentors: Darren Shaw, Gareth Jones, Michael Bradley, Helen Bowyer, and Jay Dykes.
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Date Posted: September 04, 2008
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