I decided to investigate the project Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. I decided to chose this project because it looked really busy and I wanted to explore exactly what it was graphing.
What (or who) are the nodes and what are the edges?
The nodes in this project are different blips of people who were involved in early modern social circles, such as Francis Bacon and Kind James I. When the nodes are further investegated by the user (clicked), you can see additional information like their role in society and the timeline in which they lived. Attached to the nodes are edges that depict the social relationship between other people (nodes). Furthermore, an edge can represent a second hand relationship, in the case that two people are not directly linked first hand.
What interactions does the project allow?
The project allows the user to click on individual nodes to highlight how that node fits into the larger relationships of the graph. When clicked, the edges and other nodes that the node is linked to are shown while others become grayed out. Furthermore, you can hover over nodes and see its name, and hover over specific edges to highlight them specifically through clicks. The project also allows you to browze the metadata of each node so the user can see a list of each node’s name, historical significance, birth date, gender, and who it was created by. There is also an extra ‘visualization’ button that allows the user to click on a specific node and visualize how it fits into the larger context of the graph.
How does this impact their effectiveness and/or your engagement?
This projects interactions do not allow the user to sort the inital nodes by any type of genre, but they are very effective in showing connections between people. The feature that allows the user to focus on a specific node and its connections is very useful in visualizing early social circles in history. Furthermore, the organization of first hand and second hand relationships kept me engaged with the graphs, as it depicted more people beyond the nobles / churchmen who were socially well versed.
