Creating reflections in public emotion visualization: prototype exploration on traffic theme

Abstract

The paper presents a visualization prototype that tackles the issue of public emotion. It emphasizes the exploration process in the aim of creating reflections for the viewer to observe the whole social context as well as individual perspectives. Urban traffic conversation on SNS (Social Networking Site) is our current interest. The prototype we present is made on real post streams captured from Chinese most popular microblog Sina Weibo. After experimenting on two online prototypes we determine a visualizing flow to lead the viewer going through the insights from macro to micro view in three interaction frameworks: City Sentiment, Related Topics, and Post Content. Through showing the visualizing flow with interaction mode, data analysis, and prototype construction, the paper ends with discussing about design considerations in creating reflections on public traffic emotion in visualization prototype.