Project Information

About this project:

In many learning or meeting contexts, participants are involved in interactive discourses to bring together their individual knowledge. The results of this discourses are often documented as text-based meeting minutes. Sometimes the results are documented as integrated visualizations. For this purpose only analog methods or proprietary software exist.

This is the reason why we are developing an Open Source software. The Software DialogueMaps, that we want to present, supports the communication process within a group to get a better understanding of complex circumstances or issues by creating visualizations. DialogueMaps is based on several theoretical concepts. As an integrating medium DialogueMaps helps supporting the creation of Interactive Visualizations (aka hyper visualization) in group discussion. For a first and better understanding, DialogueMaps is partly identical to prezi [0]. But it's more!

Our vision is a new emerging media called interactive visualization. Interactive Visualizations according to our understanding are inspired by the Mikropolis Modell from Arno Rolf et al. [1] (a framework of theories, methods, and models of several disciplines in order to understand the interactions that occur between development and design of information technology on the one hand and changes in organizations and in society on the other side).

More preparatory works or theoretical underpinnings are Otto Neuraths [2] picture language ISOTYPE [3][4] (and his vision of a picture based encyclopedia), David Sibbets [5] methods for graphic facilitation (to develop a better understanding about complex circumstances or issues in group situations), and Vanaver Bushs idea of a memory extender (called Memex, which allows to navigate in complex multimedia data material along predefined associative trails; described in his article “As we may think” [6]) . For more details, please read our scientific publications [7][8][9][10].