Paper Reading #5: Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight

Comments:


Reference Information:
Title:  Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight
Authors:  Peter Kinnaird, Mario Romero, Gregory Abowd
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010 April 10-15, 2010 Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Summary:
The first part of this paper talks about how it is important to get information out to voters so they can make informed decisions. This paper deals with something called a "Roll Call". A roll call vote takes place in the US Congress and require the representative to explicitly select one of three options (Yes, No, Present), which then becomes a matter of public record.

Because this data system is very large and complex a visualization system called  Connect 2 Congress was designed to reduce this complexity.

C2C Interface

C2C provides the community with a visualization system to explore data and it's changes over time. It is a web application that can run in any modern browser. C2C displays all of it's data on a vertical timeline where light gray tick marks mark dates during which voting occurred. There are two green triangles where the user can select a timespan for desired data. The API and more of its more complex features are discussed further in this paper.

Different users can find different uses for C2C. An evaluation was done with a focus group that would find C2C useful. This is what was found from each different type of user. Social Scientists and historians could visually explore and analyze both individual and group behavior in great detail. Political Strategists and Politicians could spot trends and changes in behavior at both the individual and group level. Strategies could also be evaluated for effectiveness. Journalists could spot trends and behavior to verify or reject claims. Informed voters could get unbiased information about candidates' actions.

This system has two primary contributions. First, political science is merged with HCI. Second, a general technique for making voting records accessible.

Discussion:

 This paper was actually kind of a relief. In my previous blogs I could see how the subject would relate to HCI but it wasn't specified in full detail in the paper. For this paper software is actually used and described to connect with political science. C2C seems pretty useful because you can see how people are voting and what the trends are. This could be very important and useful to certain people.  I don't think political science is an interesting subject at all but after reading a little about this software I might find it a little more interesting if I were able to use this program.