I started playing with processing today, a easy-to use open source programming language and environment targeted a people who want to program images. This language seems to offer an simple platform that can be used to visualize my CatchBob logfiles. The logfiles store all the players' interaction with some annotations the researcher (hmm myself) made about what information they exchanged. As I explained previously, I'd like to visualize the exchange of “coordination devices” among players: the mutually recognized information that would enables the teammates to choose the right actions to perform so that the common goal might be reached.

Along with Fabrice Hong, we did some prototypes using the replay tool he designed, but I also wanted to give a try with another tool and Processing seemed to be the perfect candidate to have more appealing viz. My first attempt is quite simple and depicts how 3 players exchanged messages during the 3 phases of the game; squares represent messages, links between square show occurences of dialogues.

Why do I blog this? I am trying tools, let's see if it's easy to use them, Processins seems to have easy XML import (my annotated logs are in XML).