Virtual Organization Breeding Environment Visualization Tool

In addition to studying how Virtual Organization Breeding Grounds (VBE’s) foster collaboration and trust within two life science communities of practice, this software tool seeks to explore the ways in which interaction amongst the users of such networks can be visualized. The visualization system uses a matrix-based design pattern in order to illustrate the intensity of interaction between users in certain topic-based online forums for life scientists. A matrix is a familiar design because of its common appearance in both data visualization and everyday data presentation. It also allows each user to user interaction to be separated. Each interaction can be analyzed simply by rolling the cursor over a square. One can then easily discern to which interaction the information is referring.