Optimice Launches Professional Network Visualization

Australian professional networking company, Optimice, has just launched a new website featuring a visualization based on Constellation Framework. This customization reads data from a special format and displays it in a unique interface built by Asterisq.

The "Thinkmap-Style" Interface

The interface itself features zooming and filtering options for refining and navigating the dataset. Clicking the checkboxes updates the visualization immediately.

When users join the network, they rank the topics that matter to them. Highly-ranked topics are connected using shorter, thicker lines. Taking it one step further, edges connecting people to topics that aren't so important to them are more curved. This reduces the visual association between the nodes and creates a more organic aesthetic.

The nodes themselves are colored according to type and topics that have more high-priority connections are displayed using larger circles. Also, hovering over a node emphasizes its label for better legibility.

The Social Network Data

Optimice's application is used to display the people in their network and their top five areas of interest. The data is transmitted in the "VNA" format used by the Netdraw Network Visualization App.

To speed up the user experience for displaying a large network, data is only loaded as it is needed. The screenshot shows an example of the VNA format.

• Check out the live Optimice Network Visualization.