Connection Visualization

A while ago, Collin McClellan came to me with an Idea. He wanted to build a system that could visualize the connections between friends. I had heard of several other times where someone had made this visualization with Facebook friends, but Facebook friends only show if a connection exists, not the strength of the relationship. Collin wanted to survey people so that he could visualize the strength of the connection too. After Collin collected some hand-organized data, Andrew Adler decided to create an automated system using Google Sheets and Forms.

Unfortunately, the programming required within Google Sheets made for a very complicated system with a lot of failure points. I started to optimize this system by using the Script Editor tool within Google Sheets. The Script Editor allowed me to create several custom functions that organized the data relatively efficiently.

  To expand the survey’s publicity, Andrew worked on a website containing pictures of everyone who took the questionnaire. He then integrated our form into the site, so as someone was taking the survey they could look at people instead of just their names.  

              The Google Forums add-on we were using to update our forum whenever a new person took it had an issue that was causing our columns to overflow. After spending a couple day’s worth of spare time, I had written a script to replace the system that Google uses to connect forums and sheets, and another script to update the forum options based on a list in Google Sheets. My scripts allowed us to reach Sheet’s 256 column limit without any blank spaces.

   From there it was just another simple script to format the data into a standard network association table and upload that into Google Fusion Tables; where it can be graphed and visualized in many ways.

   All together this system serves as a proof of concept for a possible campus or even town-wide social connection map. Of course, that system would have to use an actual database, but for small scale (up to 250) people I found Google’s Scripting system to be very effective. 

Here's a mini interactive model.

The vast majority of credit and motivation goes to both Collin and Andrew, this project wouldn't have happened without them, and Andrew's countless hours sitting in the dorm lobby catching passersby should not go unrecognized. 

Unfortunately, I think I'm the only member on Linkedin at the moment, so please contact me with any questions or interests.