I recently came across LizardFeeder, a "compilation of data feeds representing activity within the Mozilla community." I think it's a pretty nice tool. It shares some ideas in common with my awareness tool for developers, especially in that both tools aggregate discrete events in a software project. Obviously, the scale of our approaches is a little different; I was focused specifically on building a tool for a small team.
(LizardFeeder screenshot)
Dave Bottoms of Mozilla has published a call for designers to create "a visualization that attempts to demystify the collaborative process of making software, while celebrating [Mozilla] contributors." The goals are a little nebulous, but my take on it is they want to build on the ideas in LizardFeeder and come up with a visualization that is universally approachable, even to non-technical people.
Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction researchers have been trying to visualize software development communities for a few years. The archives of the Mining Software Repositories conference have some examples and one can also look to recent projects such as code_swarm. There have been some nice designs, for sure, and code_swarm is definitely fun to watch. At the same time, my pragmatic side is left looking for more. In practice, these are the kind of visualizations that you put up in the lobby of your building (in HiDef!) to impress visitors. Visual wow factor is a noble goal in itself---don't get me wrong---but I think we're still searching for ways to build meaningful tools in this area. The Mozilla proposal is especially welcome in that regard.
I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of it all, and given LizardFeeder's overlap with my research, some interesting ideas for awareness tools might emerge along the way.
