Association Mapping: Social Network Analysis with Humans and Non-Humans

I present Association Mapping (AM), a novel adaptation of Social Network Analysis that intends to map out each moment of association between people and objects. By including non-human actors in the analysis of software use, all of the disparate applications, devices, tasks, and contexts can be made explicit, numerically represented, and tested against or with similar networks. I demonstrate AM by creating Association Maps for 6 games of the board game Catan (1995) – a dice-based game of resource distribution and management. Catan (1995) was chosen for this pilot study due to its popularity, affordances, and expected behaviors. The maps are separated in 2 ways: 1). modalities: on the tabletop and mediated by an iPad application and 2). By group. AM is useful to designers by providing measurements of three distinct spaces: Outer Space or the general shape the objects create while associating, Inner space or the power of each object individually, and Inter-space or groups of objects working in tandem. Through design fiction, literature criticism, metaphor, and play, AM is contextualized and described both through this study and in general.

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Recommended citation: LaLone, Nicolas. (2018). "Association Mapping: Social Network Analysis with Humans and Non-Humans." Retrieved from Electronic Theses and Dissertations for Graduate School.