Genealogy has been a hobby of mine for some time. One thing that has long frustrated me is that although there are good tools for creating a family tree—managing data, basically—there are not a lot of good ways for seeing and using it.
I suspect more people are interested in seeing their family than they are at doing research or data entry.
After I became a parent, I started working on creating a poster that could be displayed in our home, that showed our family. It’s finally ready for an alpha launch. Continue reading below or go see Family Circles Diagram.
Goals
The main issue for me is that most family diagrams show (a) a focus person and their ancestors, or (b) a focus person or couple and their descendants. I wanted to be able to show everyone. Overall, the goals were to create something:
- that shows all types of relatives
- beautiful by itself, not something ugly or plain that is just decorated (chartjunk)
- to be printed
- that focuses on the present; that is, family as it is experienced today
- readable from one position (not requiring rotation)
- in a format that enables further editing
To me at least, these have largely been achieved, although further improvements are still planned.
The basic design (and name)
A focus person (or people) are shown in the centre. Around them (arranged in a circle) are those one “step” away: parents, full siblings, children, and spouses. Around them are people one step away from them, and so on. This is illustrated better on the diagram website.
This is unlike any other family tree diagram I am aware of, as those will have only people of the same generation on each level or circle.
The name comes from the concept of social circles, with you in the centre, your close family around you, close friends around them, then acquaintances, etc.
What I have made is one (opinionated) implementation. The concept could be done in other ways as well, such as in an interactive digital form.
Some nice features
- It really can display all types of family. If someone has been adopted, both their biological and adoptive family are shown. In-laws and step-relations may not be “blood” relatives, but they are still your family.
- For the number of people displayed, it’s fairly compact.
- Some other diagrams may show siblings (and multiple partners) in the order they were born (or married), however I think this is clearer in this diagram, and it’s the only one I know of that clearly indicates twins/triplets/etc.
Caveats
You can go to the website now and create your diagram, but there are some caveats:
- Geni.com is used as the data source. Why? Because I use Geni. If your family tree is not on Geni, you can export it from your current software and import it into Geni. As Geni is a collaborative single family tree (not unlike Wikipedia) this can be confusing to newcomers. I do not have a date for when this tool will be available for any other website or for GEDCOM files. Any errors in the family tree data will of course be reflected in the diagram.
- As per the terms of the Geni API, there is a limit on how fast data can be requested. The more people are using this tool at once, the longer it will take to create your diagram.
- This tool is new and may not always work or work perfectly. If you experience a problem, please let me know. I may need to ask you to share your personal family data in order to figure out what the problem is and fix it. I also have very little time available, so I cannot make any promises about how long a fix will take.
- The tool provides you with a file in SVG format. This is great because it means you can edit it as you want (tips are on the website), however even if you do not want to make changes, you will probably need to use software (such as Inkscape) to save it as a PDF for printing. I do not yet know when I will be able to provide PDF files directly.
- Depending on who you choose to include, the diagram can be very large and is generally not suited to printing at home, or at least, not on a single sheet.
- The diagram is English and Western-oriented at this point. People’s names should display okay in any language (matching what you see on Geni.com), however texts including relationship names and the legend are only in English. The drawings used for people who have no photos may not match everyone’s culture. Place names are complicated and may or may not be in English.
Other interesting notes
- This really is a new way to look at both your family generally, as well as what information is on Geni. I think most people will see their diagram and realize they want to add more photos and other details before remaking their diagram to print.
- Complex relationships
- In my limited experience, in most families you don’t have to look that far to find people who you are related to in more than one way. The diagram shows people only once, in whichever way is the fewest number of steps away. Other relationships with other people that are also in the diagram will be shown too, except in the case of siblings whose parents are not in the diagram (as siblings are drawn connected via their parents, not directly to each other).
- Data extrapolation
- Because knowing someone’s birth date is so important to various aspects of how the diagram is drawn, estimates are calculated (where possible) for people with no birth year specified. These estimates are not directly shown, but are used in colour-coding as well as choosing images for people with no photo. Geni has it’s own birth date estimates, however they are not provided in the API, and at any rate, I believe my estimates are better, and I have some ideas of how to improve it further. Birth date estimates are also used to mark some people as deceased, even when the data from Geni has them as living.
- In general, the tool tries its best to get or make use of the data available to fill in the desired data. For instance, the location listed for each person is meant to be their current location, but if that isn’t available, another location associated with that person will be used.
- Relationship names
- Because relationships in a family circles diagram are not always as clear as in ancestor and descendant diagrams, in addition to showing it visually (by lines that connect partners, and arrows connecting parents to their children), relationship names are also provided. This uses English conventions, which can be ambiguous (for instance sibling-in-law could be either a sibling’s partner or a partner’s sibling). Other cultures have very different names and I’d love to make use of those one day. Relationship names may not match those on Geni for a couple of reasons, as Geni does not note half-relationships, nor use names like “step” and “in-law.”
The future
I have lots of improvements “planned”, but as mentioned, not much time to work on this. So if there’s a fix or improvement you want, or you just want to share your appreciation of the tool, send me a note.