Building the Mega-Collaboration Interface: Behavioral, Cultural, and Cognitive Factors in Visualization Support (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the 6th …, 2009
The need to gather and use decentralized information and resources in responding to disasters demands an integrated interface that can support large-scale collaboration. This paper describes the development of a collaboration tool interface. The tool will surpass existing groupware and social networking applications, providing easy entry, categorization, and visualization of masses of critical data; the ability to form ad-hoc teams with collaboration protocols for negotiated action; and agent-augmented mixed-initiative tracking and coordination of these activities. The paper reports user testing results concerning the data entry interface, emergent leadership, and the directed negotiation process. The paper also discusses planned enhancements, including formalized collaboration engineering and the use of a disaster simulation test bed.
IN2CO - A Visualization Framework for Intuitive Collaboration
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Today, the need for interaction and visualization techniques to fulfill user requirements for collaborative work is ever increasing. Current approaches do not suffice since they do not consider the simultaneous work of participating users, different views of the data being analyzed, or the exchange of information between different data emphases. We introduce Intuitive Collaboration (IN2CO), a scalable visualization framework that supports decision-making processes concerning multilevels and multi-roles. IN2CO improves the state of the art by integrating ubiquitous technologies and existing techniques to explore and manipulate data and dependencies collaboratively. A prototype has been tested by mechanical engineers with expertise in factory planning. Preliminary results imply that IN2CO supports communication and decision-making in a team-oriented manner.
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Abstract For several decades, researchers and engineers have struggled with the development of systems to support distance collaboration. The failure of many collaborative technologies is due, in part, to a limited understanding of how groups coordinate in collocated environments and how the coordination mechanisms of face-to-face collaboration are impacted by technology.
Designing dynamic interactive visualisations to support collaboration and cognition
2002
Abstract Dynamic interactive visualisations (DIVs) are intended to help coordination and collaboration, through augmenting existing forms of synchronous communication (ie phones, face to face, walkie-talkie). A central feature of a DIV is active user involvement: users are required to create, annotate, and change the information visualisation to represent the changes in the activity space they are concerned with. One benefit of doing so is to enable users to externalise and offload some of the cognitive effort involved.
A great corpus of studies reports empirical evidence of how information visualization supports comprehension and analysis of data. The benefits of visualization for synchronous group knowledge work, however, have not been addressed extensively. Anecdotal evidence and use cases illustrate the benefits of synchronous collaborative information visualization, but very few empirical studies have rigorously examined the impact of visualization on group knowledge work. We have consequently designed and conducted an experiment in which we have analyzed the impact of visualization on knowledge sharing in situated work groups. Our experimental study consists of evaluating the performance of 131 subjects (all experienced managers) in groups of 5 (for a total of 26 groups), working together on a real-life knowledge sharing task. We compare (1) the control condition (no visualization provided), with two visualization supports: (2) optimal and (3) suboptimal visualization (based on a previous survey). The facilitator of each group was asked to populate the provided interactive visual template with insights from the group, and to organize the contributions according to the group consensus. We have evaluated the results through both objective and subjective measures. Our statistical analysis clearly shows that interactive visualization has a statistically significant, objective and positive impact on the outcomes of knowledge sharing, but that the subjects seem not to be aware of this. In particular, groups supported by visualization achieved higher productivity, higher quality of outcome and greater knowledge gains. No statistically significant results could be found between an optimal and a suboptimal visualization though (as classified by the pre-experiment survey). Subjects also did not seem to be aware of the benefits that the visualizations provided as no difference between the visualization and the control conditions was found for the self-reported measures of satisfaction and participation. An implication of our study for information visualization applications is to extend them by using real-time group annotation functionalities that aid in the group sense making process of the represented data.
Increasing Understanding During Collaboration Through Advanced Representations
Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction
this paper is to present an environment which has been specifically designed for multiple ways to represent and manipulate information. Several representations, when coupled with appropriate visualization techniques, lead to opportunities for increasing understanding of AEC project characteristics. More specifically, when a numerical constraint solver (SpaceSolver) is integrated within a document-centric collaboration environment (ICC), synergies between information exchange and solution space exploration contribute very positively to the quality of projects. In particular, the ICC environment provides a framework for representing and visualizing information structures that are created during collaboration. Conceptually, an information architecture and visualization techniques to support the virtual AEC enterprise are emphasized. A plug-in architecture allows for the addition of processspecific functionality. The constraint solver SpaceSolver presents a complementary collaborative a...
The Big Five and Visualisations of Team Work Activity
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006
We have created a set of novel visualisations of group activity: they have been designed to mirror the activity of the individuals and their interactions, based upon readily available authentic data from the groups. We evaluated these visualisations in the context of a semester long software development project course. Data from these was used to build visualisations of the activity of each person in each group. We report our theoretical analysis of the design of our visualisations in the framework defined by the "Big 5" theory of team work as well as a qualitative study of the visualizations in relation to the student's reflective reports. We conclude that these visualizations provide a powerful and valuable mirroring role which has the potential, when well used, to help groups learn how to improve their effectiveness.
Do visualizations improve synchronous remote collaboration?
Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '08, 2008
Information visualizations can improve collaborative problem solving, but this improvement may depend on whether visualizations promote communication. In an experiment on the effect of network visualizations, remote pairs worked synchronously to identify a serial killer. They discussed disparate evidence distributed across the pair using IM. Four conditions, respectively, offered (a) spreadsheet only (controls), (b) individual unshared visualizations, (c) view-only shared visualizations, and (d) a full-access shared visualization of all evidence. We examined collaborative performance, use of the visualization tool, and communication as a function of condition. All visualization conditions improved remote collaborators' performance over the control condition. Full access to a shared visualization best facilitated remote collaboration by encouraging tool use and fostering discussion between the partners. Shared visualization without full access impaired performance somewhat and made communication even more vital to identifying the serial killer. This study provides direct evidence of visualization tool features and partner behavior that promote collaboration.
Planning for information visualization in mixed-initiative systems
1999
This paper describes two forms of information visualization for mixed-initiative systems associated with team collaboration and begins to discuss how plans might be formulated to achieve the visualizations. Common understanding visualization is concerned with visualizing the information a team employs, whereas visual collaboration is concerned with visualizing the ongoing, incremental information collection, the credibility and origins of that information, and the dynamic interpersonal relationships of the team itself. The first is the more "classic" form of visualization where data and information is collected, analyzed, abstracted, and tailored for display to the user. We are concerned not only with visualization for the single user, but also with visualizing the relationship the information holds in regard to the entire team. At the level of the individual user, a mixed-initiative system must consider how to tailor the appropriate information given the user's skill, expertise, and preferences. At the corporate level, a system must manage the display of information across multiple human users and system components that share a common goal. The second form of visualization deals with the collaboration between a user and his/her mixed-initiative system, between users, and between systems. That is, the user needs to understand and visualize the collaboration, how the user fits into it, and the associated human/information interaction and processes involved in such collaboration. We claim both types of visualization are important for effective collaboration.
Sharing your view: A distributed user interface approach for reviewing emergency plans
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2014
Emergency planning is an ongoing activity in which a multidisciplinary group of experts intermittently collaborate to define the most appropriate response to risks. One of the most important tasks of emergency planning is the review of plans as a way of maintaining, refining, and improving them. This review of plans is based on exchanging knowledge and experiences in order to take into account different perspectives and generate alternative solutions. An exploratory case study carried out within municipal organizations has disclosed how the application of rigid plan reviewing practices hinders team creativity and, consequently, effective decision-making. This paper presents a computer-based collaborative environment aimed at supporting unstructured team discussion during the post-hoc review of emergency plan. This collaborative environment allows emergency planning team members to share their view in a free manner by interacting with user interface components distributed across several input and output dimensions. The usage of the environment has proved how the application of new interactive technologies can create more dynamic work settings, fostering team creativity.