User-Centered Collaborative Visualization

While a large set of problems can be addressed through automatic techniques from fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning or computer vision, there are various datasets and domains that still rely on the human intuition and experience in order to parse and discover hidden information. In such instances, the data is usually structured and represented in the form of an interactive visual representation that allows users to efficiently explore the data space and reach valuable insights. However, the experience, knowledge and intuition of a single person also has its limits. To address this, collaborative visualizations allow multiple users to communicate, interact and explore a visual representation by building on the different views and knowledge blocks contributed by each person.

Our group explores the potential of subjective measurements and user emotional awareness in collaborative scenarios as well as support flexible and user-centered collaboration in information visualization systems running on tabletop displays. For this, we introduce the concept of User-Centered Collaborative Visualization (UCCV, see below) and developed a number of techniques supporting this approach.

User-centered collaborative visualization is the shared use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of data that considers knowledge about the abilities and needs of both the involved users and the group as such, their task(s), and the environment(s) within which they work, in order to capture vital contextual information and support the process of completing the user group’s common goal of contribution to joint information processing activities.

The User-Centered Collaborative Visualization project was performed from 2009 until 2015 in collaboration with the Research Group on HCI and Visualization at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.