Collaborative Visualization for Supporting the Analysis of Mobile Device Data

Abstract

Visualizations are mainly used for providing easy access to complex information and data. Within this paper we focus on how visualization itself can serve as a collaborative aspect within distributed and asynchronous team work. In doing so, we try to uncover challenges to support a team of researchers in understanding and analyzing mobile data by collaborative visualization. Based on a review of recent literature, two workshops with participants from the academic field were conducted, which revealed use cases and major design challenges for a collaborative visualization approach. With our user-centered study, we introduce design implications for collaborative visualizations that focus on research questions instead on single visualizations, embed multiple visualizations into a discussion thread, highlight relations between research artefacts as well as include external parties in collaborative visualizations.