Design Considerations for Collaborative Information Workspaces in Multi-Display Environments

Proc. of Workshop on Collaborative Visualization on Interactive Surfaces (CoVIS'09), in conjunction with VisWeek

The incorporation of massive amounts of data from different sources is a challenging task for the conception of any
information visualization system. Especially the data heterogeneity often makes it necessary to include people from multiple domains
with various fields of expertise. Hence, the inclusion of multiple users in a collaborative data analysis process introduces a whole
new challenge for the design and conception of visualization applications. Using a multi-display environment to support co-located
collaborative work seems to be a natural next step. However, adapting common visualization systems to multi-display environments
poses several challenges.
We have come up with a number of design considerations for employing multiple-view visualizations in collaborative multi-display
environments: adaptations of the visualization depending on display factors and user preferences, interaction techniques to facilitate
information sharing and to guide the users’ attention to relevant items in the environment, and the design of a flexible working
environment, adjustable to varying group sizes and specific tasks.
Motivated by these considerations we propose a system relying on a spatial model of the environment as its main information source.
We argue that the system design should be separated into basic multi-display environment functionality, such as multiple input
handling and the management of the physical displays, and higher level functionality provided by the visualization system. An
API offered by the multi-display framework thereby provides the necessary information about the environment and users to the
visualization system.

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